Mother Angelica: Entrepeneur

The National Post of Canada has a fair summary of Raymond Arroyo's new biography of Mother Angelica.

She remains the only woman to found a television network. Evidently, EWTN did not receive Candadian government approval for broadcast in the beginning. Perhaps they found it too unReasonable. Michael Coren has more:

Mother Angelica herself is an unlikely hero. Born Rita Rizzo, she grew up in an Ohio slum dominated by organized crime where prostitutes and thugs walked the streets. Her mother suffered from acute and sometimes suicidal depression, her father abandoned the family and left them in poverty.

She became a cloistered nun and expected to spend the rest of her life as such. But she saw at first-hand the contrived decay of the Catholic Church and felt obliged to intervene. As is so often the case with people who have been mugged by the reality of the inner city, she has never suffered liberals lightly and was not about to blithely accept establishment driven rusty relativism.

As Arroyo points out so eloquently in his book, Mother Angelica with a cause is a sight to behold. Muscular Christianity at its most compelling. Not only did she have to fight the television hierarchy but often various bishops who were so desperate to not rock the boat that they preferred to sink.

The book itself is a fitting tribute to a woman whose final legacy, though great even now, is still to be felt in its entirety. For once hyperbole is justified: She changed and is changing the world.

Changed and changing Canada too. EWTN has a dedicated following in this country and is growing steadily. For many years, however, those Canadians who chose to watch the station were obliged to break the law. Or sort of break the law. They had to buy satellites on the grey market and pretend that they wouldn't dream of betraying the CBC.Because the Canadian response to EWTN was, well, nun is too many. While welcoming Playboy TV and various semi-pornographic networks into this country, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission(CRTC) ruled that Canada was too vulnerable, too fragile and too atheistic to need or want Mother Angelica.

Eventually the CRTC changed its mind, but with the advent of digital cable and the expanded television market the government body had little option. The market dictated that the state become less intolerant.

It was yet another example of the galloping paradox that permeates Canadian society. This is a deeply religious country but those who make and shape its politics and culture not only refuse to acknowledge this but, in many cases, genuinely have no idea that it is true.

It's the same secular fundamentalist approach that attempts to expunge faith-based opinion from the public square, unless of course the particular opinion is politically accommodating. When the Roman Catholic Church, for example, expresses profound reservations about Third World debt and the war in Iraq, it is welcomed as a pure voice of moderation and balance.

However, when it condemns abortion, refuses to accept same-sex marriage and rejects euthanasia it is told by the same people to keep quiet because of the necessity to separate church and state.

Mother Angelica has never desired to break any separation between church and state. Like most orthodox Christians, be they Catholic or Protestant, she simply wants the same rights and abilities as the non-religious world to express her views. (Emphasis Mine.)

EWTN has allowed Foolish Catholics to experience the perspective of those that celebrate the fullness of the Faith. In the Post-Vatican II "Spirit of Vatican II" heyday, far too many Foolables would have all but obliterated such a perspective. Mother Angelica and EWTN stood firm against the Spirit of the Age. Pope John Paul the Great's call for a new Evangelism vindicated their resistance.

Now, Fools can laugh while Foolables join their Reasonable masters mouth-foaming on the carpet of civility. We'll laugh as the Everymen of society open the broom closet and the kitchen door. We'll keep laughing as Foolable and Reasonable alike get swept out the door. Mother Angelica gave Fools a forum in which to laugh. Thank God for her committment to the Foolishness of Faith.