The Good Old Days!

The Good Old Days!
Friday, Oct. 12, 2007
The following are excerpts from America’s Bishop, The Life and Times of Fulton J. Sheen, by Thomas C. Reeves, Encounter Books, San Francisco, 2001. This book can be checked out in the Orange County Libraries.

In 1943 there were 2 million pupils in 8,000 schools. 16,838 men were in Catholic seminaries. 9 million people subscribed to 333 Catholic newspapers. More than 100 publishing houses were linked with Catholic Press Association. There were 726 Catholic hospitals. Catholic reported about 86,000 converts yearly.

In Philadelphia churches, for instance, especially those with second and third generations, attendance at Mass hovered around 90%. Close to ¾ of Catholic voters supported Franklin Roosevelt in 1936, about 70% in 1940 and 2/3 in 1944.
In July 1948, Time magazine reported: The priesthood had grown to 41,747 and Catholic colleges had more than doubled their enrollment in two years. The number of converts was recording breaking 115,214.

In 1948, the administration board of the National Catholic Welfare Conference, in the name of all the American bishops published a document criticizing both Supreme Court decisions (Everson v. Board of Education in 1947, and McCullom v. Board of Education 1948) for adopting an “entirely novel… interpretation of the first amendment, one that would endanger our “original American tradition” of “free cooperation between government and religious bodies – cooperation involving no special privileges to any group. Many liberal intellectuals were outraged by the Church’s prosperity during this period.

Convert Gretta Palmer, a prominent freelance journalist in 1947 said, “I discovered that historically speaking people seem to leave the Church because they want forbidden things, never because they want a deeper truth….nobody ever left the church because the best in him could not find fulfillment there.”

Preface to Religion, given to converts, is one of Bishop Fulton Sheen’s most impressive books.
“If you want to know about God, there is only one way to do it: get down on your knees.
Atheism, nine times out of ten, is born from the womb of a bad conscience. Disbelief is born of sin, not of reason.
If you do not worship God, you worship something, and nine out ten times it will be yourself.
Much of modern education is merely a rationalization of evil. It makes clever devils instead of stupid devils. The world is not in a muddle because of the stupidity of the intellect, but because of perversity of the will. We know enough: it is our choices that are wrong.
Have you noticed that as men love faith in God, they become selfish, immoral and cruel? On a cosmic scale, as religion decreases, tyranny increases: as men lose faith in Divinity, they lose faith in humanity. Where God is outlawed, there man is subjugated.” 184

Today, always look at the big picture. The Catholic-in-only-politicians, the CINOPS and other scandals have dire consequences. They have muzzled but not smothered Pope John Paul II great springtime for Christianity. Let us, you the laity take a look at his 1998 ad Limina Addresses to the Bishops of the United States.
George H. Kubeck, Duplicate and or translate in Spanish. www.cinopsbegone.blogspost.com for St. Francis of Assisi, Thurs. Oct. 11/07