ARTICLES

"Would You Take Your Braces Off?"

EMBATTLED TV NUN CLAIMS MIRACULOUS HEALING

According to the January 29 broadcast of the Eternal Word Television Network's youth program, "Life on The Rock," EWTN founder Mother Angelica has been miraculously healed of a condition that forced her for 40 years to wear leg braces and use crutches. Jeff Cavins, the host of "Life on The Rock," reading from the biography of the television nun, described the accident that left a much younger Sister Angelica hospitalized. Angelica's doctor at the time, said Cavins, told her that she would be fully paralyzed. Sister Angelica, however, prayed, vowing to God to build him a monastery in the South if only He would spare her from paralysis. According to the book, God heard the sister's prayer; she was not paralyzed, though she required the use of crutches and leg braces, and later a back brace.

"It's been a very strange experience," said Mother Angelica, who joined Cavins and a studio audience of young people. When she walked into the studio she asked Cavins, "Shall we dance?" and they shuffled a two-step. Her telling of her healing was done without rhetorical flourish; she simply told her story, rarely looking into the camera.

"A blessed woman," said Mother Angelica, came to her, and when Mother asked her why she came, the woman said that Our Lady had sent her, though she knew not why. This "blessed woman" (whom Mother Angelica never identified) asked Mother Angelica to say the rosary with her, and Mother invited her into her office. The woman asked Mother to lead the first three decades, while she led the fourth and fifth. Angelica said she prayed the first three decades in Latin, since the woman knew no English. When they came to the fourth decade, the woman prayed in Italian.

When the woman came to the fourth bead of the fourth decade, she stopped, said Mother Angelica, and "started talking to Our Lady." The woman told Mother Angelica,"Our Lord and Our Lady said...they were pleased with what we are doing for the Church. Our Lady began to cry, and she cried over many things, especially priests [and] religious who are losing their faith. Then she [the woman] looked at me and said, 'Would you like me to pray for you?' And I said, 'Sure.'

"So she knelt down and she prayed, and she said, 'Would you take your braces off?' I said, 'Okay.' I knew what was going to happen, because I had taken them off before. And what I thought would happen, did. Both legs went this way [Mother gestured, moving her hands in a circular motion] and one went that way. Then I stood up, and she put her hands out and said, 'Come, don't be afraid!' Well, my body went every which way, and so did my legs."

Despite her wobbling, Mother said, she walked to the door. "When I did turn around, I felt a heat on my ankles, and I thought, 'Wow!'" Mother Angelica related that as she walked back and forth across her office, her legs stopped wobbling and became straight. She had two sisters with her in the office, and when they saw her walking, she said, "I thought they would faint!"

"I didn't ask to be healed, but He did it...out of love," said Mother Angelica. She related that she had seen her former condition as an apostolate by which she could give courage to the disabled. Now, she thought, her healing gave her a new witness to the power of the rosary; to young adults, cynical about God, that "the Lord wants them to know He is alive"; and to the Church, "the Body of Christ, broken on every level."

"I think Our Lord is saying, 'I can heal the Body of Christ, like that....' We are crippled in our faith, in our hearts; but if we trust Him, if we can hope again, if our faith can grow again, then that broken body can be healed, and will be healed. If we can work together, say our rosary...This is a sign for preparation...for an awakening of God's love and existence."

Continuing the theme of the healing of the Body of Christ, Mother Angelica opined that, by the beginning of the next millennium, the Eucharist would be "different." She said that she thinks it will be different "because of the very bad and poor teaching. People don't know He is really and truly present...He is alive, He is not dead...He is alive! It's body, blood, soul, and divinity. I think that by the year 2000, when you walk into a Catholic Church, you're going to know, you're going to see, you're going to see a light, you're going to feel a healing, you're going to know He's listening to you, you're going to know He cares...And the reason is, never in the history of the world has there been so much blasphemy, disbelief, error, schism, cruelty -- cruelty toward the Body and Blood of Jesus. The Father's going to make up for that, and Our Lady's going to make up for that in a brand new way. The sick will be healed, the deaf will hear, and the blind will see by just going into a Catholic Church and saying, 'Lord, I believe. Help me!' I believe that with all my heart."

Meanwhile, His Eminence, Roger Cardinal Mahony, according to the January 30 National Catholic Reporter, has complained to Rome about Mother Angelica. Archdiocesan media relations director, Father Gregory Coiro, told NCR, "The cardinal wants the Holy See to do something about Mother Angelica's whole attitude that she is not responsible to the National Conference of Catholic Bishops or to any of the individual bishops. It goes beyond her criticism of the cardinal -- it's about how the network [EWTN] operates and to whom it is accountable."

The cardinal's ire was raised by Mother Angelica's critical on-air remarks last November concerning his pastoral letter on the liturgy, Gather Faithfully Together. She was particularly critical of its lack of emphasis on the True Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, mention of which was relegated to a single footnote. During a November 11, 1997 broadcast, Mother Angelica said of Los Angeles: "I am afraid my obedience in that diocese would be absolute zero, and I hope everybody else's in that diocese is zero."

According to NCR, while in Rome for the Synod for America in December, the cardinal approached the Congregation for the Institutes of Consecrated Life and the Societies of Apostolic Life, and the Pontifical Council for Social Communications to discuss his ideas for EWTN. To date, the cardinal has not received a reply from these Vatican offices.

Father Coiro, according to NCR, thinks Mother Angelica's criticisms of Cardinal Mahony constitute "technically, a very serious violation of canon law." In his letter to Mother Angelica, Cardinal Mahony cited Canon 753, which states that "[a]lthough they do not enjoy infallible teaching authority," bishops in communion with the Holy See, either gathered in conferences or councils, or as individuals, "are authentic teachers and instructors of the faith for the faithful entrusted to their care; the faithful must adhere to the authentic teaching of their own bishops with a sense of religious respect." Canon 1373, also cited by Father Coiro, says "[o]ne who publicly either stirs up hostilities or hatred among subjects against the Apostolic See or against an ordinary on account of some act of ecclesiastical power or ministry or incites subjects to disobey them is to be punished by interdict or by other just penalties."

The penalty mentioned in Canon 1373, would -- according to Canons 1331 and 1332 -- presumably forbid those at EWTN "to have any ministerial participation in celebrating the Eucharistic Sacrifice or in any other ceremonies whatsoever of public worship," and "to celebrate the sacraments and sacramentals and to receive the sacraments."

It is hard to say how applicable these canons are to Mother Angelica's controversy with Cardinal Mahony. Does a questioning of the clarity of a bishop's teaching constitute a breach of the adherence one owes him out of religious respect? Is the teaching of a bishop "authentic" merely because he is a teacher with authority, or is it "authentic" because it is traditional teaching enunciated by one who can speak for the Church? In the latter case, criticism of any episcopal teaching which has a questionable or unclear relation to Sacred Tradition might not be a breach of Canon 753.

One must wonder, too, the applicability of Canon 1373 to Mother Angelica since she publicly apologized the next week for her remarks of November 11. Cardinal Mahony, too, recognized that she apologized in his December 1, 1997 letter to her: "Had you simply read the two parts in which you did, indeed, offer that apology, [emphasis added] and went on to other subjects, I would have been quite satisfied."

In an NCR article February 13 about Mother Angelica's healing, Father Coiro is quoted saying that he has been hearing "over the Internet from people suggesting that Mother Angelica was healed because she took on Cardinal Mahony....I've been telling people in jest that the healing was for my benefit so I can't be accused of attacking a crippled nun."