Ven. Fulton Sheen, America’s Archbishop

Today is the anniversary of the 1895 birth of a great American who, after World War II, led a fervent religious revival in America: the late Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen.

Sheen has yet to be made a saint, though he was declared a venerable, one of the steps in the process to canonization. While he made mistakes and had some flawed views (particularly economically), like any other human, he combined true sanctity with personal charisma, a fighting spirit with a captivating wit, a talent for persuasive words with a strict orthodoxy, and a passionate love of the Church with strong patriotism to America and opposition to Communism. He certainly captured the minds and hearts of Americans—he won an Emmy Award for “Most Outstanding Personality” because of his hugely popular show. Though he sometimes failed, though he was persecuted by his superiors, Sheen’s preaching and writing, his TV shows and his books, were not only excellent in his day but just as inspiring and applicable in ours.

You can read a biography of Fulton Sheen here. I would like to share a few of his quotes, and you can watch one of Sheen’s TV episodes below:

“If you don’t behave as you believe, you will end by believing as you behave.”

“As men love God, they will also love their country.”

“It behooves us all to take pride in the words that Washington spoke at Valley Forge: Put only Americans on guard tonight.”

“The refusal to take sides on great moral issues is itself a decision. It is a silent acquiescence to evil. The Tragedy of our time is that those who still believe in honesty lack fire and conviction, while those who believe in dishonesty are full of passionate conviction.”

“Moral principles do not depend on a majority vote. Wrong is wrong, even if everybody is wrong. Right is right, even if nobody is right.”

“Communism is the final logic of the dehumanization of man. The industrial civilization of the Western world has no intent to destroy man's freedom or to deny his personality. But Communism does. Denying God, it reduces man to a robot.”

“There are not one hundred people in the United States who hate The Catholic Church, but there are millions who hate what they wrongly perceive the Catholic Church to be.”

“A person is free on the inside because he can call his soul his own; he is free on the outside because he can call property his own. Internal freedom is based upon the fact that ‘I am;’ external freedom is based on the fact that ‘I have.’”

“The Sermon on the Mount is so much at variance with all that our world holds dear that the world will crucify anyone who tries to live up to its values. Because Christ preached them, He had to die. Calvary was the price He paid for the Sermon on the Mount. Only mediocrity survives. Those who call black black, and white white, are sentenced for intolerance. Only the grays live…The Beatitudes cannot be taken alone: they are not ideals; they are hard facts and realities inseparable from the Cross of Calvary...[We must] stop mouthing freedom until we have justice, truth and love of God in our hearts as the condition of freedom.”

“The main problem with atheism is that it breathes in the same air as it breathes out.”

“To all the phonies and fakers who would say that they could not join the Church because His Church was not holy enough, He would ask, ‘How holy must the Church be before you will enter into it?’ If the Church were as holy as they wanted it to be, they would never be allowed into it!”

“When He [Christ] filled their stomachs, He satisfied their sense of social justice. That was the kind of king they wanted, a bread king...But Our Lord would have no kingship based on the economics of plenty.”

“America, it is said, is suffering from intolerance—it is not. It is suffering from tolerance…Our country is not nearly so overrun by the bigoted as it is overrun with the broadminded.”

“Tolerance is an attitude of reasoned patience toward evil.”

“As the great patriot of all ages, He [Jesus] looked beyond His own suffering and fixed His eye on the city that rejected Love.”

“Broadmindedness, when it means indifference to right and wrong, eventually ends in a hatred of what is right.”