Role Model Venerable Fulton Sheen

Role Model: Venerable Fulton Sheen
In pursuit of the truth - cinops be gone - Wed., Dec. 19, 2012

Excerpts from A Journey to Sainthood, The Living Legacy of Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, by the Mindszenty Report, December 2012 - Vol. LIV-No. 12 - BBPROF@sbcglobal.net

The Face of the Church: A few generations ago Fulton J. Sheen was the face of the Church in America for millions of Catholics…. According to Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan of New York City, the common theme that emanated in all of his preaching, writing, and speaking was that Jesus Christ was the way to heaven, the truth about how to get there, the life we hope to share for all eternity.

Sheen was born on May 8, 1895 in El Paso, Illinois, the oldest of four sons of Newton and Delia…. After his ordination in the Diocese of Peoria in 1919, he earned the prestigious Cardinal Mercier Prize for International Philosophy in 1923. This led to his appointment to teach theology and philosophy at Catholic University, a position he held from 1926 through 1950.… In 1950 Spellman named him to direct the Society for the Propagation of the Faith in the United States…

Uncle Fultie: Sheen published the first of his 73 books in 1925... It was from the secular pulpit of mass communications that he did the most for the salvation of souls. In 1928 Sheen began a weekly Sunday night radio broadcast, The Catholic Hour. He quickly became the program’s most popular preacher… [Among three different religious programs, Bishop Sheen’s segment, aptly called “Life is Worth Living,” was a sensation.] Monsignor Sheen simply discussed the moral issues of the times in front of a live audience without script or cue cards. Above all it was Sheen’s engaging smile, bright eyes and profound wit that made him a media icon… Sheen topics scanned the Catholic landscape from Freudian psychiatry to the Irish sense of humor and the evils of communism.

A New Messianism: Sheen recognized world communism as the greatest threat to Christianity. He constantly used his intellect and the power of his voice to combat it in his books and broadcast media… Sheen believed that atheism was not just an esoteric philosophy preached by Ivy League professors but was a universal philosophy that had evolved into a New Messianism that threatened to cover the face of the earth….

Brides of the State: Bishop Sheen considered women the barometers of Western Civilization. As mothers, teachers and nurtures they were the transmitters of society’s culture…. Their modern transformation from wives and mothers to brides of the state accelerated in America under President Lyndon Johnson’s welfare reforms which severely weakened the American family.

Sheen believed that advocates of equal rights for women saw equality in purely mathematical terms- e.g., access to the same jobs, pay and sexual freedoms as men. This contradicted Christians, which stressed equality only in a proportioned sense. Female mathematical equality effectively killed chivalrous respect and reduced women to little more than the instrument of man’s sexual pleasure.

The World’s First Love: Sheen had a lifelong devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary whom he referred to as the woman I love. Mary was the pinnacle of womanhood in her pure sacrifice and devotion to her family. Sheen’s love for the Blessed Mother was fully revealed in his book The World’s First Love. To Sheen Mary was the true inspiration of womanhood….

Soul Peace: Bishop Sheen realized as a young priest that mankind was in a perennial state of agitation…. Sheen stressed that in all of modern psychology there is nothing written on frustration, fears and anxieties which can even faintly compare in depth or breadth with St. Thomas’s treatise on the Passions, St. Augustine’s Confessions, or Bossuet’s treatise on Concupiscence. Sheen knew that there could never world peace unless there was soul peace. …

The Hound of Heaven: Sheen was well-known for his celebrity converts…. Columnist Heywood Broun, doctrinaire communists Elizabeth Bentley, Bella Dodd and Louis Budenz, Henry Ford II, Claire Booth Luce, and comedian Jackie Gleason… Sheen’s daily one hour devotion to the Blessed Sacrament was a ritual he observed since his ordination….                                                                                                              George H. Kubeck - Sheen would have ripped apart today’s feeling basis of liberal progressivism.