EWTN portal reports on the anniversary of Mother Angelica’s death with a nostalgic account of the chaotic circumstances surrounding her first profession of vows in 1960. The article, titled “Remembering the ‘shenanigans’ at Mother Angelica’s first vows,” describes a blizzard, a disputatious choir, a bishop arriving wet and demanding socks, a swollen hand preventing the profession ring from fitting, and the subject of the narrative referring to the day as a “real spiritual experience” where “that’s the way God works with me.” The piece concludes by highlighting her founding of the EWTN media empire. This trivialized, human-centered anecdote is presented as an edifying tale of divine providence, thereby sanctifying liturgical and disciplinary chaos and exemplifying the post-conciliar Church’s replacement of sacred tradition with sentimental humanism.
The Desacralization of the Religious Profession: A Case Study in Post-Conciliar Spirituality
Factual Deconstruction: Chaos as Edifying Narrative
The article presents a series of liturgical and disciplinary failures—a public argument between religious during a sacred ceremony, a presiding bishop’s preoccupation with mundane comfort (requesting socks), a physical injury from neglected convent infrastructure, and a general atmosphere of disorder—not as failures to be corrected, but as a charming, “real spiritual experience.” This reframing of sacrilege and negligence as divine pedagogy is the core error. The subject, then-Sister Angelica, interprets these events through a lens of personal, affective piety (“that’s the way God works with me”), reducing the objective sacredness of the religious profession to a subjective, sentimental narrative. The biography’s quoted language (“shenanigans,” “the people must have thought we were nuts”) further trivializes the violation of the sacred space and rite.
Linguistic Analysis: The Tone of Naturalistic Humanism
The vocabulary is consistently casual and humorous (“shenanigans,” “nuts,” “madwoman with a jackhammer”). This tone strips the event of its supernatural significance. A first profession of vows is the public, solemn entry into a consecrated life, a mystical marriage with Christ. The language used treats it as a relatable, messy family gathering. This is the hermeneutic of discontinuity in practice: the pre-conciliar understanding of the *sacrum*—the set-apart, the holy—is replaced by a profane familiarity. The bishop is not the *sacramental person* of Christ, the head of the local Church, but a cold, wet man concerned with dry socks. The sacred action is interrupted and overshadowed by human pettiness and physical comedy, and this is presented as spiritually formative.
Theological Confrontation: Violations of Sacred Tradition and Liturgical Law
Every major element described contradicts the unchanging theological and canonical principles of the Catholic Church before the revolution of Vatican II.
* **On the Liturgical Action:** The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and the sacraments are the primary acts of worship. The public, solemn profession of vows is an integral part of the Church’s liturgical life, governed by strict canonical and liturgical norms. The *Code of Canon Law* (1917) and the *Rituale Romanum* mandated decorum, silence, and sacred music for such functions. The described arguing, pounding of kneelers, and discordant organ playing constitute a grave violation of the virtue of religion and the canonical right to a sacred, undisturbed ceremony. This is not “how God works”; it is a failure of religious obedience and monastic discipline, which the Church has always taught is essential for the dignity of the rites. *Lex orandi, lex credendi*: the law of prayer is the law of belief. A prayer life built on such chaos produces a chaotic faith.
* **On Episcopal Dignity and the Independence of the Church:** The bishop, James McFadden, is presented as a figure of mundane inconvenience. This directly contradicts the doctrine of the episcopal office. Pope Pius XI in *Quas Primas* teaches that Christ’s royal dignity demands that all relations in the state be ordered on the basis of God’s commandments, and that rulers should recognize they exercise authority not by their own right but by the command and in the place of the Divine King. The bishop, as a successor of the Apostles, is a prince of the Church, a teacher and sanctifier. His arrival, drenched and demanding socks, reduces his sacred office to a level of common humanity incompatible with the reverence due to the *sacrum*. This reflects the error condemned by Pope Pius IX in the *Syllabus of Errors* (Error 27): “The sacred ministers of the Church and the Roman pontiff are to be absolutely excluded from every charge and dominion over temporal affairs.” The bishop’s concern for a dry pair of socks, while not inherently evil, being the *primary* concern upon entering a sacred ceremony for a major religious profession, demonstrates a naturalistic, human-centered priority that excludes the supernatural. It is a microcosm of the error of Error 44: “The civil authority may interfere in matters relating to religion, morality and spiritual government… it can pass judgment on the instructions issued for the guidance of consciences.”
* **On the Nature of “Spiritual Experience”:** The characterization of the day’s chaos as a “real spiritual experience” and the interpretation “that’s the way God works with me” is theologically dangerous. It promotes a purely subjective, emotional, and providentialist piety. True spiritual experiences are judged by their conformity to the objective, revealed will of God and the teaching of the Church, not by their intensity or personal meaning. St. Pius X, in condemning Modernism in *Pascendi Dominici gregis* and *Lamentabili sane exitu*, warned against the “experiential” religion where faith is reduced to a personal, internal sentiment. Proposition 25 of *Lamentabili* states: “Faith, as assent of the mind, is ultimately based on a sum of probabilities.” The article’s narrative promotes the opposite error: that faith is validated by personal, often chaotic, “experiences,” regardless of objective order and doctrine. This is the religion of feeling, not of faith.
Symptomatic Analysis: The Fruit of the Conciliar Revolution
This article is not an isolated anecdote; it is a symptom of the systemic apostasy of the post-conciliar “Church.” The “neo-church” has systematically dismantled the sacred, the hierarchical, and the objective in favor of the communal, the affective, and the human-centered.
1. **Liturgical Deconstruction:** The described scene prefigures the liturgical chaos of the post-conciliar “Mass of Paul VI,” where arguments over music, irreverence, and a focus on human community (“the people must have thought we were nuts”) replace the prayerful, God-centered orientation of the Roman Rite. The *Novus Ordo*’s emphasis on “active participation” often devolves into the very “shenanigans” described, where the human element is foregrounded over the sacred action.
2. **Egalitarianism and Loss of Hierarchy:** The public, undignified argument between the organist and the choir director in the presence of the bishop and guests demonstrates a loss of the sense of hierarchical order and religious obedience. In a true Catholic community, even private disagreements are subordinated to the common good of the sacred rite and the authority of the superior. The bishop’s failure to immediately correct this public scandal (the article implies he did not) shows a weakness of episcopal governance, a direct result of the conciliar ethos of “collegiality” and “dialogue” over hierarchical command.
3. **Humanization of the Sacred:** The bishop’s sock request and the focus on the swollen hand from a broken shower handle bring the profane details of human discomfort into the center of a sacred narrative. This is the essence of the “cult of man” condemned by Pope Pius XI in *Quadragesimo Anno* and Pius XII. The supernatural event (a religious profession) is filtered through and explained by natural, human difficulties. God’s grace is seen as working *through* the mess, not *despite* the obligation to avoid it. This inverts the Catholic principle that the natural must be ordered to and perfected by the supernatural.
4. **The “EWTN Empire” as Culmination:** The article ends by celebrating EWTN as a global media network. This is the final stage of the process: the chaotic, human-centered “spirituality” of the convent is packaged and broadcast globally as authentic Catholicism. EWTN, while using traditional language and the old Mass in part, operates entirely within the conciliar structures, promoting the “hermeneutic of continuity” that the *Lamentabili* and *Syllabus* condemn as the synthesis of all Modernist errors. It presents the “shenanigans” as a model of holy flexibility, thus inculcating in millions the idea that sacred disorder is a sign of authenticity.
Contrast with True Catholic Tradition
In the true, integral Catholic faith, a first profession is a moment of profound supernatural significance, surrounded by the utmost liturgical and disciplinary order. The bishop would arrive vested, his mind on the sacred action, not his physical comfort. The choir would be silent and prayerful before the rite, their music perfect and reverent. The ceremony would proceed with an objective gravity that reflects the eternal vows being taken. Any disturbance would be seen as a grave scandal to be immediately quelled by the religious superior and the bishop. The “spiritual experience” would be the soul’s conscious, humble, and obedient union with Christ, mediated by the Church’s sacred rites, not a retrospective interpretation of chaos. As Pope Pius XI teaches in *Quas Primas*, Christ’s reign requires order, law, and obedience: “He is the Lawgiver, to whom men owe obedience… He possesses… executive power, for all must obey His commands.” The article’s narrative stands in direct opposition to this.
Conclusion: The Bankruptcy of the “Shenanigan” Spirituality
This article is a quintessential artifact of the post-conciliar apostasy. It takes a clear failure of monastic discipline and liturgical reverence and recasts it as a profound lesson in divine providence. It promotes a sentimental, experiential, and humanistic piety over the objective, sacramental, and hierarchical faith of the Catholic Church. It mocks the sacred by laughing at its violation. The “shenanigans” are not a sign of God’s funny ways; they are the visible fruit of a Church that has removed Christ and His most holy law from its customs, as Pius XI lamented. The true Catholic response to such an event would be shame, correction, and penance for the scandal given. The response of the “neo-church,” as documented here, is to celebrate it as a charming story of holiness. This inversion is the very heart of the Modernist error: making the human element the measure of the divine. The article, therefore, is not a harmless memory but a doctrinal Trojan horse, smuggling in the principle that the sacred is profaned with impunity, and that such profanation is, in fact, spiritually edifying.
Source:
Remembering the ‘shenanigans’ at Mother Angelica’s first vows (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 27.03.2026