DEDICATION
and
PREFACE

To

Our Lady, Conqueror of All Heresies, who warned us of the
coming apostasy, and promised to restore the Church
through the Triumph of Her Immaculate Heart

and

Pope Saint Pius X, the last canonized Pope, who defeated the
Modernists of his day.  May the Church soon be blessed with
a Pope of equal greatness, who will rescue her from
the scourge of darkness that calls itself light.
 

“Were one to attempt the task of collecting together all the errors that have been broached against the Faith and to concentrate the sap and substance of them all into one, he could not better succeed than the Modernists have done. Nay, they have done more than this, for… their system means the destruction not of the Catholic religion alone but of all religion.”

...

 “Though they express astonishment themselves, no one can justly be surprised that We number such men among the enemies of the Church… [T]hey proceed to disseminate poison through the whole tree, so that there is no part of Catholic truth from which they hold their hand, none that they do not strive to corrupt.”

-- POPE SAINT PIUS X on the errors of the Modernists,
 in his encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis"
 

PREFACE

       With the death of Pope John Paul II and the election of his successor, Benedict XVI, a new era has begun in the history of the Roman Catholic Church. But the crisis that has wracked the Church since the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) goes on, even if the faithful hope that during the present pontificate measures will at last be taken to bring the crisis to an end.

      Over the past forty years a growing number of Catholics have come to recognize what is manifest: that the post-conciliar crisis began with, and has resulted from, a host of previously unheard-of ecclesial innovations, imposed in the name of the Council, which have provoked confusion and disorder and led to a massive turning away from the Faith—an apostasy—in the Catholic Church.

      The theme of this book is that the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN) both exemplifies and promotes these ruinous novelties, and thus has contributed to the crisis itself. It is the author’s burden to demonstrate that with the departure of its foundress, Mother Angelica, from a leadership role, EWTN has taken a sharp turn toward what Pope St. Pius X condemned as the heresy of Modernism, as it attempts to combine Catholicism with rock and roll, show business and the worst novelties of the era after Vatican II. 

      While EWTN was once a sign of hope for a Catholic restoration, it has become instead a major factor in the Modernist innovation of the Church since the Council: a mixture of truth and error, orthodoxy and heresy, the sacred and the profane. EWTN now functions as an organ of what is aptly dubbed “New Church”—a kind of faux church that exists parasitically within the host organism, which is the unchanged and unchangeable Roman Catholic Church of all time. The author will show that the unprecedented emergence of “New Church” is the very essence of the post-conciliar crisis, and that this development was predicted in the Third Secret of Fatima, as Pope Pius XII indicated in a stunning prophecy that figures largely in this book.

      The author also shows that even as EWTN promotes all manner of destructive ecclesial innovation, EWTN also presents itself as the standard of authentic Catholicism and calls for the shunning of Catholics who defend the perennial Faith without alteration. EWTN is thus not merely a passive adopter of novelty, but an active promoter of ecclesial revolution.

      For these reasons, the author concludes, EWTN—a worldwide television, radio and Internet presence—must now be considered one of the foremost agents of Modernist apostasy in the Church and a positive danger to the welfare of souls, despite certain good elements in its programming. Thus, it is not Catholics who defend the perennial Faith who must be shunned, but rather EWTN and the rest of the “New Church” establishment, which has been leading the Church toward ruin over the past forty years of ecclesial decay and decline.

      Should anyone take the trouble to respond to this book, let him begin here, where the author stresses that he does not intend to suggest that any of the EWTN directors or celebrities mentioned critically in the following pages are all necessarily subjectively guilty of apostasy, Modernism, formal heresy or any other deliberate offense against the Faith. Such guilt is a matter of Divine Judgment, and the personal piety and sincerity of individuals is not in question here.

      Words, however, have their objective meanings, and deeds their objective consequences. It is the duty of every Catholic to oppose words and deeds that undermine the Faith, give scandal, disturb the good order of the Church and endanger the welfare of souls—especially when those words and deeds are televised throughout the world to audiences of millions of Catholics and non-Catholics by a lay-run organization that has absolutely no authority in the Church, yet creates the impression that it represents the best of what the Church is.

      The honest critic must confront the evidence presented in the following pages, rather than turn the matter into an outraged defense of the alleged subjective motives of this or that person. Let the critic address what a person is shown to have said or done, not what he “meant” to say or do according to some hidden intention elaborated after the fact.

      Nor should anyone who might wish to respond to this book waste his time demonstrating that certain elements of what EWTN presents are soundly Catholic. That this is so is not only stipulated at the beginning of the book, but is in fact the crux of the problem with EWTN: that it combines things of the Faith with things inimical to the Faith, thus attacking the integrity of what Pope St. Pius X called “the Catholic name.”

      The combination of the orthodox with the heterodox is the essence of Modernism. As Pius X declared in condemning the writings of the Modernists: “Hence in their books you find some things which might well be expressed by a Catholic, but in the next page you find other things which might have been dictated by a rationalist.” Let the critic, therefore, address the evidence of things inimical to the Faith, rather than attempting to prove what is not in dispute.

      Those who direct EWTN may believe they are doing a service to the Church and that they have the right to engage in their public mission. It is the author’s conviction, however, that if they consider attentively the evidence of what they are promoting, they will no longer have the refuge of good faith.

      Having taken upon themselves a public religious mission, those responsible for EWTN become subject to public criticism from fellow Catholics who, out of their own sense of duty, oppose what EWTN is doing. And it is an act of charity, not unkindness, to oppose errors—from whatever source—that threaten the integrity of the Faith and therefore the welfare of souls. It is in this spirit of fraternal correction, however forcefully expressed, that this book was written.

 January 6, 2006
Feast of the Epiphany