Originally ordained a priest of the Peoria (Illinois) Diocese in 1919, Sheen eventually went on to teach theology and philosophy from 1928 to 1950 at Washington, D.C.'s Catholic University. Before that, after finishing his studies at that same Catholic University, he had earned his Ph.D. at the Catholic University of Louvain (now Leuven) in Belgium in 1923. His doctoral dissertation was "The Spirit of Contemporary Philosophy and the Finite God". Sheen became the first American to win the Cardinal Mercier Prize for international Philosophy.
From 1930 to 1950, he hosted a night-time radio program The Catholic Hour on NBC. His fame skyrocketed after he moved to television in 1952, where he hosted Life Is Worth Living until 1957. The program featured Bishop Sheen speaking extemporaneously before a live audience and using a blackboard. The show was in primetime and attracted a mass audience - competing with "Mr. Television" Milton Berle! (My parents watched Milton Berle, not Bishop Sheen) Finally from 1961 to 1968, he hosted the syndicated The Fulton Sheen Program. Sheen won an Emmy Award for Most Outstanding Television Personality, and was featured on the cover of Time.
As a radio and TV personality, Sheen was noted for his anti-communism (a commonplace Catholic position at the time). In the 1960s, however, he also spoke out against the Vietnam War, which cost him considerably in popularity. Along with communism, he also attacked Freudian psychoanalysis for what he saw as its materialistic premises and was a strong critic of modern therapeutic culture.
In 1950, Sheen became the National Director of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith. During his 16 years as the Propagation's director, Sheen raised millions of dollars for missionary efforts worldwide. (He also donated $10 million that he earned from his later television programs.) In 1951, Pope Pius XII appointed Sheen as an Auxiliary Bishop for New York, an office he held until 1966, when he was made Bishop of Rochester. His tenure there was challenging, and he resigned Rochester in 1969 and was made Titular Archbishop of Newport (Wales).
In the late 1950s, the U.S. government donated millions of dollars' worth of powdered milk to the New York Archdiocese. Francis Cardinal Spellman, New York's powerful archbishop from 1939 through 1967, donated that milk to Sheen's Society for the Propagation of the Faith to distribute to the poor of the world. On at least one occasion, however, Spellman demanded that Sheen pay the Archdiocese for the donated milk. Sheen refused and took his case directly to the Pope. Supposedly, Spellman later confronted Sheen and and promised to "get even" with him. Besides being pressured to leave television, Spellman famously canceled Sheen's annual Good Friday sermons at Saint Patrick's Cathedral, and Sheen found himself unwelcome in many New York churches, enduring a true trial and crucible of suffering at the hands of fellow churchmen. Sheen himself humbly never talked about his quarrel with Spellman.
Although my family did not watch Bishop Sheen in the 1950s, I certainly heard plenty about him and eventually saw some of his later shows. I vividly remember his TV programs on the occasion of the death of the Pope and the election of his successor. As a child, I remember reading a book, a commentary on the Mass, which featured photos of Sheen celebrating Mass in his private chapel. I only finally heard him in person, late in his life, when he came to preach at the ecumenical Sunday service in the Princeton University chapel. His impact on the U.S. Church in his time had been enormous. He can be considered one of the first televangelists and certainly pioneered the Catholic Church's engagement with modern media as a vehicle for evangelization and cultural efficacy. When Pope Saint John Paul II embraced him at Saint Patrick's Cathedral just months before his death, the Pope assured him that he had written and spoken well of the Lord and was a true son of the Church.
His cause for canonization was delayed by an unseemly tussle between the Archdiocese of New York and the Diocese of Peoria about possession of Sheen's body, which was originally interred in Saint Patrick's Cathedral in 1979. In 2016, the New York State Supreme Court ordered Sheen disinterred and returned to Peoria, a ruling reaffirmed by the Appellate Division in 2018. This enabled Peoria to continue pursuing Sheen's Cause, culminating finally in his long awaited beatification today.
On the occasion of the canonization of a 16th-century Spanish Augustinian saint, the then Augustinian Prior General, Robert F. Prevost (Pope Leo XIV), said: "On canonizing a saint, the Church does not only wish to give us a reason for joy and celebration; she wishes above all to praise the Lord, to recognize the working of his grace in the Saint, and to propose to everyone in him a model of life and of Christian commitment."
Blessed Fulton Sheen, outstanding preacher of God's word in the modern world, pray for us!
No comments:
Post a Comment