The Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN) is an American basic cable television network which presents around-the-clock Catholic-themed programming. It is not only the largest Catholic television network in America,[1] but reportedly "the world's largest religious media network",[2] (and according to the network itself) reaching 425 million people in 160 countries,[2] with 11 networks. It was founded by Mother AngelicaPCPA, in 1980[3] and began broadcasting on August 15, 1981, from a garage studio at the Our Lady of the Angels Monastery in Irondale, Alabama, which Mother Angelica founded in 1962.[4] She hosted her own show, Mother Angelica Live, until health issues led to her retirement in September 2001.[5] As of 2017, Michael P. Warsaw, who is a consultant to the Vatican's Dicastery for Communications, leads EWTN.[6]
In addition to its television network, EWTN owns the National Catholic Register newspaper, which it acquired in January 2011, and Catholic News Agency.[7] The network maintains an online presence through its primary site, EWTN.com, and it has a dedicated commercial site, EWTNReligiousCatalogue.com.[8] EWTN also has a 24-hour radio network, offering Catholic talk and worship programming to about 350 radio stations around the U.S. as well as SiriusXM Satellite Radio and shortwave radio.[9][10] Some of the schedule is the audio from EWTN television shows and some is original programming for radio listeners.
The network is overseen by trustees rather than shareholders or owners. All of the network's funding comes from viewer donations, protecting it from advertising secular or non-Catholic programming.[13]
Development
Mother Angelica made her profession of vows in 1953. In 1962 she established Our Lady of the Angels monastery. During the 1970s, she was an in-demand lecturer and produced pamphlets and audio and video tapes. She had been a guest on local station WBMG (currently WIAT, Channel 42), and on shows on the Christian Broadcasting Network and the Trinity Broadcasting Network. After she gave an interview on then-Christian station WCFC (Channel 38) in Chicago, she decided she wanted her own network. "I walked in, and it was just a little studio, and I remember standing in the doorway and thinking, 'It doesn't take much to reach the masses'. I just stood there and said to the Lord, 'Lord, I've got to have one of these'".[14]
Mother Angelica purchased satellite space and EWTN began broadcasting on August 15, 1981, with four hours of daily programming, which included her own show, Mother Angelica Live (aired bi-weekly), a Sunday Mass, and reruns of older Catholic programs such as Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen's Life Is Worth Living. The remainder of the time was filled with shows produced by dioceses across the country, shows from Protestant sources which Mother Angelica determined were in concert with Catholic teachings, and children's shows such as Joy Junction and The Sunshine Factory. About one-third of programming time consisted of secular content, such as re-runs of The Bill Cosby Show, public domain films, and cooking and western-themed shows. EWTN eventually increased its broadcast schedule to six hours per day and then to eight hours per day by 1986. Secular content was gradually reduced from 1986 to 1988, and satellite distribution was expanded late in 1987, after which EWTN acquired a far more desirable satellite channel and began broadcasting around the clock. At this point, EWTN began broadcasting the praying of the rosary on a daily basis and added a number of educational shows. In-house production of original programming gradually increased. The Mass became televised daily in 1991 from a chapel on the monastery grounds. Most shows from non-Catholic sources were eliminated and a more theological image gradually developed.[citation needed]
From 1982 to 1994, the network had competition from another Catholic broadcaster, the Catholic Telecommunications Network of America. The network was sponsored by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops which poured $30 million into the venture before it failed.[15]
In 2000, "in the midst of an apostolic visitation by San Juan Archbishop Roberto González Nieves" to investigate Mother Angelica's authority over the station and monastery, Mother Angelica gave control of EWTN to a board of lay people.[2]
As of 2011, the network's chairman of the board and chief executive officer is Michael P. Warsaw.[16]
As of 2019, EWTN programming was available through "more than 6,000 TV affiliates as well as on Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire and YouTube". In addition to its Irondale campus, the network maintains a Washington, D.C., facility for its news division, along with a West Coast broadcast facility on the campus of the Christ Cathedral in Garden Grove, California.
In 1992, EWTN established the largest privately owned shortwave radio station, WEWN. The station broadcasts from Vandiver, Alabama, in the vicinity of greater Birmingham.[17]
In 1996, Mother Angelica announced that EWTN would make its radio signal available via satellite to AM and FM stations throughout the United States at no cost.[18]
In 1999, programs included Mother Angelica Live and "Life Is Worth Living" with Fulton J. Sheen. WGSN in North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, was an affiliate.[19] Current radio programs include Open Line in which callers can have their questions regarding the Catholic Faith answered.
In January 2011, EWTN acquired the National Catholic Register, a newspaper founded in Denver, Colorado, in 1924 as a periodical for local Catholics, and which became a national publication three years later. EWTN officially assumed total control on February 1, 2011.[7] EWTN also owns Catholic News Agency[22] which is a Catholic news service with bureaus across America, Latin America and Europe.[citation needed]
News coverage
The EWTN news department produces a daily news service for television and radio, featuring news sources including Vatican Radio. A reflection of its size and influence is that it has 30 staff members covering the Vatican alone, "far outnumbering other English-language media outlets".[2] Tracy Sabol is currently the lead anchor of the network's nightly news program, EWTN News Nightly,[23] succeeding Lauren Ashburn, who in turn succeeded founding anchor Colleen Carroll Campbell.[citation needed]
It also produces The World Over Live, which reports current events. Journalist and author Raymond Arroyo, who is EWTN's news director, hosts the program. The program is conservative in its political orientation and generally conservative in its religious orientation. Notable guests have included Robert Rector of The Heritage Foundation, author and activist George Weigel, political commentator Laura Ingraham, conservative political commentator Pat Buchanan, and the late columnist and commentator Robert Novak, a Jewish convert to the Catholic Faith.[citation needed]
Finance
While the network has trustees, it does not have shareholders or owners. A majority of the network's funding is from viewer donations about which it advertises 100% viewer supported, which keeps it from advertising secular or non-Catholic programming. Its traditional plea for donations is "Keep us between your gas and electric bill".[13][24][note 1]Mother Angelica developed the fund raising slogan for viewers, "Please keep us between your gas and electric bill!"[24]
EWTN was founded by Mother Angelica, PCPA, in 1980[3] and began broadcasting on August 15, 1981, from a garage studio at the Our Lady of the Angels Monastery in Irondale, Alabama, which Mother Angelica founded in 1962.[4]
Capitol Hill reporter Erik Rosales interviewing Congresswoman Debbie Lesko in 2020
Mother Angelica hosted her own show, Mother Angelica Live, until suffering a major stroke and other health issues in September 2001.[5] Repeats now air as either the Best of Mother Angelica Live or Mother Angelica Live Classics. From then until her death on Easter Sunday of 2016, she led a cloistered life at the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament in Hanceville, Alabama.
In its early history, EWTN broadcast Catholic programming from a great variety of Catholic sources, which ranged from Catholic charismatic programming, such as that of Fr. Michael Manning, to programs focusing on social reform and social justice, such as Christopher Closeup, to doctrinal programs hosted by clergy. The network began broadcasting daily rosary broadcasts in 1987 and daily Mass in 1991.[2]
In the early 1990s, EWTN began producing more of its own programs. This effort marked a conspicuously conservative shift in its overall orientation, with programs on topics of social reform and justice gradually eliminated and replaced by programs on doctrine and programs of dialogue. The shift was apparent in the daily televised Masses, which, in 1992, began incorporating Latin into the liturgy and gradually eliminated contemporary music. Some untelevised Masses are totally in English and some include more contemporary music. On Christmas Eve of 1993, Mother Angelica and the nuns of her order reverted to traditional habits. From 1992 on, the Latin portions of the Mass included the Gloria, introduction of the Gospel readings, the Sanctus, and the remainder of the Mass after the Great Amen, beginning with the Lord's Prayer.
Among its notable weekly programs are The Journey Home and Life on the Rock. The Journey Home, hosted by Marcus Grodi, presents converts to the Catholic Faith. Grodi is a former Presbyterianminister who converted to the Catholic Faith in 1992.[25] Although most guests are former Protestants, former members of non-Christian faiths (such as Judaism) and former atheists occasionally appear. Life on the Rock is hosted by Rev. Mark Mary, MFVA.
The HD feed first became available to Comcast customers in Richmond, Virginia, and its vicinity on May 11, 2010.[26]
In October 2011, EWTN became available through the Roku streaming player. The player provides six live channels of EWTN at no cost, including English, Spanish, and German languages, thus permitting users to view the channel on their televisions. In addition, select EWTN programs can be viewed through the video on demand option, and a live feed of EWTN Radio is available.[27]
EWTN's top news program, EWTN News Nightly,[28] is hosted by Tracy Sabol[29] and features correspondents Erik Rosales, Owen T. Jensen, Mark Irons and Colm Flynn.[23] It was previously anchored by Lauren Ashburn, who in turn succeeded founding anchor and journalist Colleen Carroll Campbell.[30][31]
Until 1993, EWTN head Mother Angelica showed little propensity for politically conservative culture warfare, stating for example on October 27, 1992, "I believe people should vote pro-life, but life is everything: the elderly, the born, the unborn, all of us."[32] However, in a 1993 episode of Mother Angelica Live broadcast live from World Youth Day 1993, Mother Angelica harshly criticized a mimed re-enactment of the Stations of the Cross where a woman played Jesus, which Pope John Paul II did not attend. Mother Angelica denounced the display as "an abomination to the Eternal Father" and proceeded with a half-hour criticism of the "liberal church in America" and the post Second Vatican Council reforms. "I'm so tired of you, liberal church in America[...] Your whole purpose is to destroy[...] It's time somebody said something about all these tiny little cracks that you have been putting for the last 30 years into the church."[1] Among other things she opined that "We're just tired of you constantly pushing anti-God, anti-Catholic and pagan ways into the Catholic Church. Leave us alone. Don't pour your poison, your venom, on all the church."[32]
Archbishop Rembert Weakland of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee criticized Mother Angelica's comment as "one of the most disgraceful, un-Christian, offensive, and divisive diatribes I have ever heard".[33] Mother Angelica responded that "He didn't think a woman playing Jesus was offensive? He can go put his head in the back toilet as far as I am concerned!"[33] The event is believed by some (National Catholic Reporter) to mark Mother Angelica's emergence "as a culture warrior", as prior to it she had sometimes "criticized feminists" but "rarely, if ever, attacked the ecclesiastical hierarchy".[32] Following the attack, "Mother Angelica and the sisters in her convent abandoned their modified post-Vatican II habits in favor of the pre-Vatican II style."[2]
In 1997, Mother Angelica publicly criticized Cardinal Roger Mahony, then Archbishop of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, for his pastoral letter on the Eucharist, "Gather Faithfully Together: A Guide for Sunday Mass", which she perceived as lacking emphasis on transubstantiation (the presence of Christ in the Eucharist):[34] "I'm afraid my obedience in that diocese would be absolutely zero. And I hope everybody else's in that diocese is zero".[35] Cardinal Mahony regarded her comments as accusing him of heresy.[36] Mother Angelica later conditionally apologized for her comments.
In 1999, Bishop David E. Foley of the Diocese of Birmingham, Alabama, issued a decree prohibiting priests in his diocese from celebrating Mass ad orientem (which literally denotes 'to the east', which refers to the priest having their back to the congregation) under most circumstances.[37] Although the decree did not specifically name EWTN, supporters and critics generally agreed that the decree, which applied to "any Mass that is or will be televised for broadcast or videotaped for public dissemination", was authored specifically to target EWTN. Bishop Foley stated that the practice of the priest celebrating ad orientem "amounts to making a political statement and is dividing the people."[37]
Apostolic visitation
In 2000, Archbishop Roberto González Nieves of San Juan, Puerto Rico, performed an apostolic visitation of EWTN. Nieves focused on three issues – the actual ownership of the network; the associated monastery's right to donate property to EWTN; and, since she had never been elected, the authority of Mother Angelica.[38] However, before Nieves could write his final report, Mother Angelica resigned from her positions as EWTN CEO and board chair. According to Global Sister Report, a final report by Nieves was never issued,[2] and "even today, outsiders know little about what occurred". When asked about the visitation by Global Sister, "EWTN did not respond".[39]
Conflict with Pope Francis
In March 2021, Pope Francis reportedly told the EWTN reporter and cameraman on board a papal flight to Iraq that the network "should stop bad-mouthing me," according to a report in the Jesuit magazine America.[1] On a 2021 trip to Slovakia, Francis complained in a "meeting with Jesuits" that "a large Catholic television channel that has no hesitation in continually speaking ill of the pope," and that "they are the work of the devil[...] I have also said this to some of them."[1] In reply, archbishop emeritus Charles J. Chaput, who "led the archdiocese of Philadelphia and who is a former EWTN board member", stated that "any suggestion that EWTN is unfaithful to the Church" is "simply vindictive and false."[1]
Recurring guests on the weekly EWTN show "The World Over", hosted by EWTN anchor Raymond Arroyo, include:
[...] prominent Francis critics, including Cardinal Raymond Burke, who co-signed a list of dubia about Pope Francis' openness to allowing divorced and remarried Catholics to receive Communion in some cases, and Cardinal Gerhard Müller, the former head of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, who was not renewed for another term by Pope Francis in 2017. Two years later, Cardinal Müller published a "manifesto of faith" in the EWTN-owned Catholic News Agency and other outlets that have been critical of the pope, arguing against Francis' teaching on Communion for the divorced and remarried.[2]
Other guests include Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, who has called on the pope to resign. EWTN also features a group calling itself "The Papal Posse"—which includes along with Raymond Arroyo, the Rev. Gerald Murray (a New York priest, former U.S. Navy chaplain and canon lawyer), and Robert Royal (a Catholic author who founded the D.C. think tank the Faith and Reason Institute and the blog "The Catholic Thing")—that according to Colleen Dulle of America magazine, "riffs on one another's criticisms of the pope and has given uncritical interviews to anti-Francis guests like Steve Bannon, who argued on air that his own populist politics better represent Catholic social teaching than Pope Francis does".[2]
Case of Francis Mary Stone
In 2007, Francis Mary Stone, an ordained Catholic priest who hosted the network's show Life On The Rock, was suspended from the network after it was revealed that he violated his vow of celibate chastity and fathered a child with EWTN employee Christina Presnell.[40] Stone was forced on leave of absence, and Presnell was fired from EWTN.[40] By 2018, he was reported to be suspended from his religious order.[40]
Gloria Purvis
In summer 2020, the network came under fire from listeners for its "Morning Glory" show, a radio program hosted by Gloria Purvis and Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers (both African American), and Msgr Charles Pope, among other guest hosts. In the wake of the murder of George Floyd, Purvis became known for defending anti-racist measures around the country in response, while the more conservative Burke-Sivers, Pope, and another priest opposed the measures and Purvis' sentiments.
Listeners from EWTN's largest radio affiliate, Guadalupe Radio Network, complained about the alleged "conflicts" and GRN suspended the show in response, making headlines in Catholic media and elsewhere.[41] Purvis was interviewed by the New York Times concerning the controversy, and EWTN initially expressed support for her and said the show would continue to be produced despite the suspension (which was in fact permanent).[42][41]
In December 2020, however, the network canceled the show without explanation, occasioning accusations of racism. Purvis was hired for her own podcast affiliated with America Media in 2021.[43]
Viewership
EWTN is the largest religious media network in the world, and it says it has a reach of a quarter-billion people in 140 countries. The network is unrated in the United States, though various articles cite millions of viewers watch per month. On YouTube and other social media platforms, EWTN has more than 1,000,000 active followers and online viewers. EWTN is also available on demand on streaming services Roku, Kindle, and Apple TV. EWTN's Internet site is viewed three to four million times monthly, according to SimilarWeb. In the United States, EWTN is available through most cable and satellite providers with a reach of around 70 million households.[44] EWTN had an annual revenue of $64,946,744 in 2019, and has received an 84.3 (out of 100) overall score and rating from Charity Navigator.[45]
List of programs
EWTN News Nightly, on Mondays through Fridays
EWTN News In Depth, on Fridays
EWTN Pro Life Weekly, on Thursdays
EWTN Vaticano, on Sundays and available On-Demand
The Journey Home – Marcus Grodi, on Mondays
Threshold of Hope – Fr. Mitch Pacwa, SJ, on Tuesdays
EWTN's logo has incorporated a globe outline in some form since the network's launch in 1981 to suggest the network's hope of a worldwide reach, usually with an outline of the dome of St. Peter's Basilica within a profile of a satellite dish inside of it. The network had the sub-branding of the "Catholic Cable Network" until 1995, when with the launch of DirecTV and Dishdirect satellite broadcasters (where it was a charter network with both providers) it took a new sub-branding of "International Catholic Network", then "Global Catholic Network" in 1996 after uploading its signal for worldwide viewing.[citation needed]
^According to Father Andrew Apostoli, TV host of EWTN: Sunday Night Prime, the saying is derived from the practice of Mother Angelica asking Jesus Christ for financial help, by placing a letter of request between the gas and electric bill (sometimes gas and telephone bill). The saying was later adopted for benefactors who donate to EWTN, in response to propagating its ministry.
^"Democrat and Chronicle 05 Dec 2019, page A4". Newspapers.com. Rochester, NY: Democrat and Chronicle. The Journal Star. December 5, 2019. p. A4. Retrieved March 26, 2023. A news story published Tuesday from the Catholic News Agency, part of the EWTN cable-television network...
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