“The Nostalgia for a Sacralised World”
The pope is dead, but not everybody at the “Eternal World Television Network” in Irondale, Alabama, is shedding tears. For the moment the heated attacks on Pope Francis have made way to an adulatory coverage of his funeral. But with the conclave coming the ideological battle for the soul of Catholicism will surely return to the airwaves of EWTN, the world’s largest religious media network. The story of this Catholic TV network aligns with the political developments of the Republican Party and the American Right. It marks a challenge to the traditionally more liberal Catholic Church in den US. And all of it started with Mother Angelica, an ordinary nun whose extraordinary career from being cloistered to becoming a revered TV-Evangelist encapsulates the developments and changes in US-media, religion and politics over the last 40 years.
When you enter the modern studio buildings of EWTN attached to the old monastery, which Mother Angelica built in the 60s, you get the story of the remarkable Franciscan nun through a video presentation followed by the gentle guidance of Steven Lynsford.
Born in 1923 Mother Angelica had a calling to open a monastery for recruiting black nuns in the still segregated American South, a goal, however, that was soon to be forgotten. Instead, Mother Angelica published spiritual books, which Steven’s father printed and moved on to recorded talks and appearances on religious TV-networks. In the video you can see her standing in a Chicago TV-studio in 1980 saying: “I want one of this”. And so, it was being done.
Daily broadcasts started in 1987; the first satellite transmissions began ten years later via the huge dish in the back of the EWTN building called “Gabriel” which makes for a nice story. “When Mother Angelica could not pay the 300.000 Dollars for the massive dish, a millionaire called from afar and transferred the money right away. For Steven, who kept stressing that everything was funded from viewers contributions, it is no problem to dress up the co-financing by a cadre of wealthy conservative donors and political operatives as a miracle, a gift of God.
Today Mother Angelica’s catholic complex with a staff of 400 comprises the EWTN network, which broadcasts daily to a potential audience of 400 million viewers worldwide, the combative “Catholic Register” as a rival publication to the tame “Catholic News Service” of the US-Conference of Catholic Bishops - and the impressive “Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament” an hour’s drive north from Irondale.
From the EWTN studios they’ve also broadcast attacks on the progressive ideology of Pope Francis who in return has called those “the work of the devil”. Mother Angelica’s turn to a “true Catholicism” and against the teaching of the Second Vatican Council started at the World Youth Day in Denver in 1993 when a woman was chosen to play Jesus. “Your whole purpose is to destroy” she harangued the liberal Catholic Church on “Mother Angelica Live”. As the TV critic James Martin wrote in 1995: “EWTN became a reliable place where anger at the “liberal church” was regularly broadcast”.
Despite a heavy stroke in 2001 Mother Angelica continued her live appearances despite her disfigured face, but her second haemorrhage confined Mother Angelica in the cloister where she had come from and where she died in 2016.
Since then, her biographer Raymond Arroyo has become Mother Angelica’s placeholder as anchor on EWTN and frequent guest in America’s conservative media, on FOX News and elsewhere. Thus, the story of EWTN seems less of a miracle as one of systematic support of conservative media by a few dozen Christian inspired ultra-rich. Arroyo has asked people like the MAGA-ideologue Steve Bannon on his show to express his populist position against liberal teaching. If you ask Steven Lynsford about who was first to turn more conservative during his time at EWTN, the flock or the donors, he won’t give you an answer.
On a Friday afternoon at the “Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament” we find no flock but a rather yawning emptiness. The Shrine is made up of an impressive church, a fake “Castle” modelled after a 13th century temple and a wide array of other buildings. The story goes that when Mother Angelica visited the catholic shrine of “El Nino” in Columbia, she said again: “I want one of this”. And so, it was being done. This time the miracle consisted of five rich millionaires in northern Alabama granting her the land near Hanceville to build her shrine.
The whole scene feels a bit like Lourdes before the crowds come. Some visitors leaving the church after the 12 o’clock mass are heading for the “Gift Shop of El Nino”. One of them is Chris with his family, voluntary “refugees” from the hustle of California to the quietness of Alabama. From here Chris does an online course in Psychology and Christian counselling at “Mercy University”, Virginia, and he is sure that there will be a lot of work to do in rural Alabama.
Chris missed the election in November but would have voted for Donald Trump because of his faith. “Trump is pro-life and trying to rectify things”. But being a Filipino, does he not worry about the illegal deportations? Not at all, because President Biden just went too far in opening the borders. And despite being catholic, Chris adds, the democratic contender “did not represent my faith well”.
How do you square “true Catholicism” with voting for Donald Trump? Kim, who works at the shrine has no problem with this seeming contradiction. Yes, Trump’s life “has been a trainwreck, partying and leading a playboy life”. But some saints have been the greatest sinners before they found God, haven’t they. And Donald Trump, “has had his conversion”. “Okay”, she adds, “he could do with a bit more.” But he rallied the conservative base and appealed to her pro-life values.
Kim came from Texas to northern Alabama and to the shrine after she had become unsatisfied with her career in business, after her father had died and “after women’s lib empowering women had all backfired on the family”. So, she stayed home raising her five children. Catholics are a small minority of 7% in the state, but here German immigrants brought their faith to this area where it has germinated since. Living in a small town nearby, called Berlin, Kim praises her surroundings: people are religious, have a good work ethic and good manners. Many parents in her community have turned to home schooling and “do not want their kids to go to university, where they get only confused and indoctrinated”. At the age of 52 Kim can revel in the beauty of community life, motherhood and of morning mass at the shrine. “Mother Angelica”, she says, “was all about the family”.
In a way, the battle over culture and mindset of the Catholic Church at the world’s largest religious TV-network on the globe has pre-empted the ideological confrontations at the conclave in Rom. Yet at EWTN and the Shrine of Mother Angelica culture-war Catholicism, which Pope Francis had once criticized as “the nostalgia for a sacralised world”, has clearly won.