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| | | High school teacher resources | Home » » » Mother Angelica: The Remarkable Story of a Nun, Her Nerve, and a Network of Miracles | | | | | | | Description: | | In 1981, a simple nun, using merely her entrepreneurial instincts and $200, launched what would become the world’s largest religious media empire in the garage of a Birmingham, Alabama, monastery. Under her guidance, the Eternal Word Television Network grew at a staggering pace, both in viewership and in influence, to where it now reaches over a hundred million viewers in hundreds of countries around the globe.
Raymond Arroyo combines his journalist’s objectivity and eye for detail with more than five years of exclusive interviews with Mother Angelica. He traces Mother Angelica’s tortured rise to success and exposes for the first time the fierce opposition she faced, both outside and inside of her church. | | | Features: | |
• ISBN13: 9780385510936
• Condition: New
• Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
| | | Product Details: | | | Author:
| Raymond Arroyo | | Paperback:
| 416 pages | | Publisher:
| Image | | Publication Date:
| May 15, 2007 | | Language:
| English | | ISBN:
| 0385510934 | | Product Length:
| 5.5 inches | | Product Width:
| 0.85 inches | | Product Height:
| 8.2 inches | | Product Weight:
| 0.69 pounds | | Package Length:
| 8.2 inches | | Package Width:
| 5.5 inches | | Package Height:
| 1.0 inches | | Package Weight:
| 0.7 pounds | | Average Customer Rating:
|  based on 125 reviews |
| | | | Customer Reviews: | |
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214 of 235 found the following review helpful:
 A Dangerous BookSep 13, 2005
By Fr Phillip Bloom
"parish priest"
Last week a parishioner gave me Raymond Arroyo's unauthorized biography of Mother Angelica. With mild curiosity, I read the dust jacket and table of contents. My plan was to skim the book, then return to it when I had more time. I liked Mother Angelica, but I knew little about her life or how she founded the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN). I also admired Raymond Arroyo, often listening to his news and interview program, *The World Over.* As I began skimming the biography, I quickly became hooked. It turned out to be what I call a "dangerous book." Every year or two I will pick up a book which so grabs my attention that I wind up devoting every spare moment to reading it. Besides the most basic duties, everything else takes second place.
I was expecting a somewhat saccharine story about a folksy contemplative sister. Instead the book depicts what to me is the most difficult reality: the intense and often bitter suffering to which God apparently calls some souls. With the unflinching eye of an investigative reporter, Raymond Arroyo recounts painful details of her childhood. Rita Rizzo (the girl who would become Mother Angelica) had a wandering father who abandoned her at an early age. Her mother, never well balanced, became unhinged by the divorce - at that time a terrible stigma - and wound up reversing the normal mother-daughter roles. She increasingly demanded emotional support from her daughter and provided very little in return.
In her twenties, Rita met a Catholic convert turned mystic, who transformed the young woman's life. Entering a contemplative religious order, against her mother's bitter protests, she encountered more painful forms of suffering. Physical ailments (such as knees swollen to the size of cantaloupes) almost ended her religious vocation. Raymond Arroyo, cautious as a newsman should be, relates the seeming miraculous cure which enabled her to continue in the convent.
The story of how this contemplative sister founded a world-wide television and radio network is too complex to describe here. Without giving away the story, let me state that it was hardly a smooth journey from one triumph to the next. The biography reads like a novel depicting the suspense and mounting opposition which Mother Angelica and her sisters confronted. Inability to pay enormous bills, the betrayal of co-workers and the death of dear ones (including her mother who had become one of her sisters) led to bouts of anguish and near-despair. During this long "dark night of the soul" only her iron will and her prayer to Jesus kept her going.
This book will probably be read mainly by "conservatives." That is a shame - and perhaps makes this a dangerous book in another sense. It is easy for those concerned with doctrinal integrity to feel betrayed by official teachers. The book describes Mother Angelica's strong reaction even against bishops who, for example, promoted women's ordination or who watered down difficult teachings (such as marital fecundity). In that atmosphere, one can take aim at the wrong target - as Mother Angelica sometimes did. For example in his 1987 visit to the U.S., the pope was in Phoenix for the Feast of the Holy Cross (September 14). The organizers provided a large, bare cross for him to kiss. Mother Angelica railed against the organizers, seeing this as a sign of how the American Church wants to take Jesus off the cross.
No doubt every pastor in the country, including the most orthodox, has had conservatives attack him for what they perceive as liturgical or doctrinal deviations. They can magnify the smallest misstep until it seems to include all the abuses of the past four decades. For this kind of misguided zeal, many pastors are only too eager to lay the blame at Mother Angelica's feet. "Another complaint from one of the EWTN crowd."
Whether Raymond Arroyo's book will increase polarization or reduce it depends on how people read the book. It is easy to get caught up in the political dimension and miss what I believe is Raymond's deeper purpose: to show us a woman who came from a difficult background and who by her own admission has many flaws, but who has embraced suffering with its redemptive power. In a word, he wants to help us glimpse the mystery and the triumph of the cross.
122 of 132 found the following review helpful:
Fervent Trust in God always prevails - a must read for EVERYONE with much, little, or no faithSep 06, 2005
By Amy Seltzer
"100% Catholic, 100% pro-life"
The spiritual impact this book has on its reader is amazing. It gives anyone, no matter how difficult their situation, the hope that your life is worth something. Given over to God, the life of every person is powerful.
Even if you are not a "religious person" this story in itself is fascinating and nearly unbelieveable. It is written very well, making a most enjoyable read. A good laugh is also guaranteed.
And for those of you like myself, tired of the liberal Church constantly chipping away at our Faith, you will have plenty to cheer about.
Buy the book; you will not be disappointed.
33 of 34 found the following review helpful:
A Young Man Discovers the Remarkable Story of an Elderly NunSep 21, 2005
By Seth Naser
I discovered EWTN in the first months of my freshman year of college. While channel surfing through MTV and ESPN, I came across a beautiful old face swallowed by large glasses and wrapped in a white wimple.
I stopped. I'd never known a nun, let alone seen one in a traditional habit. Her simple outlook on faith kept me hooked. After watching Mother Angelica on television for the past five years, I thought I knew the simple elderly nun who'd shown me the beauty of my Catholic faith. After reading Raymond Arroyo's new biography, I realize how wrong I was.
Here is the life of Rita Rizzo weaved into a wonderfully narrative story. It shows her humble and tormented early years, her first miraculous healing, and her radical conversion to live for God. It chronicles many little known facts: her many ailments and healings, her intention to build a Southern monastery for reparation for unjustice to African Americans, her charismatic experiences, her dark night of the soul. Her leap of faith in creating the largest religious communications empire in the world is given its due, but does not overshadow.
Arroyo treats Mother as a human being, not a pious, holy card saint. She has doubts, a sense of humor, and a fiery temper. She struggles in her relationship with both parents, clashes with bishops and cardinals over orthodoxy and control of her network, and ultimately undergoes a Vatican investigation.
Mother Angelica has lived a life of radical service through love for Her Spouse, Jesus Christ, and His Church. Anyone who knows her only through her television network knows only part of the story. This biography tells it all. And Mother will be seen as an even greater witness to God because of it
29 of 30 found the following review helpful:
Great Story, Even for a non-CatholicSep 22, 2005
By John Matlock
"Gunny"
As anyone who has ever attempted to start a business knows, it is difficult. It's difficult to get it started. It's difficult to supervise its growth. As you go through the various phases where you can't do it in your initial business, where you have to start hiring people, where you basic sales functions have to be expanded to a marketing/sales department. Each of these is an excellent opportunity for the business to fail.
Eternal Word Television Network began 25 years ago with only $200 in initial investment. It has since grown to a worldwide organization reaching some 110 million households. This is the story of EWTN, but more important it is the story of its remarkable founder and guiding light.
I am not catholic, so the discussions of the liberal vs conservative aspects of the church don't have a great deal of meaning to me. But the strength of her convictions, the life she has lived make her life one worth learning about. She has done a remarkable job of living a life. Even after suffering a stroke and leaving EWTN, the network she built will remain as a monument for many, many years.
28 of 29 found the following review helpful:
This Book is an Absolute Joy.Sep 21, 2005
By Peccator
Arroyo's book on Mother Angelica is more than a great read; it starts great and then gets better, each chapter more unbelieveable than the last. It's no secret that Mother Angelica has fought a single-handed battle for the soul of the Church in America and saved it from those intellectual moderns (including the conference of Catholic Bishops) who prefer we not be too Roman in our Catholicism. Chesterton says that "The Catholic Church is the only thing which saves a man from the degrading slavery of being a child of his age". Fortunately, Mother knew this all too well, enough to bring many of us back to our wits as well as our faith.
Arroyo makes it hard to miss how divine providence was with her every step of the way. I never knew how much. The book is a fascinating exploration of the trials of Mother (Rita Rizzo) from early childhood through her departure from the board of directors at EWTN. Her simple faith built the largest religious network and the only one without a budget. You'll laugh at how she moves undetered through her decisions. When I first heard Mother described as the patron Saint of CEO's I thought "give me a break". After reading I'd say every CEO talks of taking risks, but not a one would ever be ballsy enough to take any of the risks that Mother took along the way.
Given her life and the nuns of her childhood, MA should be a disgruntled "recovering" Catholic. Her love and fidelity to the faith, her rediscovery and return to sound Catholic traditions make for a read that can only be appreciated by the Catholic caught for forty years between the lunacy of both the moderns and the schismatics. This book is preaching to the heavenly choir. One way or another, most people's minds are made up already with respect to Mother. If you're one of those who we delighted when you first saw her on "the tube", you'll love the book and come to a deeper appreciation of what she actually endured and finally accomplished. Prepare yourself for the laughs and the tears, in the end it's an absolute joy.
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