Fulton Sheen Three Drunks Worth Knowing

now some drunks and alcoholics worth knowing we're going to give tree just part of their stories at the beginning because obviously the whole point of this telecast is to suggest to cure we have two drunkards in one alcoholic torpor one was rich one drunkard was in Dublin the other drunkard was in London and the alcoholic was in New York the poor drunken in Dublin was Matt Talbot Matt quit school and he was 13 and he started working for a wine merchant that did bottling for Guinness Stout have you ever seen any of the advertisements of Guinness Stout in England the cleverest advertisements in the world last summer they had the whole length of a London bus covered with a bottle of Guinness Stout and then underneath it ran the label I ran the the novus to read this label stand buffs on em Guinness for strength just like in this country I think perhaps the the finest advertising there is is Harry and Bert huh see everybody knows Harry and Bert I think that represents the highest in advertising as the lowest in advertising is probably cigarette never an idea just singing in a mirror of mere repetition an onion smells like an onion ought to smell but but a we have to get back to math and that was Matt learned to drape when he was 13 why did they say you'll have to learn to dream as if it were metaphysics or archeology but he learned to drink at 13 and his father punished him then finally I had him change his jobs he became a bricklayer and then later on went into the lumber business but Matt was a drunkard he liked the stuff he couldn't stop even if he wanted to he used to get his pay envelope take it in to the public house and then have it all drugged by a Monday or Tuesday one time he was in the saloon and and the Fiddler's came in when the Fiddler's back was turned Matt white out sold the fiddle came back with the money treated the fiddler two round after round of break the fiddler was having a great time until he found that it was all at his own expense and the other drunkard was from London his name believe it or not really and truly was Percival Percival was lived in a dive he lived also on a kind of a government Dole never worked and he used to get money by selling his shoes as he put it he said I I would sell my shoes at the door of the peddler the public house in order to get a drink he would sell his shirt and I said to him I said Percy how how many shoes and church did you ever sell in one night well he said I would sell my shoes and shirt and a saloon then go out and people would see me barefooted without a shirt and he said they'd buy me a pair of shoes or they'd give me a pair of shoes he said to go to the next saloon sell it he sold six one night and the other one was an alcoholic she was rich she lived here in New York and her husband could never tell how in heaven's name she got her liquor she told me how she got she had a big apartment and she had one room of the apartment that was a museum she was very fond of coloured glass glass bottles but real colored glass and she used to hire a servant at night to fill all of these bottles with liquor then 'she would gently walk from one room of the apartment to the other in the morning she would step on a chair drain the upper glasses first and then in the evening she would naturally drain the lower ones the husband never found out how she became an alcoholic well those are our three cases now for cures they were all cured point number one regardless of how compulsive may be the desire for drink regardless of how deep-seated the habit be there is still left in every drunkard an alcoholic an area of freedom no drunken man has ever like a drunken piece the Assumption today very often is that a drunken or alcoholic either one very let this stand for his head these were his ears here and he's a happy one now almost everyone says that he has no freedom at all he's just impaled the Greek he's under compulsion no that is not true there still remains an area of freedom now when you use ordinary soul there's always some scum that is left like that but you watch my angel cleans this off here he uses x47 our secret formula or reply to raise to the ninth power of CP door front tells the Kabbalistic convolution to the metaphoric and a bit they are caller re and you'll see how clean is it but what I meant to indicate here is that there is some area of freedom in every alcoholic and every drunkard the evidence were first of all or have to be freedom to start certainly we have temptations we have propensity but we have to act upon those by an act of will under decision and the choice then that choice can become habit when repeated and then finally one does become enslaved the scripture says so that a man will eventually say to to alcohol I take thee until death do us part for better or for worse for richer for poorer but there's freedom when one begins and even after one that's become either a drunkard or an alcoholic there still is freedom as is proven first of all but the fact that when one recovers from about with alcohol he will generally debate with himself before starting again he would say now I told my wife I would not drink anymore or I took a pledge or I hate to go back in the hospital with another case of DTS that's a free man with the baby then as he's recovering from alcohol you have remorse whenever has remorse for that for which one is not responsible then they will give all manner of excuses example well my wife doesn't understand me business is bad they give excuses because they recognize some kind of guilt and there's a recognition of guilt because there is some kind of Liberty and here's another evidence of the fact that there's some kind of freedom there and that there it's not just a disease like diabetes or a speck in the eye they'll never be cured we start without assumption just look at the exo Kalka holics i do not believe that there's a single class of men in the world we're more anxious to stand before their fellow man and parade or alcoholism they will they will affirm that they were down in the gutter then they will say see what I am now they parade themselves before others as an example of sobriety and temperance well would they do that if they recovered from a disease like tuberculosis here they want everyone to praise them or else they want everyone to emulate them but if they want everyone to praise them should they not be blamed for the condition into which they originally placed themselves there has to be freedom somewhere either for praise or her blames so there is an area of freedom point number two one must will to recover from alcohol it is not just enough to what to recover it is not enough to wish to recover in that tiny little area of freedom a man still has a little determination self-determination some really do not want to recover because they do not want to put forth the effort when our Blessed Lord came to the paralyzed man he said wilt thou be made whole not do you wish but is there a will whatever the cost you remember when Saint Agustin was Boris convergent he was living a life of sin he said dear Lord I want to be better not now but a little later on he had the wish but not the will the pledge is not to be sneered at the pledge is to induce an alcoholic to make an act of will and to witness it before God now every one of the cases that I mentioned they had to make an act of will not Talbot had to make it and this is how his happened talk about louse lost weekend's poor Pat didn't have Matt didn't have lost weekends he had lost weeks and he didn't work this particular week and he needed a drink Saturday and he went down to Pemberton's because the boys were coming out all of his fellow workman and he had treated them for years then they passed him by still mad low back good evening Matt and they let him go by not one of them bought for Matt a drink he went home and his mother says Matt Saturday home early sober he's his mother I'm going to take the pledge he says Matt don't take the place unless you're going to keep it he said I'm will to take that plate he took it he took it only for three months but he took it now my friend Percival he was out in a park bench at Hyde Park he was just getting over from solarium treatments and he said to himself I'm just a devil I will to become a saint I proceeded to say but some more effort was required but at any rate there was the will and this alcoholic woman when she came to me I said listen you love alcohol more than you love anything else in all the world you'll never get rid of alcohol and did you find something not to love more can it push out alcoholism you've got to crowd it out by bringing in another affection and expulse of affection so I spoke to her for an hour and a half on the love of law our Lord particularly as crucifixion I said now it's up to you to decide whether or not you love the Lord more than you love alcohol she made an act of will but that is nothing yet though there is an area of freedom though in act to the will is necessary there must always for the cure of a drunkard or an alcoholic there must always be the intervention of an outside and divine power and strength the eye does not supply its own light the year does not supply its own harmony nor the stomach its own food and it's easy pramantha go downward he just merely needs to let himself go but to pull himself up he needs some outside strength and that comes from God and the moment that there is the conjunction of this act of will along with this power which is gratis and therefore called grace then begins the recovery but with a certain condition which we will mention if for example I had a ball in my hand and I rolled it across the stage threw it across the stage it would go in a straight line unless it were diverted by a superior power now an alcoholic is going in the direction of complete dereliction unless there's a superior power that diverts him when our vested Lord therefore came to the paralyzed man who for thirty-eight years had been on his bed our Lord said to him arise take up thy bed and walk riot how could he your eyes after he had said wilt thou be made whole that was the trouble with him he could not arise but it made sense because our Blessed Lord was saying love and by yourself you cannot but with the power that I give you you can arise take up thy bed no relapse no going back to this and walk depend on yourself no outside support this power will come to all men but this is what is often forgotten in the Cure when one is addicted to any vice and particularly this the Cure never comes without passing through and additional crises in which it would seem that there is a summary of all the temptations of the past life and all of the temptations that one would have even to the crack of doom that was the case with Matt the week after Matt took the pledge he said to his mother I can't stand this anymore he went down to the saloon and they all offered him a drink he almost dropped dead when he ordered seltzer water did you ever hear what WC Fields once said to when he was asked if he wanted soda water in his alcohol he said I can't stand the noise [Music] and Matt ran out of the saloon and he was impelled to go back and that said that he never had a passion for alcohol he's he did that night and now a church was closed he went and threw himself on a church step and he prayed there for four hours and finally it passed he never was tempted to gain impact used to get up at two o'clock in the morning and pray slept on a wooden bed did all manner of penances when he died at the age of 69 the Irish independent of Dublin said an unknown man dropped dead on Granby Street yesterday everybody did they know whose nose that unknown man Matt Talbot the one day will be the patron saint of all alcoholics but he passed through the crises and so it with Percy he went into Church and he couldn't stand it anymore he ran down the middle aisle then he said he felt as if he were tearing out his own heart as he turned around and knelt for a blessing and this alcoholic woman told me that she found some alcohol in one of the bottles in her museum room and she said she wanted that more than she ever wanted anything else in all her life and she was about to take it and she heard a voice saying you love this more than me and she struggled with it and prayed and fought she spent the last rest of her life taking care of drunkards not just alcoholics the poorest of God's poor there are no hopeless cases in any order and any of you and he stealing what makes for hopelessness is telling people that they're under an impulsion and they have no responsibility for the cure and that they can do nothing they can do something every human being in the world is an altar and on that altar of self not goats and bullocks and cheaper sacrificed but our vices and our can Koopa senses our excesses and our indulgences in our love of alcohol all of these are immolated on that altar the man begins to be free when he knows how to make that immolation excuse me I was looking at the clock to see if I had died and all the alcoholics in the world is worth remembering that atonement had to be made for alcoholism because it is a sin there is responsibility and he'll came in this earth to redeem the world took upon himself the sins of the alcoholic and for all of their excesses he uttered from the cross the words I I first to be thirsted for by the drunkards and by the alcoholics who hear my words if any man thirsts let him come to me and drink [Applause]

Channel: Robert Landry

Views: 114,644

Rating: 4.8725023 out of 5

Keywords: Bishop Fulton J. Sheen; 3 Drunks

Id: o2V7oQBGOfc

Length: 20min 19sec (1219 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 15 2016