The lede’s a slight exaggeration – maybe. I don’t know that they’ll be broadcasting Mass from the outrageous former protestant Crystal Cathedral of the Diocese of Orange, CA, but they will make their left coast offices on the campus, which seems a bit of an endorsement to me:
Christ Cathedral will be the site of the first West Coast broadcast studio for the largest religious media network in the world, with construction underway in the iconic Tower of Hope for the Eternal World Television Network.
EWTN, which transmits Catholic programming 24 hours a day available to 230 million-plus homes in 140 countries, has long sought a West Coast presence, and after about a year of discussions, has formed a partnership with the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange.
The initial lease will last 10 years, said Michael P. Warsaw, the chairman of the board and CEO for the television network. The parties, though, have not yet settled on a price, though it should be “nominal,” said diocese spokesman Ryan Lilyengren.
“This is a great opportunity for us to have access to people and organizations on the West Coast,” Warsaw said. “As we learned about the diocese’s vision, it became evident that (Christ Cathedral) would be a great location.”
Do you think Mother Angelica signed off on this? I doubt it.
Such an interesting choice – an increasingly neo-Catholic network chooses to “Catholicize” the former grounds of a protestant TV ministry. By so doing they seem to give at least tacit support to the use of the wholly inappropriate glass menagerie as a Catholic Cathedral.
I am certain in their minds this made just absolutely perfect sense. Somehow, this really evokes the whole turn the network has made in the past 8 or 10 years to me.
Am I the only one that finds this a very strange, if not a very poor, choice?