Norwich, England, Aug 29, 2017 / 02:24 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- On Tuesday EWTN opened its first studio and office in the U.K. at the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham, emphasizing its role in supporting the Church’s evangelization in the region.
In an Aug. 29 statement on the studio launch, EWTN Chairman and CEO Michael P. Warsaw called the opening of the facility “a particularly important” step for the network’s continued development in the U.K.
The new studio, he said, “will allow us to greatly expand our capacity to produce programming for our European channels as well as to more easily incorporate content from the U.K. into our other channels around the world.”
He said it’s appropriate that the new studio sits just steps away from the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham, which annually draws hundreds of thousands of pilgrims from all over the U.K. and the world, and which for centuries “has been one of the most important centers of Catholicism in Britain.”
With such strong pilgrim activity, Warsaw said he is “very happy that EWTN now has a presence in this extraordinary place and can share what happens here with our audience around the globe.”
Located in a converted house in the village of Walsingham, about 30 miles northwest of Norwich, the studio includes a street-level reception area and welcome center for visitors, where pilgrims can watch clips of EWTN’s most popular television shows, films, and documentaries.
One of the most important pilgrimage sites in Europe, the Walsingham shrine dates back to 1061, and is widely referred to as “England’s Nazareth.” Both Anglican and a Catholic chapels are located at the site, which has become a hub for ecumenical prayer and devotion.
Inspiration for the shrine came when a devout English noblewoman, Richeldis de Faverches, prayed to undertake a special task in honor of Our Lady.
As the story goes, in answer to the woman’s request, Mary appeared to her in a vision and took her to Nazareth, showing her where the Annunciation occurred. Mary then asked De Faverches to build a replica of the house in Walsingham to serve as a perpetual memorial of that moment.
The shrine was built and a religious community put in charge of it. In 1150, a priory was built by the Augustinian Canons, and eventually Walsingham became one of the largest, most well-known shrines in Medieval Christendom.
However, during the English Reformation, the priory was handed over to the commissioners of King Henry VIII in 1538, and the highly venerated statue of Our Lady of Walsingham was burned along with the shrine.
As a result, pilgrimages to the site ceased, and wouldn’t pick up again for another 300 years, until after the Catholic Emancipation of 1829.
In 1896, Charlotte Pearson Boyd purchased a small, 14th century chapel called the “Slipper Chapel” – one of the last en-route to Walsingham – and restored it for Catholic use. A year later, in 1897, Leo XIII issued a rescript stating that the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham would be restored.
Official pilgrimages started up again that same year, and visits to the site increased as greater numbers of pilgrims began filing into both the chapel and the shrine for devotion.
Walsingham currently attracts some 150,000 pilgrims during peak seasons.
In 2015, on the Feast of the Holy Family, Pope Francis gave the shrine the title of a minor basilica.
Warsaw voiced his hope in his statement that the opening of EWTN’s studio there would help to form a “strategic collaboration” with the shrine in order to help the site carry out “its mission to evangelize.”
Present alongside Warsaw at the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new shrine was the shrine’s rector, Monsignor John Armitage, and Bishop Alan Hopes of East Anglia.
Msgr. Armitage said Walsingham “is very much the crossroads of the Catholic Church in England, and has been for over 950 years.”
“This is a place where pilgrims come from all over the country and indeed all over the world,” he said, explaining that the Church itself “needs to be at the crossroads.”
For an organization dedicated to communications such as EWTN, “to be at a place where people are coming from all sort of different aspects of the life of the Church is particularly important.”
“So we are delighted as a shrine to be able to welcome EWTN to come here as an organization in their own right, but at this place where so many pilgrims come from all over the world.”
Bishop Hopes also spoke about the new studio, saying the facility “will certainly be a center for evangelization.”
“EWTN right at the front of evangelization in the media…it enters people’s hopes, it enables them to join in the prayer and worship life of the Church,” he said. “It means that people can see the teaching aspects of the faith, so it’s a real mission in itself.
Just as Richeldis de Faverches responded to Mary’s wish by building a shrine in honor of the place where the Annunciation took place, EWTN will do the same in terms of building the Church, he said, explaining that the organization “always contributed (to the Church in England), but it’s assisting in that building up of the Kingdom, that proclamation of the Gospel.”
Cardinal Vincent Nichols of Westminster sent a letter for the occasion, which was read aloud by Bishop Hopes at the ceremony.
Cardinal Nichols offered his gratitude for the addition of the studio, which he called a “valuable media center in the heart of our National Shrine.”
He praised the work of the media, noting that over the past 950 years “Walsingham has been a place of pilgrimage, proclaiming the joy of the Annunciation.”
“In this new chapter of its history, I welcome the opportunity for the shrine and EWTN to work together as servants of the New Evangelization,” he said, adding that he is looking forward to visiting the studios himself while in Walsingham for the Westminster pilgrimage in October.
All television and radio channels EWTN produces for the U.K. and Ireland are currently available on the Sky satellite platform, and cable and video streaming platforms throughout the area. The network also transmits two additional television channels for the European continent.
The Walsingham studio in particular was made possible thanks to the work of Saint Clare Media-EWTN, Ltd., the network’s non-profit affiliate in Britain. They conduct marketing, fundraising, and the production of programming for EWTN’s radio services in the U.K., and they are also create and distribute news content in collaboration with EWTN’s global news outlets.
Warsaw joined EWTN in 1991 and worked in senior management positions in television production, satellite operations and technical services. In 2000 he became president of EWTN, and in 2009 he assumed the post of CEO. In 2013 he was named chairman of the board.
EWTN was founded launched in 1981 by Mother Angelica of the Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration. The largest religious media network in the world, it reaches more than 268 million television households in more than 145 countries and territories.
In addition to 11 television channels in multiple languages, EWTN platforms include radio services through shortwave and satellite radio, SIRIUS/XM, iHeart Radio, and over 500 AM and FM affiliates. EWTN publishes the National Catholic Register, operates a religious goods catalogue, and in 2015 formed EWTN Publishing in a joint venture with Sophia Institute Press. Catholic News Agency is also part of the EWTN family.
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I expect he is 100% correct.
Affection, security, and love are the start. And prayer, especially meditation. That is what enables the person to start loving themselves and repenting of their sins, loving their abusers and forgiving them, accepting the vast quantities and varied kinds of suffering they have and healing from it, and believing the truth about God’s love for them.
I don’t think the sex, drugs, and such are to make themselves feel loved. That’s to distract just a bit from the pain of believing you aren’t.
Offering LOVE then “repenting of their sins”? That seems to be an indictment when they least need it.
Sin harms no one so much as the person who commits it. It is an act of self-hatred to sin, and an act of self-love to repent.
If you are trying to make someone feel good, calling them to repentance might not achieve that, particularly if you’re bad at communicating how harmful it is to them, how much sin destroys, in the sinner, the joy and peace God means us to have. But anyone who has walked from self-hatred to properly ordered self-love knows that repentance is an essential part of that… so essential that avoidance of repentance will at some point become an obstacle to healing (similarly with forgiveness).
In case it wasn’t clear, this is a process, and one to be done gently, patiently, kindly, and charitably (i.e., loving the person for love of God), and according to God’s timing and not our own.
Failure to face reality is never considered normal, but rather a sign of weakness somewhere. One truth that we can always rely on is that God loves His creation = all of it, and if the human ones screw up, they must always be sorry and make atonement to their Creator – some sort of atonement, to keep things in proper order. Does that make sense?
To the Samaritan woman at the well, Jesus noted the fault zones of her life. He offered her living water while pointing out her sin. Jesus admonished the woman caught in adultery to sin no more. Jesus came to call “sinners to repentance.” (Luke 5:32) Only after Zaccheus the tax collector determined to amend his cheating mistakes, only then did Jesus proclaim his salvation.
The Gospel is filled with such examples. Jesus did not come to call sinners who believe they are already righteous. He did not come to call sinners who think they are already nice, good, or okay. Jesus advised: “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matthew 5:48).
We are all sinners, but a sinner who refuses or resents another recognizing his sins is neither a humble nor a repentant sinner. A non-repentant sinner is not able to recognize or appreciate let alone receive benefit or salvation from Christ’s living water.
Hebrews 10:5 has Jesus commenting on “a body you have prepared for me.” Just as Jesus offered His body, pure and undefiled to God Our Father, every Christian is to work toward doing the same.
Sin works against God. We must not become complacent about sin in our lives or in those we claim to love.
With a suicide rate which I understand approaches 50%, its clear that Trans people have a significant mental illness. Body dysmorphia at the very least. And “transitioning” does not greatly lower that statistic. They can declare themselves dragons if they want to, but forcing other people to call them that will change nothing at all. The govt needs to stop affirming transgenderism as something normal.
Actually, the suicide rate is no different and has remained static over the years according to APA as stated in Dr. Kevin Vost, PSY.D. I agree that the LGBTQ+ community is using flawed rhetoric to push acceptance of the ideological trans dogma in an effort to normalize there prefer abnormal sexual behaviors. That does not give society the excuse to be demeaning but to understand that the LGBTQ+ people are suffering from deep mental defect. In the same, the church needs to continue to also profess that any deviant sexual activity in a sin and continue to try to save the sinner. It is also worth noting that it is not just the LGBTQ+ people that take pare in sinful lust activity that is not in accordance with natural law.
A Danish study quoted by CNN shows an elevated rate as much as 40% higher than the general population. Not remotely the same as the general population.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/28/health/transgender-suicide-risk/index.html
And this study from the National Institute of health showing the rates from various countries as 32 to 50% of the trans population.These are not the only studies showing elevated rates of suicide among Trans. Saying it’s no different from the population at large is untrue propaganda.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5178031/
“The govt needs to stop affirming transgenderism as something normal.”
Well said.
It is not news to me but I am very glad to read the priest’s account of that problem. The available online data shows a disproportionately high percentage of abused (mostly in their families) among those who seek hormonal “therapy” and surgeries. It makes perfect sense to me: a teen whom his family makes feel ugly and shameful, unloved and rejected is unable to understand the real reason for his desperation precisely because it is his family and thus a norm. There is thus something wrong with him, not with his family. Hence, he believes he is “ugly and unacceptable” indeed. I perceive those drastic surgeries to be an attempt TO BECOME another person who will be loved and accepted. The problem is that since a teen has learnt not to love himself, there is practically no chance that he will love himself after he “remade” himself. If he will love himself, it will be only until the novelty wears off.
Being interviewed, many of those teenagers exhibit the symptoms of severe anxiety, depression, bulimia, anorexia and even borderline personality disorder (which is a result of an extreme early trauma) – all that apart from being just normally miserable as most teens are re: their changing bodies. I was astonished to discover that such people are given “a green light” towards mutilation after just one or maximum two appointments with a psychologist. It is a huge crime.
In a nutshell, it is a denial of the reality of a suffering soul, a kind of plastic surgery to remove wrinkles. Superficial and pathetic beyond measure.
That’s what I’ve seen, too. For a long time, I thought that all sin was, underneath everything, a kind of satanic defiance of God, with the talk about human weakness merely being our attempts to excuse our actions. The few people I have really gotten to know who are LGBTQ are, however, deeply broken, and their facade of being “gay” in the old-fashioned sense masks a very profound sadness. They are very badly served by those who claim to represent them.
Sadly, these realities are all almost self-evident, an advanced form of the same lack of self-worth syndrome that drives homosexuality, but there is another factor. I viewed a PBS documentary a few years ago showing a pyschologist evaluating a video study of a boy in front of his parents trying to convince them he was trans and should get a surgery immediately. On what basis? Well the boy seemed to be more attached to the family dog than anyone else in the household “proving” that he had a strong “maternal nurturing” side, which proved, to the psychologist, that he really is “a girl in a boys body”. This was good enough for the well-educated, trendy parents who agreed with the “expert.” There is no limit to the stupidity embraced by those trying to prove their superior intelligence.
Wow.
Sadly, this is beginning to shed light on the parents in places like Canaan and Carthage who willingly gave up their children to be sacrificed to demons.
Yes. Such parents are pagans. They believe the way to salvation, truth, and life lies in the deadly sacrificial offering of their offspring to lifelong psychological and bodily mutilation.
You are being generous to the motives of these pagan parents. The advantages they seek, now as they did then, are usually much less than “salvation, truth, and life”.
How sad, that love for an animal/pet could be used to label someone homosexual or trans. My father grew up on a farm, and when one of the dairy cattle died, his family mourned (all the cows had names and personalities!). My dad loved his cats, and my mother told me once (when they were older) that she found him sobbing and when she asked why, he sobbed, “My cat got run over!” My brother is the same way–loves his cats and mourns when they die. God gave Adam the job of caring for the animals in the Garden of Eden! AND…it is a stereotype to think that all gay men love animals–some do…and some definitely do NOT!–just like straight people have different preferences when it comes to animals.
Honestly, it’s the sort of thing that could only be done by someone with very limited familiarity with real boys and men … or by someone who had no interest in the truth.
My goodness. I have every reason to believe this happened, and that your account is accurate. Can you give some identifying information about the show: Name of the show, when it aired, etc.? I could try to look it up, but as you know, there’s a lot of this sort of detritus on PBS, and it would take a lot of sifting to find the piece you reference.
First, I’m in total agreement with all who expressed sentiments about the appropriateness of men having compassion for the innocent creatures. I do too. My point in my anecdote was to note the elitist vanity of an “expert” doing harm from a ridiculous observation. Human vanity increases as religious practice declines.
Regarding the broadcast, I wish I could help more. It’s based on a memory of a half-watched program on a PBS special, which I did not view to the end once my disgust crossed my blood pressure threshold. I vaguely remember it was about four or five years ago, maybe during what they call “pride month” in June, and it was when trans issues were just gaining momentum. I live in NYC, so the local network is WNET, generally more liberal. I believe they might archive their old broadcast schedules.
Anyone with gender dysphoria has deep psychological wounds, which they sadly often transform into physical wounds by chopping off healthy body parts. You can’t treat a software problem with a hardware solution.
You *really* can’t solve a software problem by taking a sledgehammer to the hardware.
The basic salve for these disorders – whether it’s of the trans variety or the homosexual kind is…Truth. You never help anyone by lying to them. Of course, Truth must be always leavened with Love.
Sexual mutilation of the human body is one of the more diabolic manifestations of evil, largely imposed on the young and vulnerable by monsters with medical and psychiatric degrees. And government under this administration deem it compassionate medical care. Assume the authority to seize children from parents. Proclaim the idolatrous freedom of diversity. A cauldron awaits them at Judgment.
I heard Calvin Robinson describe those who prey on the young in these ways as “Millstone People.”
Indeed mrscracker. In our day the target for the worst sins are children. It’s difficult not to be angered and yet retain focus on praying for conversions. Although it was Christ who referred to the millstone, that’s what he desires of us. I had to look up Calvin Robinson and then remind myself of the Old Catholics in Britain. They’re, or rather perceive themselves as more Catholic than the Pope.
There is more than a little irony that many of the same people who say they “follow the science” and disbelieve religious claims are still willing to claim that a female soul is somehow trapped in a male body (or vice versa).
I have always been concerned with the spiritual, mental and physical health of transgender teens. Can we really “recover” them with our current interventions? Are the parents and doctors vocal? I ask…
Are we lovingly and properly labeling adolescent transgenders? Can they be truly included in the LGBQ ideology? How can they be identified to apply “counciling”? And, what is the success/failure rate afer intervention is completed?
I am still conflated on the drastic efforts to “make them whole”. I ask, how would an otherwise healthy teen subject themselves to major surgery and toxic hormone substances with urgency? Were they born that way?
We must ask for Jesus’ guidance.
Perhaps we could begin helping them by choosing not use Newspeak terminology like “transgender teens.” Verbal engineering precedes every social delusion.
The few people with gender dysphoria I have heard of with a discernible cause involved growing up either with their opposite-sex siblings being showered with affection and attention while they were ignored, or with a very unstable and abusive home, or having a parent (or 2) that really wanted a transgender child for the bragging rights and therefore pressured them into it at an early age. The exceptions to that are where the abuse/brainwashing was done at school instead of at home.
I suspect that some form of physical, sexual, or emotional abuse or neglect will account for all or nearly all with gender dysphoria. Recovering from that requires recognizing the abuse and neglect and lies as such, rejecting the lies and evil, forgiving the perpetrators, recovering and healing, and then repeating that process as the layers get peeled back, as many times as it takes.
Deep wounds.
Who would have expected otherwise?
Mental illness of either biological or sociological origin is treated through psychological therapy and hopefully with pastoral care. That does not include affirmation to any degree of the disorder. It is about correcting the disorder.
The victims of ‘trans’ ‘man-boy-lover’ couples have deep wounds as well. A friend of mine had a brother raped by a ‘trans’ ‘man-boy-lover’ Boy scout leader. Six of the twelve boys molested committed suicide before adulthood. Three boys survived to adulthood but were total emotional disasters and could not function in life to get jobs, married or live away from caretakers. The other three seemed to have normal lives from the outside, but no one knows for sure what kind of emotional burden they carry.
Pope Francis, “Asked about the synod assembly’s discussion of homosexuality, Pope Francis said: “When I say ‘everyone, everyone, everyone,’ [I’m speaking about] people. The Church receives people. Everyone. And it does not ask how you are. Then, inside, everyone grows, but from a Christian belonging.”
“One central critique: that the Pope’s focus was not on same-sex unions, but instead on same-sex-attracted persons who may be in some kind of same-sex relationship.”
https://www.ncregister.com/news/pope-s-directive-on-same-sex-blessings-emphasizes-persons-not-unions-theologians-say?
“German Bishop Must Face Vatican Investigation, Abuse Council Demands
“we still perceive in the actions of Bishop Bode a more perpetrator-oriented than victim-oriented attitude,” the victims’ advisory council said on Monday.”
“Several prominent German prelates have been accused of mishandling cases of sexual abuse. They include Synodal Way initiator Cardinal Reinhard Marx, Synodal Way president Bishop Georg Bätzing — the successor to Marx as president of the bishops’ conference — and Hamburg’s Archbishop Heße. All of them have so far remained in office.”
https://www.ncregister.com/cna/german-bishop-must-face-vatican-investigation-abuse-council-demands?
‘Mankind will not have peace untill it turns WITH TRUST to My mercy ‘ -https://www.thedivinemercy.org/articles/message-mercy-diary-st-faustina –
Words of our Lord to the St., in relation of need to celebrate The Feast of Mercy and related devotion . Providential too that the ministry is by the Marians of The Immaculate Concecption . Hatred / contempt / envy about the body – said to have been at root of the rebellion of the fallen angels , whose work is manifest amidst us, as all the evils against life and sanctity of marriage etc :, which likely add to the wounds in other realms .
Lord as The Mercy of The Father , The Mother as the Mercy of The Lord, thus The Church too as mercy manifest – reason the Holy Father has seen the need for much tenderness and compassion in our times , so that the wounded are helped to overcome the deeply ingrained sense of unworthiness as lack of trust .
The role of The Mother, to help bring that trust, in loving her – thus loving the Holy Trinity and all in Them , by having such an intention in daily life, renewing same often through the day, to thus grow in the exchange of love , to help trust that one is loved by her, thus able to love oneself ( and others ) with her love !
One such publication that can be helpful –
https://benedictinesofdivinewill.org/uploads/3/4/3/2/34324596/mary_in_dw.pdf
Invoking the mystical ‘tears of blood ‘ that manifest the grieving of the Holy Spirit as sins of pride and presumption, its rebellions,slavery under powers of evil – those tears to be invoked often unto all such wounds of oneself and others , to be set free from the bitterness, despair and all .
The threats by secular powers against explicit mention of the nature of these issues could be somewhat of a blessing in disguise – The Church can bring all these areas – exorcism ministry included , to ‘walk together ‘ -to invite all the wounded which any more would be all families , to have the ‘daily bread ‘ – for prevention as well as remedy . FIAT !
Hey, all you backwardist complainers above. It’s not about natural law, or even common sense or evidence; it’s about marketable flim-flam:
In the 1980s and 90s clericalists, tutored by “experts” in psychiatry, believed that so-called pedophiles could be harmonized into a cure by a geographic fix—musical chairs within the diocese (and 85% were homosexuals, the John Jay Report, 2002);
Now, today, medical experts sing their same ol’ tune—this time harmonizing another sexually related distress, with a hormone fix and now physiological mutilation (case studies point instead to persistent and deeper wounds).
But, hey, Cardinal Fernandez is poised to expose gender theory—but why not synod theory? The paradigm shift away from the “real” Council of the Documents to the musical chairs of first the “virtual” council, and then synodal roundtables, then the experts, and now the study groups!
With synod theory, adults in the room have exposed the marketing and word-game fix in the capstone Fiducia Supplicans—all of the (synodal!) Eastern Orthodox Churches and, in the West, Hungary, Poland, Kazakhstan, Peru, all of continental Africa, and parts of Argentina, France, Spain, and so on, including the former Prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
And to think that synods did work well in the past, and might again. Why is that? But, hey, no “backwardist” glances; ever forward!