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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If a person can get a Declaration of Nullity for the Sacrament of Marriage, it seems like one should be able to apply for a Declaration of Nullity for the other Sacraments as well.
Well, if there was something critical lacking at the time of the Baptism I suppose it wouldn’t be valid either.
mrscracker:
That’s what conditional Baptisms are for: To rectify invalid Baptisms, such as the ones performed by that priest in Arizona.
Any valid baptism cannot be nullified or rescinded in any circumstance, no matter whether the person declares themself no longer a Catholic, or leaves the Church for the rest of his/her life.
Once a baptized Catholic, always a baptized Catholic.
Whichvi believe to be anti biblical and foolish….many times jesus used parables to point that out….you can walk away from the faith as an adult, voiding your baptism as a mark of conversion…so get baptized as an infant, grow up doing whatever you please in opposition to the teachings of the church and still go to heaven….very delusional….
The Sacraments leave an indelible character upon the soul. Assuming they were valid.
I was baptised at 13 years old, and obviously, I know far more now, and understand far more now, then I did at the time. I got baptised with my friend. It was after confirmation classes were completed for the year (this was a Methodist Church) but before the confirmation ceremony (which I did not attend because we were out of town). I stopped going to church after that.
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Now, really, honestly, if I went to a marriage tribunal with that kind of mentality about my marriage (I don’t mean because I was 13, just all the other events around the baptism–the circumstances), pretty sure I could obtain a Declaration of Nullity.
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So a baby is baptised, and that’s the last time the child ever goes to Church because the parents show up just long enough to get the child baptised, but aren’t interested in the faith much. I remember reading John Hardon, SJ said that baptising a baby who would not be raised in the faith can actually be detrimental.
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NGL, I’ve literally wondered about getting my Confirmation declared Null
Baptism imparts an indelible character. You cannot undo Baptism. You can remove names from State rolls where the State has insinuated itself into the practice of religion, but the State does not inform Ctholic theology.
MrsHess:
An annulment is something that only pertains to the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony/Holy Mystery of Crowning.
It does NOT seem like one should should be able to apply for a Declaration of Nullity for the other Sacraments as well. A priest can be defrocked, and marriage can be granted an annulment in certain circumstances. Once you are baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and Holy Spirit, you are a Catholic for the rest of your life, whether or not you declare yourself to be debaptized, or declare yourself as no longer a Catholic
You can leave the Church for the remainder of your life, but those 3 Sacraments of Initiation of Baptism, Confirmation, (Chrismation) and Holy Eucharist remain with you and your soul as long as you live.
Once a Catholic, always a Catholic.
Perhaps a better choice of words, but overall, welcome to dystopia. After-the-fact debaptizing sounds a lot like after-the-fact abortion undoing pregnancy.
And, while they’re at it, the 500 Belgians might explain for us why the transgender movement should not remind us of the 1978 sci-fi horror movie, “The Body Snatchers.”
For once, a rare moment Pope Francis is vilified for being morally on target. “The pope’s words were rejected by the university, which criticized them as betraying a deterministic and reductive attitude” (French-speaking branch of the university in Louvain).
Haughty, intellectually distorted faculty, the bane of academia worldwide, rend their garments. Not lacking in vindictiveness they add the criticism of clergy abuse to their outrage as a sort of elevation of their distorted reasoning. When was bringing an infant to birth deterministic? By what logic is describing women as nurturers of the gift of life reductionism.
Their logic is the unprincipled freedom to distort reality. They in effect hurl their disdain at Christus Pantokrator. Leuven/Louvain, among the many Catholic universities that are no longer Catholic.
The discord between Bergoglio’s words and actions is flagrant Liberalism – a sin when Catholics were at the helm of the Roman Institutions presently occupied by freemasons, their sympathisers and traitors.
The 4 maxims in Evangelii Gaudium are a composition deriving from secular thinking stressing worldly toleration. The source is not grace. The same secularist thinking is very often, inconsistent with itself; since it will at times prioritize conflict and ideas with its own part(s) while monopolizing both time and space as usefully as possible. Here we have a demonstration of it by people declaring their wish to be de-baptized; doing this in order to steal away from the Pope and the moral force of his declaration, whatever positive feeling they might now engender. The secularist thinking can’t be moored to faith; it is itself prone to produce its own jumbles while faith works in grace in season and out of season. The 4 maxims have nothing to do with evangelization and we are at a loss what is to be done for the Holy Father, or for the encyclical, about that. Except of course to pray to be faithful.
Belgium, like Holland, is the lion’s den today.
Hope Belgian Archbishop Luc Terlinden is taking lessons from Dutch Cardinal Willem Eijk.
Baptism like several other sacraments is an outward sign of an inward Grace joyfully received by an unique life and celebrated by the Divine residing in the assembled kith and kin. Trying to undo such an in-depth communitarian spiritual branding is a Herculean undertaking. Archival records may depict someone as a paper tiger, paper lion, or a paper Christian. Is that enough?