By Rita McInerney

More than four years after her pioneering plunge into cable television; Mother Angelica is a regular and welcome electronic presence in countless Catholic homes across the United States, all because she followed the “theology of risk.” The Franciscan nun who founded the Eternal World Television Network at Our Lady of the Angels Monastery outside Birmingham, Ala., because she didn’t want her programs shown on the local channel that showed a movie she considered blasphemous, lists faith as her principal security.

“The way we manage our network is by relying on God’s providence. That is our witness. He does great things,” she said during an interview before her talk Friday night at the seventh annual National Catholic Lay Celebration on Evangelization held at the Atlanta Hilton.

Being a nun in TV makes a difference in the way the network is operated, she said. “I could give a talk and make people feel guilty enough to donate to a cause. But it would be better if I could give a talk and make people feel compassion, feel the conviction that comes from the Lord that I’m my brother’s keeper.” The Gospel method, she believes, is better than trying to solve problems from the outside, just sitting down and writing a tax-deductible check. The desire to help must come from the inside.

“They used to say that maids built the big cathedrals,” Mother Angelica said. “Today 97 percent of our donations comes from families.” There are, of course, a few big donors. Both large and small contributions are necessary for a network operation that has an overhead of from $290,000 to $320,000 each month “depending upon the interest due,” a professional staff of 50 people and a new 50 by 75 foot studio. Her recent appearance on “60 Minutes” brought money from some one time donors. “Moneywise, we’re not sure yet but it did a lot for our mailing lists,” she revealed.

“It did a tremendous lot of good, more cable assistances from every part of the country. It made people aware that there was a Catholic cable television network.”

Morley Safer, CBS newsman who traveled to the monastery for the interviews, called her a “smart cookie” during the tapings, she recounted. So the nuns baked a batch of cookies and sent them to him from “one smart cookie to another.” Later, a “thank you” letter arrived in the EWTN mail signed by everyone associated with the show from Mike Wallace and Safer to the grips and cameramen.

This first Catholic cable TV network, operated by a small band of Franciscan nuns, has good months and bad, but God hasn’t failed them yet, Mother Angelica said. “The first three years we didn’t ask for funds on the air,” but this year there will be a fund raising appeal from Nov. 18 to 21. “We’re hoping to break even. They say it takes from five to seven years. Now, in our fourth year, we inch forward.”

Helping EWTN to “inch forward” are the other things the cable network is capable of doing; “uplinking” of news segments and shows for other networks from the monastery studios. “We put it up on their satellite then they take it down,” is Mother Angelica’s technical explanation.

“We can do anything NBC does,” she added. “We also do teleconferencing for hospitals, corporations, other denominations. They come to our studios, we produce it and put it on the satellite.”

Mother Angelica was asked what she thought could be done about pornography on television. One antidote she sees is providing “wonderful programs.” A believer in the positive approach, she mentions David and Goliath -- “that slingshot did a lot of good.”

“I think the Catholic Church has enough in its treasury to feed every need, every type of spirituality; the martyrs of the past, the cathedral builders. We’ve got to find out what they had that we don’t have.”

“The gospels of TV unfortunately, are ratings. If we can provide beautiful programs, provide something better as Jesus did, we can say “Here’s the table. It’s available.”

Two powerhouses the Church has not tapped, as she sees it, are the elderly with the wisdom of age and our youth. “We’re not challenging them.” She mentioned the enthusiasm of a gathering of 3,000 young people she addressed last year in Steubenville, Ohio. “They could be the greatest evangelizers in the world.”

She gets calls from hurting people when “Mother Angelica Live” is telecast three nights each week; people close to suicide, women considering third abortions, divorcees, homosexuals, prostitutes, latchkey children. And “the average person who wants to lead a holy life and doesn’t know how.” If she features a Catholic author like Dr. Susan Muto, she says, “we have to go on long after the show is over to answer their calls.”

If she could expand her programming, she would include quality productions, “alternatives to bad video music, programs for children and the elderly, the lives of the saints, and provide some heroes that are worthwhile to follow.”

She has had most of the labels pinned on her; Pre-Vatican II, conservative, liberal, charismatic. She thinks some people in the Church would like to “sweep her under the rug” but there were those in the hotel lobby and hall Friday night who called her a “saint.”

Mother Angelica “likes to mingle” with the crowd. She gave warm hugs to two delighted women from Warner Robins, Ga. They said meeting her made a wonderful day even better. She was encircled by people after her uplifting talk and didn’t try to ease away until she had talked with as many as possible.

To watch Mother Angelica on the speaker’s platform of the large hall of the Atlanta Hilton with over six hundred people hanging onto her words is to see the other side of the quiet-spoken woman who rested in a hardbacked chair and quietly answered the reporter’s questions. It was the same brown habited nun with the light blue eyes and smooth pink and white complexion, but now displaying wit and mastery of timing and delivery to rival Jack Benny or Jackie Gleason.

There was spontaneous laughter from the start as she told the loving audience that “everywhere she goes she tries to prove that God is looking for dummies to do great things. He did it in the beginning with the fisherman who never did catch any fish on his own. He did it with what they call ignorant laymen. And he’s doing it again. That is our witness. Isn’t it ridiculous to think that the first Catholic cable network in the country is cloistered among the Bible belt? Unless we are willing to do the ridiculous, God won’t do the miraculous.”

The wonderful qualities of the apostles; honesty, obedience and the ability to accept forgiveness with no guilt from a loving God are the qualities needed to be a Catholic evangelist today. “We must witness today because you see, my friends, we’re losing them. Don’t let statistics give you false confidence. I know what the directory says. I wonder how many are that alive Catholic who has the enthusiasm that we should have knowing we have the deposit of faith?” “You don’t have to wait for the second coming. He is here now. He is in you, He is in me. He is in the world; He is in the Eucharist...How often are we on fire for what we possess? As today’s Elijahs you must be on fire because we live in a cold world...without the faith that’s willing to take the good with the bad.”

“Let’s not lose the theology of risk, be so bogged down by the theology of assurance. Four years ago, my friends, I couldn’t have adjusted the color on a TV set.”

Then she detailed the incident with the local station manager over the blasphemous movie. During the “discussion” she lost her “Italian temper” and vowed to start her own station. “I don’t need you, I only need God. I’ll build my own,” she told the manager. With $200 in the monastery accounts, “there was a lot of ignorance and no money.”

There have been times, she said later in her talk when “He seems to have gone away, leaving a little group of nuns very much alone, in tears with anxiety of heart...Somehow we’ve made it.”

“I’m not afraid to fail. I want to succeed for the Church and the Lord...I am scared to death of dying and having the Lord say to me ‘Angelica, this is what you might have done if you trusted me.” “You have a great Church to proclaim. The Lord never said she was perfect, only inspired. We must be faithful children of so great a mother...You need guts, not brains and lots of love. The world is starving for that. You may be the only Jesus your neighbor will ever see. And you must have joy in your heart.”