Virtue:
Faith
Other names:
Definition:
"Faith is the theological virtue by which we believe in God and believe all that he has said and revealed to us, and that Holy Church proposes for our belief, because he is truth itself" (CCC 1814)
Advice:
Empirical Research:
We are not aware of any empirical research about the theological virtue of Faith. However, psychologists do study the related concepts of Spirituality/Religiousness and Appreciation of Beauty and Excellence (CSV).
Spirituality and religiousness involve beliefs and practices grounded in the conviction that there is a transcendent, non-physical dimension to life. Most definitions of this trait share three main focal points, namely belief in transcendent or superhuman powers, interest in and quest for values such as goodness, and emphasis on behaviors, attitudes and experiences consistent with these values (Houf, 1954). The Spiritual Well-Being measure (SWB, 1983) finds that religiousness is linked to higher self-esteem, family togetherness and psychological well-being. Religiousness is linked to stronger family relationships (G. Brody, Stoneman, Flor, & McCrary, 1994; Mahoney et al., 1999), forgiveness (Rye et al., 200), kindness (Ellison, 1992), compassion (Wuthnow, 1991), and life satisfaction (Ellison, Gay, & Glass, 1989). Church involvement is a strong predictor of altruism, volunteerism and philanthropy (Hodgkinson, Weitzman, & Kirsch, 1990; Mattis et al., 2000; Regnerus, Smith & Sikkink, 1998).
Appreciation of Beauty and Excellence involves the ability to recognize and take pleasure in the good and the beautiful in the physical and social worlds. Physical beauty inspires awe, skill or talent inspires admiration, and virtue inspires moral and emotional elevation (Haidt, 2003). In religion, this trait often involves a mixture between fear and submission on the one hand and joy and openness on the other (Keltner & Haidt, 2003). Interestingly, CSV suggests schadenfreude as an opposing vice.
While few measures of Appreciation of Beauty and Excellence exist, the most significant is the Cloninger Temperment and Character Inventory (TCI), which finds that it is linked to creativity, patience and self-forgetfulness.
Studies show that people who report having experiences of awe and wonder also report that these experiences motivate them to self-improvement, personal change, altruism and devotion to their community (Haidt, 2003; Keltner & Haidt, 2003).
A study by Kuo and colleagues (1998) suggests that exposure to green outdoor spaces may help to facilitate Appreciation of Beauty and Excellence in inner city settings.
Case examples:
Gifts of the Spirit:
Understanding
Knowlege
Further reading:
Vices opposed:
Unbelief
Heresy
Apostasy
Blasphemy
Case Study 1
ReplyDeleteRobert Luddy is president of CaptiveAir and author of Entrepreneurial Life: The Path from Startup to Market Leader. In his book, he explains how he came to rely on the virtue of faith when CaptiveAir’s predecessor company, Atlantic Fire, faced hard times in the early stages of development.
"The early 1980s were financially challenging, with high interest rates and slow growth, as the country experienced the pains of a recession. Atlantic Fire had too much debt because of the fast growth and a weak capital base in the preceding years. In June 1980, the company hit its low point—the frightening moment when I realized I could not meet payroll that began this story. I was confronted with the possibility that the company might fail or go bankrupt.
"I’d done everything humanly possible to save the company, so now all that remained was the grace of God. As a man of faith, in critical situations like this, when I had done all else possible, I prayed. Everything good we do is because of God’s grace. He expects us to help ourselves, but sometimes, we need a little extra help." (Luddy, Entrepreneurial Life, ch.2)
Case Study
ReplyDeleteIn his autobiography, Pizza Tiger, Domino's founder Tom Monighan explains the importance of faith in his business life. "My background makes concern about spiritual matters as natural as breathing. I grew up in a Catholic orphanage, and for a short time I attended a seminary, with every intention of becoming a priest. My religious faith is strong. I know I can never be successful on this earth unless I am on good terms with God. I know I would not have been able to build Domino's without the strength I gained from my religious faith. In the early years, I was hit by a long series of difficulties. Each one seemed like a knockout blow. But I was able to get off the floor every time and come back stronger than ever. That's the power of faith. I use it every day. No matter how tense or tired I get, I can take time out to pray the rosary and feel refreshed. That's a tremendous asset." (Monaghan, Pizza Tiger, p. 8)
Case Study
ReplyDeleteIn More than a Hobby, Hobby Lobby founder David Green recalls an instance in which he was compelled to rely on faith for guidance, and in some sense for the survival of his business. "In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the oil industry was booming in our home state of Oklahoma, where we had most of our stores at that time. Money was flowing freely; you could sell just about anything. We began adding quite expensive items such as luggage (people had money to travel), large grandfather clocks, ceiling fans, and art pieces that ran as high as $2,000 for signed and numbered lithographs. We put in a section of gourmet foods. We had classy miniature oil rigs in brass for up to $300, which companies would buy twenty and thirty at a time for their major investors. We opened a whole upstairs section above the main sales floor for this kind of merchandise.
"We were getting off track, but we didn’t know it. Then came the oil bust of 1985. Suddenly, discretionary money dried up. By the end of the year, we had lost $923,436—our first-ever year of red ink. In fact, that bottom-line loss was bigger than any two previous years of profit.
"I still remember calling the family together in our living room in April 1986. By then all three of our children, plus two nephews and our future son-in-law, were earning their living in the company. 'I have some bad news, and I don’t know what to do,' I began. I explained that we were in serious trouble.
"Our oldest son, Mart, then just twenty-four years old, said, 'Dad, it’s okay. Our faith is not in you—it’s in God. If we lose the businesses, we’ll still be okay.'
"We talked about what we could do. We figured out where we had gone wrong. We clarified that we were first and foremost an arts-and-crafts store; those departments had to remain strong no matter what else beckoned for our attention. That was what most customers came to buy, even though they might pick up other items along the way.
"As it turned out, the economy in our region rebounded fairly quickly. Within a few months, we began to see signs of profitability again. The year of 1986 ended in the black, and we’ve been able to stay there ever since. We believe God has helped us to make wise decisions, both in selecting merchandise and in other areas as well, in order to serve our customers and advance the company." (David Green, More Than a Hobby, ch. 2)
Case Study
ReplyDeleteIn his book, More Than a Hobby, David Green explains how he pursues orderliness not just as a matter of personal practice, but in the way products are physically presented and arranged at Hobby Lobby. "At Hobby Lobby we’re determined to keep a store that isn’t junky—despite the nature of our merchandise. Crafts and home accents come in thousands of different shapes and sizes, which makes our job challenging. If we were in the clothing business, most items—whether men’s, women’s, or children’s—would either display vertically on a hanger or stack nicely on a table. If we were car dealers, almost all vehicles would occupy roughly the same-size rectangles on the lot. We, on the other hand, are trying to keep an area that displays polyurethane grape clusters and dollhouse miniatures and ceramic birdbaths and model trains from looking like a junkyard." For David Green, orderliness is a basic principle of customer service on a personal as well as material level. "I insist that Hobby Lobby should be well organized—not just because it’s my nature, but because customers appreciate it. They like being able to find what they’re seeking with a minimum of looking around." (David Green, More Than a Hobby, ch. 3)
Case Study
ReplyDeleteIn his autobiography, Mover of Men and Mountains, industrialist and heavy machinery inventor R.G. LeTourneau begins his life's story, spanning such momentous events as the Great Depression and World War II, with a statement of faith. "What I want to say is that what I've done, anyone can do with the help of God. Reporters have often asked me, 'Did you start from scratch?' My answer to that is 'Every time.' I've been financially broke so often and in debt so long that it was a big day for us when my wife and I could move out of a cook shack and into a brand new tent. Spiritually, too, I was bankrupt even before I lost my first dollar. Yes, I started from scratch, all right, and was still starting from scratch at the age of forty-four. And the One who picked me up and started me over with my strength and ambition fully restored is the same Lord and Savior available to all for the asking." (LeTourneau, Mover of Men and Mountains, p. 4)
Case Study
ReplyDeleteUpon returning from his wartime work in the Naval yards to his old job as a garage mechanic in the closing months of 1918, future industrialist and heavy earth-moving machinery inventor R.G. LeTourneau experienced a series of personal setbacks and tragedies. These trials ultimately led him to a deeper relationship with God, as he explains in his autobiography Mover of Men and Mountains. "I ran into the first trouble the day I returned to the garage and found we were bankrupt. I simply couldn't believe it. The most prosperous garage in town had gone broke?" LeTourneau discovered that his business partner (whose identity he protects in his autobiography under the pseudonym of "Parks") hadn't kept any books on the company's growing expenses. These expenses arose in part from Parks' own drinking problems. "I had known that Parks was not above taking a prospective customer down to the local saloon to warm him into a receptive frame of mind. I had closed my eyes to that, assuring myself that entertainment, as he called it, was his side of the business and not mine. I was wrong." (82-83)
At the same time, LeTourneau learned from his wife, Evelyn, that their infant son was struck down by the influenza epidemic sweeping across the country. "We had no time to prepare ourselves for the blow. On February 9th the doctor turned to us as he had turned to so many other parents, as said, 'he's gone.'"
"I held Evelyn, but when I could find words, it was to God that I addressed them. 'What's wrong?' I pleaded. 'What have we done that we should be so punished? We've worked hard. We've tried our best to be Christians. Oh, where have we gone wrong?'"
That night, while we were still numb with sorrow, the answer came to me. 'My child,' the Voice said, 'you have been working hard, but for the wrong things. You have been working for material things when you should have been working for spiritual things.'"
"The words were few, but the meaning ran deep. All that long night I reviewed my past, and saw where I had been paying only token tribute to God, going through the motions of acting like a Christian, but really serving myself and my conscience instead of serving Him. Instead of being a humble servant, I was taking pride in the way I was working to pay my material debts at the garage, while doing scarcely a thing to pay my spiritual debt to God.
...
"I know that when I returned to the garage it was with a new attitude. I had been furious at Parks for the weakness of his that had caused all the trouble, and had wanted nothing to do with him. Now, having been shown the light, I was able to use my influence, with the help of God, in getting him straightened out. He became his old personable self, and sales began to pick up." (85-86) (LeTourneau, Mover of Men and Mountains, pp. 82-82 and 85-86)
Case Study
ReplyDeleteDuring the Great Depression, J. C. Penney founder James Cash Penney, whose fortunes had been heavily invested in the stock market, faced the prospect of financial ruin. By 1931, as David Delbert Kruger explains in J. C. Penney: The Man, the Store and American Agriculture, “Penney began contemplating the possibility of ending his suffering, going so far as writing out ‘parting letters’ to [his wife] Caroline and their two young daughters. As adults, the daughters would retrospectively interpret these letters as nothing less than suicide notes. Given their father’s Christian beliefs, it is doubtful that Penney would have actually attempted suicide. Even so, he was more than convinced that his life would certainly be over before the end of the year, regardless of the course of action he pursued.”
Eventually, Penney agreed to a temporary stay at the Kellogg Sanitarium. While there, he had what he later described as an overwhelming experience of God. “One evening, unable to sleep and certain he would not live to see the morning, Penney found himself walking the dark hallways of the sanitarium. As he journeyed around the building, he could hear the faint sound of an old hymn from his childhood, ‘God Will Take Care of You,’ and he followed the music to its source, a group of fellow patients singing in the chapel room. Penney quietly entered the room and slumped into a seat in the back row. When the hymn was over, a patient read from Matthew 11:28-28, followed by a group prayer. Penney began to pray in the back of the chapel, recalling later that as he submitted himself to God, he began experiencing a supernatural encounter unlike any he had ever experienced before.
“‘In the next few moments something happened to me. I have never been able to explain it clearly in words and cannot now. I believe it was a miracle. I had the feeling of being lifted, out of an immensity of dark space into a spaciousness of warm and brilliant sunlight. The thought flashed through my wearied mind that, if I had held myself responsible for such success as I had achieved, so too was I, and I alone, responsible for all the trouble that had descended upon me. But the great thing was that now I knew; God with His boundless and matchlessly patient love was there to help me. God had answered me when I cried out, “Lord I can do nothing. Will you take care of me?’ This was His answer. A weight lifted from my spirit…I came forth with a soaring sense of release, from a bondage of gathering death to a pulse of hopeful living. I had glimpsed God.’
According to Kruger, Penney believed his experience was nothing less than a moment of divine healing. Indeed, “the doctors at Kellogg Sanitarium were amazed by his rapid physical recovery thereafter. Just six days later, they discharged him to attend the J. C. Penney Company convention in Louisville, Kentucky. ‘At Louisville strength as I needed was given to me,’ recalled Penney after the convention. ‘Truly God was taking care of me. I went on to the next engagement, and the next.’ Penney never returned to the sanitarium, and he marveled that just two weeks after his experiences inside the chapel, he would happily return home and celebrate Christmas with his family.” (Kruger, J. C. Penney, pp. 88-89)
Case Study
ReplyDeleteEWTN founder Mother Angelica was born Rita Antoinette Rizzo in an impoverished and crime-ridden Italian neighborhood in Canton, Ohio. The child of a broken family, she was often forced to take on the role of caretaker for her mother, Mae, who suffered from bouts of depression. “At eleven years of age,” explains biographer Raymond Arroyo, “barely able to see over the dashboard, Rita was already driving Mae’s car, delivering starched cloths to her mother’s customers and collecting payments on Saturdays. At times, she would bring home a profit, sparking a celebration at the public library, where Mae would pore over books and Rita would indulge in the comics and a box of caramels.”
Nevertheless, Mother Angelica notes in one of her interviews with Arroyo that whatever her virtues, they would not have been enough to carry her through without grace. “‘Had the Lord not pulled me up, I would have had one miserable life,’ Mother Angelica said during a moment of reflection. ‘I never saw any change occur. I felt I was born that way and I would die that way. I was not bitter, just resigned.’
“Then the miraculous intruded on Rita Rizzo’s life for the first time. Returning from a downtown visit to the dentist, the lanky child looked both ways as she dashed across a large boulevard to catch a bus. Worn-out socks flopped about her ankles. She headed for the median in the center of the street, when a woman shrieked. Glancing over her right shoulder, Rita saw two headlights bearing down on her. She froze. The engine’s gruff rumble grew louder. With only seconds till impact, Rita closed her eyes, paralyzed with fear.
“‘All of a sudden, it felt as if two hands under my arms picked me up – I can almost feel them when I talk about it – and put me on the island where the cars were parked,’ Mother told me in an awe-filled whisper. She claimed that the passersby were amazed by what they saw and stared at her in disbelief.
“The next day on the bus, the driver told Mae he had witnessed ‘a miracle,’ and had never seen ‘somebody jump so high before.’ Both mother and daughter considered the ‘lifting’ a touch of grace during an otherwise-dismal moment in their lives.” (Arroyo, Mother Angelica, p. 18)
Case Study (Part 1)
ReplyDeleteEWTN founder Mother Angelica was born Rita Antoinette Rizzo in an impoverished and crime-ridden Italian neighborhood in Canton, Ohio. As a teenager, she suffered from chronic stomach spasms, caused by a condition known as “dropped stomach” that resulted in bloating and discoloration. As biographer Raymond Arroyo explains, Rita grew up something of a lukewarm Catholic, but underwent a profound conversion of heart after experiencing a miraculous healing through the intercession of a woman named Rhoda Wise. “A stigmatic and purported miracle worker, Wise lived in a white clapboard shotgun house a block away from the city dump.” Wise believed that she herself had experienced a miraculous healing from a series of abdominal cysts that persisted despite repeated operations.
“In 1938, during yet another round of abdominal surgeries at Mercy Hospital, Wise was visited by one of the Sisters of Charity of St. Augustine. Arrayed in white, Sister Clement prayed with the ailing woman and introduced her to the Rosary and other Catholic devotions. Being a Protestant, Wise summarily dismissed the nun’s suggestions, particularly the idea that she should offer nine days of prayer to Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus for a healing. The pain convinced her otherwise.
“During a subsequent visit to the hospital, Wise prayed the nine-day novena to Saint Thérèse and soon converted to Catholicism. She left Mercy Hospital with a new faith and an open wound, which exposed a section of her bowel. The ruptured bowel would frequently discharge, burning Wise’s skin as it oozed.
“On the night of May 27, 1939, Wise claimed, Jesus entered her room and sat on a chair adjacent to her bed. The Savior appeared iridescent to her, His light filling the room. Before leaving, Christ promised to return.
“Rhoda Wise’s suffering was so intense that she prayed for death, until the night of June 27, 1939, when the light returned to her room. According to Wise’s diary, Jesus stood in the doorway as Saint Thérèse approached the bed. The saint put her hand on the open wound, saying, ‘You doubted me before. You have been tried in the fire and not found wanting. Faith cures all things.’ When the mystical pair withdrew, Wise ‘was astonished to find the wound on my abdomen…entirely closed…the ruptured bowel, too, was entirely healed.” (28-30)
Case Study (Part 2)
ReplyDeleteRita’s mother, Mae, became convinced that a visit with Rhoda Wise was worth a try. “Rita wasn’t so sure, and Wise’s reputed signs and wonders were less than convincing: ‘I was so engrossed in survival that religion did not affect me… My faith was not at a high level, if it was at any level at all. But I was so happy that my mother wanted to go that I figured, What can I lose?’
Wise simply gave Rita “prayers to the Little Flower and told [her] to make some sort of sacrifice – and to promise to spread devotion to Saint Thérèse if [she] was cured.” For a time, Rita’s spasms continued. “Nothing happened until the early morning hours of January 17, 1943, once the ninth day of the novena had passed. In the dark of those early hours, Rita felt ‘the sharpest pains’ she had ever encountered. ‘It seemed that something was pulling my stomach out,’ she claimed…Then a voice commanded her to get up and walk without it.
“‘I knew I didn’t need that brace and I knew I was healed,’ Mother Angelica said, even though her stomach still hurt. ‘I did have a pain, but it was different from the other pain.’
“She tentatively ambled into the kitchen, where Grandma Gianfrancesco was cooking. ‘Grandma, I want a pork chop,’ she said.
“The saggy woman spun around. ‘Testadura! You can’t eat pork chops.’
“‘Yeah, I can, Grandma.’ Rita lifted her pajama top, exposing her midsection. The blue coloration was gone. So was the lump. ‘I’ve been healed.’
“The old lady turned to her frying pan and started grilling a pork chop. When Mae entered the kitchen and heard the news, she was hysterical. Caught somewhere between elation and fear, Mae got so worked up, Grandma Gianfrancesco had to slap her across the face to steady her emotions. Mae threw the kitchen door open and yelled over the grapevines to her brother Nick’s house: ‘Rita’s cured. Rita cured. It’s a miracle.” (31-32)
This event profoundly transformed Rita’s relationship with God. “When the Lord came and healed me through the Little Flower, I had a whole different attitude. I knew there was a God: I knew that God knew me and loved me and was interested in me. I didn’t know that before. All I wanted to do after my healing was give myself to Jesus.” (33) [Arroyo, Mother Angelica, pp. 28-30, 31-32 & 33]
Case Study
ReplyDeleteEWTN founder Mother Angelica began her life as a nun at Sancta Clara Monastery in Canton, Ohio. As early as the late ‘50s, she dreamed of founding a racially integrated monastery in Birmingham that would focus on providing education to the black community. However, she suffered from continuous back problems caused by a fall several years earlier, which eventually became so severe that she had to be hospitalized for surgery, with no more than a fifty-fifty chance of ever walking again. “As [the doctors] wheeled Sister Angelica into surgery,” explains biographer Raymond Arroyo, “everything was riding on her walking again. Practicing what she had taught the novices, the thirty-three-year-old abandoned her health and her monastery to the will of God.
…
“The spinal surgery was considered a failure. Though Angelica could move both legs when she woke from the anesthesia, walking was another matter. She remained in the hospital, recuperating, for at least two months.
“Returning to [her present monastery of] Sancta Clara, Sister Angelica was confined to the infirmary, where a procession of nuns collected around her bedside.
“‘She never appeared sick,’ Sister Joseph, a regular visitor, remembered. ‘She always had that gift of leadership. She had a magnetic personality, and when she counseled you spiritually, you felt she could guide you, and lead a community.’
Suffering altered the teachings and person of Sister Angelica. In the infirmary, she began to use her personal experience to concretize and explain lofty spiritual concepts to the other sisters. Pain had become a tool of understanding, increasing her empathy for others and deepening her own spiritual sense. Through necessity she learned to rely on God in all things, and found strength in weakness.
“With her intimates, Angelica shared her vow to establish a community in the South, giving them additional incentive to rally her to health. Sister Joseph and Raphael practically tripped over each other attempting to assist the ailing nun. In her first weeks home, they vied for the honor of shuttling Sister Angelica through the monastery in a rickety wooden wheelchair. Eventually, Angelica herself ended the competition, graduating to a back brace, leg brace, and crutch. With their assistance, she took her first wobbly steps of independence, to the delight of her supporters. God has fulfilled his part of the bargain.” (Arroyo, Mother Angelica, pp. 75-77)
Case Study
ReplyDeleteFuture EWTN founder Mother Angelica already proved herself capable of communicating a profound faith in God in her debut TV appearance for the program, Our Hermitage, which aired on the mostly Protestant Christian Broadcast Network. As biographer Raymond Arroyo explains, the original idea for the show in April, 1978, was a tour of Angelica’s Our Lady of Angels monastery in Birmingham. However, the format did not play to Mother Angelica’s strengths as a public speaker, so the episode was reworked and re-imagined. “In early June, Mother returned to the studio to reshoot the first episode of Our Hermitage.
“‘I’ve never forgotten it. It was incredible,’ [colleague] Jean Morris enthused. ‘The power was there; you could feel it.’
“The program opens with a wandering shot through Alabama underbrush as Sister Mary Raphael sings, ‘All I ask for is forever to remember me as loving you.’ A still shot of a cottage appears and then dissolves to Mother Angelica seated in a faux-leather chair before a papier-mâché fireplace. Her nose looks huge in the light, her eyes lost in shadow behind her glasses. She seems tired and disconnected, probably owing to a bad asthma attack that had sent her to the hospital just days before the shoot. Angelica riffs on the Scripture, finding meaning in seemingly inconsequential details. The episode is dedicated to the multiplication of the loaves and the fishes. After Jesus performed the miracle, she explains, he told the apostles to collect the scraps from the crowd. Mother pounces on the tiny morsel, her passion suddenly exploding.
“‘Have you ever wondered what happened to those scraps after Jesus took them and filled those twelve baskets? I’ll bet those apostles ate those scraps for months. You ever think of Thanksgiving dinner? I look forward to Thanksgiving dinner, except sometimes I’m still eating it at Christmas… that Thanksgiving turkey never disappears it just gets bigger and bigger.
“While the audience is still laughing (‘It’s like putting them under an anesthetic’), Mother slips in her lesson.
“‘Most of you take the scraps of your life and you permit them to pour guilt on your poor souls, or resentment or regret. And you live in those regrets, and you live in that guilt…I wish I had never felt angry or distressed, but I have. But I know that Jesus is going to take all the scraps of my life and your life and He will make something out of them that is so nourishing for our soul and so beautiful… If you have anything in your past that you are sorry for and it seems they keep coming back and making you more miserable and more unhappy…let the Lord pick up those scraps…”
“For all its professional defects, the show captured Mother’s practical teaching and her way with the Scriptures. The humor – the authenticity – was there.” (Arroyo, Mother Angelica, pp. 140-41)
Case Study
ReplyDeleteEWTN founder Mother Angelica was very much guided by faith in her risky decision to start her own network, as biographer Raymond Arroyo explains. Her future entertainment lawyer, Robert Corazzini, was caught off guard by her sheer boldness in their first telephone conversation. “‘Mr. Corazzini,’ [she announced], ‘I’m Mother Angelica from Our Lady of the Angels Monastery and I want to build a satellite network.’
“There was a marked silence on the line.
“‘I beg your pardon?’ Corazzini asked. Angelica explained herself again. Despite his reticence, the lawyer agreed to visit Birmingham to discuss Mother’s legal options.
…
“Of their collaboration, Corazzini said, ‘The great thing about Mother was that she had absolute faith that it was going to work. As long as we kept plugging, God would take care of it.
“As Corazzini pursued her broadcasting license in Washington, D.C., Mother Angelica flew to North Carolina in January 1980. Her destination was PTL, a Protestant network founded by Assembly of God minister Jim Bakker and his wife, Tammy Faye. Mother Angelica had appeared on PTL several times throughout 1979, to great acclaim, and was ranked in polls as an audience favorite. During one broadcast, she told Bakker, ‘I am convinced God is looking for dodoes. He found one: me! There are a lot of smart people out there who know it can’t be done, so they don’t do it. But a dodo doesn’t know it can’t be done. God uses dodoes: people who are willing to look ridiculous so God can do the miraculous.
“Bakker was so taken with the nun, he dispatched a team of scenic designers to Birmingham to build her first studio set. The result was a powder blue living room with framed paintings of Jesus and the Pope decorating the walls. Programs recorded in the studio were fed to the control room – a white Winnebago parked outside. Emblazoned on the body of the so-called TV van was Mother’s philosophy of the moment, the misspelled adage ‘Dodos for Jesus.’” (Arroyo, Mother Angelica, pp. 148-49)
Case Study
ReplyDeleteIn the early days of EWTN, Mother Angelica operated by what she termed a “theology of risk,” trusting everything to God as she sought the funds to get her network running. As biographer Raymond Arroyo explains, she came close to defaulting on her loans before finally establishing a relationship with eccentric philanthropist and art collector Harry John, creator of the De Rance Foundation. “Dick DeGraff, a fund-raiser for a Wisconsin-based Catholic nonprofit organization, took Angelica to De Rance after learning that she needed money for a satellite dish. Racks of religious art, pickaxes and bowls of exotic nuts littered Harry John’s office. Though fascinated by the nun, he was not convinced she could start a TV network. He asked her to elaborate on her long-range plans and explain the function of the satellite dish. Angelica complied, and as a sign of her seriousness, she requested $480,000 to cover her debt and the expected cost of the dish.
“‘Let me think about it,’ John said.
“‘What do you need to think about?’ Mother smiled. ‘I need it.’
“According to DeGraff, Mother Angelica was not happy nor assured of success on the drive back. ‘Pray,’ DeGraff told her.
“‘We always pray,’ Angelica responded ruefully.
“In August the De Rance Foundation sent Mother Angelica a check for $220,000 – hardly enough to bring down EWTN’s mounting debt load or to offset the imminent financial bleed.
“On September 18, 1980, already hundreds of thousands of dollars in arrears, Mother Angelica was about to order a thirty-three-foot satellite dish from Scientific Atlanta at a cost of $350,000 when she hesitated. Where would she get the money? And what if it never came? Most would have cut their losses and run. But Angelica proceeded with the order, exercising what she would later call her ‘theology of risk.’
“‘You want to do something for the Lord…do it. Whatever you feel needs to be done, even though you’re shaking in your boots, you’re scared to death – take the first step forward. The grace comes with that one step and you get the grace as you step. Being afraid is not a problem; it’s doing nothing when you’re afraid.’
“Hers was a high-stakes faith. On the heels of the satellite order, Angelica instructed [her associate] Bill Steltemeier to draft a purchase agreement with RCA for satellite transmission equipment. The acquisition of the satellite dish, coupled with the transmission hardware, would bring Mother’s debt burden to more than $1 million.” (150-51) While debt would continue to be an issue for Mother Angelica for many years to come, it was her faith-based risk-taking that would ultimately enable EWTN to succeed. (Arroyo, Mother Angelica, pp. 150-51)
Case Study
ReplyDeleteEWTN founder Mother Angelica was a determined leader and a tough negotiator, but she always made business decisions with an ear to the Lord, as biographer Raymond Arroyo illustrates in the following story. “In October 1986, Mother lost…EWTN’s satellite and transponder lease. The satellite provider refused to renew EWTN’s contract for 1987, and their competitors were only interested in accompanying twenty-four-hour cable networks. To keep her network on the air, Angelica could secure another six-hour deal on a secondary satellite or expand EWTN’s broadcasting day to twenty-four hours, and move to Galaxy III: a new satellite, which few cable systems could (or wanted to) look at. No matter which choice she made, [associate] Matt Scalici told Mother, EWTN would ‘lose all of its affiliates and have to start from zero.’
“Angelica prayed for guidance. ‘When the Lord acts with me, there’s always a leap of faith,’ Mother explained, ‘the leap of faith that says yes or no. And at that point, the question is: Do you recognize the Providence of God?’
“On the morning of October 24, 1986, Angelica gathered all forty-five employees in the studio, informed them of the options she was weighing, warned them of the massive challenges and benefits that awaited them should they enter the twenty-four-hour cable arena, and awaited their response. Each employee would voice an opinion and make a choice: either to keep the six-hour feed or to take the twenty-four-hour plunge. Enormous amounts of programming would be required to sustain a continuous feed, the financial strain would intensify, and an already taxed workforce would be expected to put in more time. One by one the employees spoke up, unanimously encouraging Mother to ‘go for it.’
“‘It was the most edifying, wonderful day of our lives because they knew that we were going to go back to nothing and start over.’ Mother’s face flushed with excitement as she relived the decision to broadcast twenty-four hours a day. ‘I told them they’d probably have to work without pay for a while. They didn’t care; they were challenged, and we did it.’
“Shortly after EWTN signed onto Galaxy III, a formidable lineup of cable networks bought out the satellite. They provided reception dishes to the nation’s seven thousand cable systems, turning Galaxy III into the most popular satellite in cable television – home to Nickelodeon, C-SPAN, and EWTN.” (Arroyo, Mother Angelica, pp. 199-200)