Part 2, interview continued by CFN with Mike Ferrara, author of this book:
CFN: They also promote the alleged superiority of the New Mass over the Latin Tridentine Mass?
CF: EWTN’s “theological committee” is opposed to any restoration of the traditional Mass, which they view as impossible and undesirable.
CFN: You have an entire chapter entitled “Promoting Paganism and Sacrilege”.
CF: Yes, EWTN has happily promoted the World Youth Day “Catholic Woodstocks” you have exposed, has denied and then tried to cover up the recent sacrilege in the Fatima Shrine, where Hindus prayed to Vishnu, and has reported as if they were the most solemn of Catholic liturgies the late Pope’s bizarre and scandalous “inculturated” Masses, including a pagan purification ritual in Mexico in which the Pope was rubbed down with herbs by women on camera.
CFN: One of the most fascinating chapters in the book is “The Return of the Judaizers”. Could you comment on this?
CF: This is simply unbelievable. EWTN is actively - aggressively - promoting an organization, the Association of Hebrew Catholics, that is calling for the creation of a “Hebrew Catholic” canonical community in which Jews would be separately baptized in the Church, because, as they put it, over the past 1800 years the Church has become “sociologically Gentile,” and there is no place in the Church for Jews to pursue their “collective vocation.” EWTN has also promoted the Catholic celebration of Jewish holidays, and Seder suppers and “Hebrew Masses” on the Jewish New Year in Catholic parishes.
CFN: EWTN has various “experts” to whom Catholics telephone or e-mail asking for guidance. Often times, the answers given are less than Catholic. Could you give us a few examples of EWTN “experts” wayward advice?
CF: That’s almost the whole book. But here are some: Jews need not convert if they “honestly cannot” accept Christ. Married couples must decide every month and even every day whether they are going to conceive a child or avoid conception by using “Natural Family Planning.” Marital relations are a preparation for eternal beatitude, and without engaging in them, a couple will not be ready to stand before God after death. (I am not making this up!) The conversion of Russia does not mean embracing Catholicism. Catholics should celebrate Jewish holidays, including Passover, to learn about their “Jewish roots.” There is nothing wrong with Communion in the hand, and if we find it scandalous, the fault is ours. It goes on for more than 150 pages in the book.
CFN: What do you have to say to those who defend EWTN because of the allegedly good programs it broadcasts.
CF: Even the most sumptuous feast should be avoided if it contains a single drop of cyanide. There are many drops of cyanide in EWTN’s content. That is the essence of “moderate” modernism: getting people to swallow the bad with the good under the pretense that the whole poisonous mixture is sound Catholicism. They end up spiritually dead, or at least gravely ill.
CFN: What do you hope this book achieves?
CF: Making people aware that what EWTN presents to the world as the “gold standard” of Roman Catholicism would have earned the condemnation of any Pope before Vatican II. I hope to warn Catholics not to accept a “sliding scale” of Catholicism much like that we have seen in politics, where today’s “conservative” would have been viewed as a liberal savage only 40 years ago. That is how Modernism destroys the Faith, by the gradual erosion of the very meaning of the Faith. My research has confirmed beyond doubt that, whatever the subjective intentions of its directors and celebrities - and I would never presume to judge them here or in the book - by any objective standard EWTN is a modernist enterprise promoting liturgical, doctrinal and even moral corruption. Catholics must oppose it, and demand that it reform itself or shut down.
The above interview is reprinted from the March 2006 issue of Catholic Family News (
cfnews.org/cfn.htm)).
Judge for yourself!!
