The Life and Times of Fulton J. Sheen (2002)

thomas reeves chronicles the life of the Emmy award-winner became the foremost evangelist for the Roman Catholic Church it's just over an hour I have the privilege tonight of introducing our speaker dr. Thomas C Reeves who has written this book America's Bishop the life and times of Fulton J Sheen on the subject of Bishop Sheen I have to confess to some self-consciousness because I have absolutely no memory of him whatsoever and I find it really remarkable that a Catholic priest a Catholic bishop could become as famous as Fulton sheen became he is really quite remarkable to think that a Catholic bishop would not only become a candidate for but actually win significant awards for having the most popular television program in America and that is the person about whom Thomas Reeves has written about dr. Reeves book Michael Novak has written the foul a controversial challenging and totally absorbing by absorbing biography of one of the most beloved figures of the early days of television and perhaps the most remarkable bishop in the history of the Catholic Church in America a really remarkable figure about dr. Reeves he is a historian specializing in American politics in religion he is the biographer of president Chester Arthur and Senator Joseph McCarthy his book a question of character of the life of John F Kennedy was a New York Times bestseller he is a fellow of the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute and lives with his family on the other side of the lake in Milwaukee Wisconsin please help me welcome dr. Thomas C Reeves thank you very much it's nice to be with you and to talk about a brilliant and good and scholarly and beloved man Fulton J Sheen am I getting through to the back of the room all right in 1996 I published a book called the empty church the suicide of liberal Christianity and writing it helped persuade me that I belong to the Roman Catholic Church I had an experience very much like Cardinal Newman did and in the course of that journey I read deeply in American history in order to understand the church in this country and I discovered to my shock that nothing had been done on Fulton J Sheen nothing really of any of any substance no biographies no scholarly works and I didn't understand that because when I was going up in the 1950s everybody in America knew who Fulton J Sheen was in the American history textbooks he appears if he appears at all as a sort of glib spokesman for sham religion of the 1950's he's linked with the kind of feel-good Donny Osmond a kind of America that scholars generally denigrate he's linked with Norman Vincent Peale and then his book is called peace of soul which is often cited in that Norman Vincent Peale was writing I told my wife about this about this strange omission and she said well why don't you write the book and so I did and it took two and a half years working at it full time and I experienced great joy and discovered somebody I didn't know at all and that you perhaps don't know it all either I discovered Fulton J Sheen in 1999 polls were taken in several magazines asking who the most influential American Catholics were in the 20th century and in two polls Fulton J Sheen ranked among the top five there are still many available publications of by Sheen there are tapes available EWTN runs his programming to this very day his books continue to sell as to his tracks and his tapes I once went into say Texas Church in New York and bought four hundred dollars worth he's still very much a part of our lives and yet he isn't let me explain first of all Fulton J Sheen was born in above a hardware store in El Paso Illinois and he was that his father was a relatively prosperous farmer in the is anything I can do with it his father was a relatively prosperous now it's worse if it gets any higher won't be able to see you his father was a relatively prosperous farmer in the area there were four boys in machine family they were the family was completely Irish and there were four boys born and they were given two things in life that are extraordinary first of all they were given intelligence and lots of it one of the xin boys who went into medicine tom had a photographic memory complete recall all four boys were exceptionally bright and did very well in their schooling and did well in life they were also exposed to some sort of inner desire for hard work they all worked extremely hard relatives I interviewed called it a sheen thing Fulton sheen for most of his life worked 19 hours a day seven days a week so did his brothers it was a sheen thing perhaps most important he was given the blessing of a solid Catholic family he talked about it all his life it created an instilled in him values that he never could shake he could never read out of in which he cherished deeply Fulton sheen was especially attached to the mother who gave him those penetrating eyes and spoke of her most often and of the role of women in the family and in the church the family always went to Mass they said the Rosary nightly as a family and Fulton was a server very early in his day in his life as the cathedral in Peoria Fulton sheen was a was a brilliant student which shouldn't surprise anyone because the Xin boys were known for doing well but he simply roared through the schools the local parochial schools went to high school in Peoria and went on to college at little st. viateur in Bourbonnais Illinois scoring either he was either number one or number two in in his class wherever he went he was a relatively short man he was only you only grew to be five foot seven he was never over 140 pounds he would have an operation in seminary on his ulcers that would leave him unable to eat almost anything he lived on candy and ice cream almost all of his life he couldn't be an athlete so he went into college debating and he had obvious some very obvious Benna attributes he worked hard on his subject she was prepared he had a glorious voice which I'm sure you've heard we're going to turn this program on again after I'm through here tonight and you can hear him again if you haven't heard him in a while and of course he had those penetrating eyes and became a master of the stage craft he developed this really in college as a college debater as one I know that it can help enormous Lee you lose your fear of audiences by simply living in terror for four years as you compete on the inter collegiate level he went on to college there was a sort of understanding in the family that he would be a priest he was extremely popular wherever he went in fact I had a very difficult time in interviewing scores of people for this book and in reading as much as I could I found very difficult time finding anybody who disliked him which is unusual of course somebody critical of him very little of that around he was sort of revered in college and went on to seminary in st. Paul and did extremely well then and was did so well that he was sent to the University a Catholic University of America to do graduate work there he took two degrees and went on to he wanted further to mystic studies and so they sent him to the finest Catholic school in Europe Leuven in Belgium and there he earned a PhD and excelled so extremely that he was invited the first American ever to be so invited to compete for a post a super doctorate a post doctorate degree which if you could win it after being examined by faculty members from around Europe if you could win it you would be a full professor at the great prestigious University of lova and he took up the challenge and he said he would do it and he left Diaries from this period which I found he traveled about Europe when he wasn't studying intensely he said in his autobiography that there were three levels of graduates of this program the super doctorate if you passed they would have a meal that night and they would serve water if you pass with distinction they would serve wine and if you passed with the highest honors they would serve champagne and he said in his autobiography the champagne never tasted better than it did that night he simply blew his examiners away with his knowledge and his charm and his ability to communicate he was a brilliant scholar of Thomas who it was said thought in Latin so he had a super doctorate from the most prestigious Catholic University in Europe and the offers came in one from Columbia University Oxford wanted him he had gone to Europe in the summer he became friends with GK Chesterton his book was about first book was about ready to be published he had a marvelous career ahead of it and the bishop of Peoria his bishop called him home and appointed him to be accurate in a slum Church in a rotten part of Peoria where the sweets were mud and no one could understand this and Fulton sheen did it and he became an extremely popular young curate and and while he was back in Peoria he exhibited his ability to preach it's a rare gift isn't it and he exhibited his ability to memorize the names of almost everybody he ever saw he could call anybody by name if he saw them years later he could do it wasn't Total Recall but it was close and he loved his people and he loved his priests and he worked his 19-hour day and he knocked on doors people threw things at him but he got people back into the church in short he was a success and at the end of his nine months the bishop said all right you may go now to Catholic University where I promised you years ago but I wanted to see if you would be obedient and you were now run along and soulful machine with his fancy degrees and his his growing reputation in Europe and his ability to preach and write went off to Catholic University and instead of finding himself as a full professor at Catholic University which apparently somebody's told him that he would be since he had earned that honor in Europe they made him an instructor at the very bottom of the totem pole he was paid about $1,200 a year it looked as though it would take 30 years to make full professor one of his classmates had gone with him preceded him there and he was on that slow grind up and it appeared that he would have a very difficult time making a reputation for himself he joined the faculty in 1926 and he would stay until 1950 and he became a very popular professor as you might imagine but his heart was really never at Catholic University because his talents were too great for the classroom and he found himself being summoned around the country to give sermons and retreats and pretty soon his reputation was such that he began to be invited to st. Patrick's Cathedral in New York and when this young man would come to preach five six thousand people would pack this great church and there'd be 800,000 down the street the police would cut off Fifth Avenue to hear this preacher this young professor at Catholic University and then this new medium came along called radio the first networks were about 1920 in 1928 he was invited to go on a program that the Catholic Bishops designed called the Catholic hour and he was a sensation the letters came pouring in thousands of them a day when he would ask people to send in dimes the the coffers would overflow with money and he would stay on the Catholic hour for several decades but he was growing of as a speaker getting a reputation as a most popular young priest he was a retreat leader in great demand as well he traveled tirelessly he taught two days a week and was on the road almost all of the rest of the time and even while he was on the road he wrote now I had a terrible time in writing this book to put together a bibliography of Fulton J Sheen it had been tried twice and I discovered very early that it both attempts were failures there were all kinds of things his radio talks were published some of them were turned into books there were references and bibliographies to the same title with two different publishers the same year I got sold that I traveled around I finally decided to get to make a full biography bibliography of his books alone for guests the articles there in the hundreds and there everywhere just to get the books I had to hold each one of them in my hand to make sure and read in them and see when they were published and who did them and so on finally it's an appendix in the book he wrote in his lifetime sixty-six books I was in Washington last week and in an elevator with a great American writer Catholic writer and I told him that I thought that he was probably the best competitor I know of for somebody who has written as much as Sheen had the man kind of huffed and puffed and said well it's I do have 15 books I didn't have the heart to tell him II that he was only a quarter of the way there yeah but he did he wrote 66 books a lot of repetition in these books to be sure but it's an amazing feat of persistence and insight and just sheer sweat 66 books he wrote articles he wrote pamphlets I brought along an excerpt of brief in fact it's only one sentence long from a 1948 book that Fulton sheen wrote and I give you it gives you a little bit of an of a sampling unlike what he's saying on the television programs of the way wrote this is one sentence a lot of semicolons but here you get the point listen to Fulton sheen the writer writing one of the last days when each of us his face-to-face a day that will come and he writes this there will be no attorneys to plead his case no alienists to plead that he was not in his right mind because he did wrong no Freudians to plead that he was not responsible because he had an Oedipus complex all the masks will be taken off he will step out of the ranks away from the crowd and the only voice he will hear will be the voice of conscience which will not testify in his behalf but will reveal self as he really is it's x-rays will penetrate beyond all moods and fantasies gestures and schemes and illusions no loud orchestra will play to drown his conscience no opiates will be served to make him forget or waft him off into the delightful irresponsibility of sleep no cocktails will be served at heavenly bars with angelic barmaids to make him deaf to the voice of conscience no Marxist war to defend him and say that he was determined by economic conditions under which he lived and therefore was not free no book of the month will be revved to prove that since there is no sin there can be no judgement I was really astonished as I read through those 66 books to see a man who did not appear in the textbooks who was not a glib superficial 1950s feel-good order not at all but a man of brilliance and a man of depth and a man of supernatural power that's who Fulton J Sheen was and I was delighted to discover it but he was also a human being and that meant that he had faults and in his autobiography he talks a lot about his faults his pride his willingness to to accept large fees for his talks at times to live well to build a nice house much nicer in Washington DC than his colleagues at Catholic you had but there are a couple of things he didn't say in his autobiography I discovered that I got into the personnel files of Catholic University no one had done that before and I discovered that Fulton J Sheen invented one of his doctorates and in a way I was glad because history hey geography you know the word it's the it's the story of a person as a complete saint a lot of those were written in the Middle Ages they're unbelievable and I discovered the Fulton sheen was a real human being and that he had a real scar on him that nobody else knew about and people I as I checked this I kept asking people and they couldn't believe it but it's true and it's a sin that he couldn't ever admit really the only one but he did it he did it out of vanity but he did really did it initially because he wanted to shortcut the 30 years it would take to become a full professor and he added a degree to his list of fine degrees did him no good but he was unable later in life to jettison it and it lasted the secret lasted 20 years after his death in 1948 he traveled around the world with Cardinal Spellman the most powerful prelate in America and one of the most powerful in the world he had been a protege of Pius the 12th had intimate connections with power in the Vatican who was the head of the Society for the propagation of the faith in the world the missionary arm of the Catholic Church and Spellman put him to work on this world tour he gave about 50 60 talks and was constantly exhausted by his popularity Spellman also noticed that the reporters were coming machine a bit more often than they were to him as they were traveling about and it didn't bother him so much but he noted it Sheen became Spellman's protege they became acquainted because of Sheen's oratory at st. Patrick's Cathedral and in 1950 Cardinal Spellman made and Sheen the American head of the Society for the propagation of the faith so he quit Catholic you and went to work as a fund raiser for this great missionary activity he had proved that he could he raised all kinds of money on the Catholic our by this time he published twenty twenty-five books the royalties were pouring in he was giving most of it away and this job came with an Episcopal see so he was made a bishop in 1951 the following year there was this new medium that came along called television and by late 1952 early 53 most Americans had a television set and the Catholic Church had not had had yet to have a presence on this new medium and in New York they began to think about starting it there since most of the tell of early television sets were in New York and there was a little network called Dumont it was owned by Catholics and one of Cardinal Spellman's staff suggested who was appointed to be in charge of creating some sort of television presence suggested that Fulton sheen who had done so well from the pulpit and been on the radio for so many years might be the person to do it so they rented a little place and the little Dumont station put him on on Tuesday nights at 7 o'clock opposite Milton Berle mr. television it was called a coffin corner because there was no way anybody was going to watch it and if that wasn't bad enough Frank Sinatra was on another channel at the same time and he went on and by April he was on that was February 1st 1952 and by April he was on the cover of Time magazine and that year won the Emmy Award and Frank Sinatra got off television and Milton Berle was stunned and lost a lot of his ratings to this man now imagine in a world it's very hard for those of you say under for imagine a world in which millions of Americans sit down turn on prime-time television and get a bishop in full clerical garb talking to you about life's problems turn it on today and see what you get at seven o'clock on Tuesday night people didn't think it possible that he could be suspect as successful as he was first of all there was a lot of anti-catholicism around in the early 50s you remember what Kennedy had to go through in 1960 but in the early 50s there was a lot of it around norman vincent peale and others were not at all sympathetic times to the Catholic Church which by the way had been the largest denomination Christian denomination in America since 1890 but which still suffered greatly from persecution well Sheen didn't really talk about the Catholic Church he didn't really talk about Catholicism watch those films and you see that he's talking about everyday look problems in life I discovered how he wrote those talks they look so casual when you see them here well first of all he spent 35 hours on each one half-hour talks actually about 28 minutes 35 hours then he when he was finished he gave the talk in Italian to a professor friend of his then he gave the talk in French to a young woman he hired to listen to him I interviewed her she said she was a French major and she said my accent was better but he knew more vocabulary and then he was ready to give it in English he had it polished to within five seconds there were no notes there were no cue cards there was nothing he walked out on that set in front of the American people it was live and he he was spellbinding I don't think we've never I don't think we've ever seen anything like that before since he was simply spellbinding and the American people loved it and I think he created a lot of tolerance and it helped enables Catholic politicians and others to thrive in this country because of these talks these talks were understandable and they were funny now you can't think of fault machine without thinking of humor he loved to laugh and he kept his staff in stitches I tried to track the origins of his jokes because he usually started out with a joke or always a little story they're really pretty corny he'd come out sometimes and say long time no Sheen he'd grown a little bit and he he had joke writers stuff some but self a couple of the most famous Jewish joke writer was a dear friend of his and they would always submit jokes and he they call him in to him and one secretary said that she was she much of her time with Fulton sheen was spent in laughter he was a mimic we've never seen that that was never filmed but apparently he did a marvelous imitation of Charlie Chaplin that always cracked up the office staff he was humorous he was light he was engaging anyone Awards he won the Emmy Award and he was among the most popular Americans throughout the period of this television program he was missionary minded he not only raised money in the Society for the propagation of the faith in the second year he had a sponsor Cardinal Spellman got a sponsor for him they moved over to ABC and he was receiving huge fees for the program all of which he gave to the society most of which he gave to the society he estimated that he gave ten million dollars of his own money to the Society for the Gatien of the faith he lived very simply in New York and loved New York immensely you walk out on the street and people would come running four blocks partly because he was passing out money and in love people and some of the professional paupers were were on him all the time and one relative has told him you know you really shouldn't be so gullible to these people you know some of them are just feasting on your innocence and he said suppose they really are in need I have to help them money came money with it was chaotic situation I never was fully able to document it because nobody could but money came pouring int on sheet and he would oftentimes simply pour the money back out again if you wrote him a letter and said I'm in desperate shape I need your help there'd be cash in the envelope that would come back there was no accounting there were no income tax I went to an accountant and asking if this was legal and he wasn't sure either the money just came pouring in it would go from one hand in one envelope and gets stuffed into another one and sometimes the money where people are always especially wealthy converts were always pushing money into his pockets and he would he would simply give it out as he walked down the street he helped he's famous for his celebrity converts Henry Ford the second and an assortment Clare Boothe Luce there was a tough one of very brilliant a very loose lady the actress who was embittered because her only child died and she lashed out at Sheen and rage at first and became his dearest champion and a convert of some significance there were others but I found all kinds of people he helped he went to hospitals endlessly he had a little book filled with hundreds of entries he was constantly on the move in his 19 hour day how he was raising money how he was he was writing to newspaper was how he was writing all these books editing a society journal how he did all this I don't know but he did it he would walk into a bookstore and order books sometimes 20 at a at a shot comes staggering out with him and he would get through them in a hurry one of his assistants told me when I interviewed him that he was a little suspicious of Sheen and books because one time they went to a bookstore and he loaded up and he came home and it was about 10 o'clock at night and Sheen the next morning talked about one of these books in detail that he had apparently read from ten o'clock on they were up at 5:00 and from 10 o'clock on and so the young priest said to himself I'm going to find out about this so he told Fulton sheen that he was feeling badly that is that day and would he just go on he'd stay home and be been to regain his strength when Fulton left the young priest went to find the book that had been purchased the night before and the chena talked about it was marked all the way through sometime between 10 o'clock and when they got up at 5:00 he had gone through it and yet he found time to spend an hour a day all of his adult life in front of the Blessed Sacrament his holy hour which he said generated the strength the spiritual power that kept him going the thing about Fulton sheen to remember is that he was a super naturalist that's very much in disfavor right now of course it's always been in disfavor certainly since the Enlightenment it helps divide Christians do you really believe that God loves you enough to enter into history not just way back then but now isn't all isn't the whole purpose of news to persuade you that that isn't true I mean what is news but a collection of disasters all over the world and yet the Christian message is that God is not dead he's alive and loves us no she believed that he was a super naturalist he went to Lourdes 14 times and said it was miracles happened to him a couple of times in his life two of them at Lourdes he talked about it he was a super naturalist it's the only kind of religion worth having you know in the early 1950s Fulton sheen fell into a terrible battle with his mentor Cardinal Spellman insiders knew about this the public did not the full story wasn't told until my book appeared last September and the reason I was able to tell it is that I went to Cardinal O'Connor in New York and pleaded with him personally to give me access to the Spellman papers we don't have a good biography of Spellman we have an authorized version that he put out done by an adoring employee and we have a scurrilous book of which calls him a homosexual without evidence but we don't have a good book even yet and the papers are locked up and Cardinal O'Connor gave me permission to examine relevant letters between Spelman and Sheen and there was a larger collection which perhaps I'll talk about in the question and answer period that has disappeared I now know where they are but what I was able to see fleshed out the rumors that other people had heard for a long time it was a terrible battle between the two men and it was about pride the most powerful Catholic bishop in America and the most popular bishop in America clashed really about money initially Spellman was in the since he was the international head of this organization the Society for the propagation of the faith was given to distributing money around the world wherever he went and Sheen thought that that was not only illegal it was done simply to glorify Spelman and he said you can't do it at Spelman said you're telling me I can't do something and Sheen said yes and then the struggle got hotter and hotter and finally there was an argument about whether or not something was donated or paid for by the Society for the propagation of the faith and the two men this is all again under the surface the two men found themselves in front of Pius the 12th to settle the argument they presented the facts now Pius the 12th of course had known Spellman forever he had brought him up to power he knew fold machine by his first name and adored him and now he had to choose between the two men one of them was lying he weighed the facts and he decided correctly he cited in favor of Fulton sheen and Spellman said I will get you if it takes me the rest of my life Fulton sheen was driven off of television he was made a non-person in the Archdiocese of New York people turned their backs his he was told his lecture requests fell off the struggle became so severe that finally Spellman went to Pius the 12th and extracted from him a promise to drive to approve the driving out of Fulton sheen from the Archdiocese of New York now Sheen had his choice he could go to about six or seven places in the world and he chose Rochester Spellman was worried because Sheena although he was 71 years old Spellman was 77 and it was going to retire and he was afraid that Sheen would be made his successor the two were simply mortal enemies it grieved Fulton sheen terribly I'm not so sure a grief Spellman he had the upper hand at any rate in 1966 the two men met together and they met the press and it was announced they were both smiling and hugging and lying the two men announced that at long last Fulton sheen had been given a diocese the Diocese of Rochester and he was relieved from his office at the Society for the propagation of the faith and was sent into what I call exile in the kind of stodgy upstate Diocese of Rochester which it has the same bishop for over 30 years and there it was hoped he would disappear he didn't Fulton sheen had been to Vatican to his tended all sessions and he was thoroughly in step with the reforms that were being made and he decided since I have to go to Rochester I will make a model diocese a model reformed Diocese of Rochester and he tried heroically and he bungled many things he'd have no administrative skills he was a speaker a thinker he was an expert in Marx he was an expert in Freud he read deeply in psychology he wrote about it he wrote about that and all kinds of other things but he didn't have the vaguest idea of how to administer anything he was a thinker not a door and it's a long story it's a absolutely fascinating part of the Szczecin story he didn't make it the diocese rose up and he resigned and that was 1969 and for the last 10 years of his life stricken with heart disease triple bypass surgery they finally had to put a pacemaker in he was in terrible torment the oldest person ever to have a pacemaker to that point and he was in terrible pain and AGG and he continued to write books he continued to travel all over the world and to speak he tried two more television shows and he wrote treasure in clay his autobiography is a wonderful book I hope you all will read it it doesn't tell you much of what I've been telling you but it's his humor his gentle nature his deep spirituality are all in this book it's been dismissed by critics I think they're wrong it's a wonderful book in 1978 the new pope came to America John Paul a second and actually in 1979 and came to st. Patrick's Cathedral and they brought up Fulton J Sheen who could barely walk he was in such pain they brought him up near the altar and the two men met in front of the altar and embraced and six thousand people rose to applaud and and people up close saw the Pope whisper something in Sheen's ear and they asked him later what did he tell you and Sheen said he told me I had been a loyal son of the church and that's another vital ingredient to understanding Fulton sheen he not only was a supernatural man he believed that the church was Christ's Church and he obeyed it all his life he died in 1979 in front of the altar in front of the Blessed Sacrament where he wanted to die it's a great story I've given you only the barest outline of it but he's a man thousands millions loved a man continues to this day to inspire us both on television and in his books and in this tapes and it was an absolute joy for me to have spent two and a half years almost alone with him the book came out in September and the major media have blacked it out not one major newspaper would review it now all the reviews were good I'm happy to say but not one major newspaper will review it not in New York where Sheen was a major part of New York history for decades a city he loved wouldn't touch it won't they review books about the Pope being a pro-nazi oh yes but they don't want to know about a good Catholic priest in my judgment they don't want to hear it nobody in Los Angeles with its millions of Catholics reviewed it nobody in Chicago would review it with its millions of Catholics 62 million Catholics in this country and the press blacked out the story of Fulton sheen well I'm delighted that c-span is here tonight it's a first and as all yet has opened a door and perhaps a little more fairness will rush in and the story of a good man not just a controversial or bad man will again become news I think he was the most important Catholic of 20th century America I think the record will show it and now there's an effort to canonize him and I'll close with that Cardinal O'Connor approved it the Cardinal of Chicago is a sponsor of it and they are making definite moves now to do the preliminary preparations for attempting to have Sheen be canonized people have asked me how I feel about that I have no problem with it at all he was a real human being he had faults that makes me love him all the more he was a holy man a blessed a blessed man in many ways who can inspire us and make us better Christians the young as I traveled around doing my research I asked people who knew him people knew him 30 40 50 years do you think he should become a saint they all said yes but a couple of them laughed at me and said we pray to Him already thank you very much now we have time for some questions so let's there's a there's our boom back there with the microphone on it if you'll talk into that and we can all hear you I'll be happy to answer questions for a few minutes yes yes you mentioned there was correspondence between a Cardinal Spellman and Bishop Sheen could you tell us a little bit more about that please pretty story I'll just give you an outline of it correspondence in the in the period of these several years in which Sheen and Spellman were fighting they wrote letters back and forth and Sheen saved them all and he had them in an envelope and when they came to his office in the late 70s from Rochester they were creating a shine archive and he was they were talking back and forth about what Sheen would give to the archive and he pulled he when it reached in his desk and he pulled out this out this large envelope and he was filled with letters and he said here's the story of my dealings with Spellman ice Cardinal Spellman I think I'll give these to you but let me check first and he called his secretary and she didn't think it was quite right and then one of the interrogated the people in the room from the archive said well maybe there'd be legal problems so he put them back in his desk and he said well when I pass on these are to go to you and they were never seen again now I tracked those papers and to try and find and I wasn't the first one to do it there was a young priest who started the investigation he had heard about them too and he went to Cardinal O'Connor and he had heard that the Machine letters wound up in the archdiocese in office and Cardinal O'Connor said yes they were here and the young he said well can I see them he said well alright sure and then Cardinal Spellman changed his mind and then they went back and forth a few more times and all of a sudden Spellman Cole Connors said to the young man I've sent them to Rome and that was the end of it so I came along and I had an interview with Cardinal Spellman years later Cardinal O'Connor's years later when I went to him to ask him about permission and I said where he said when I became Archbishop I found this box in my office and the Box said do not open so I opened it he said my successor was a holy man I'm not well I didn't believe that but that's what he said and there I found all the letters and he said I sent them to Rome so he told the priest that and he told me that but then I wrote to the Vatican and the Vatican wrote back and said we have no relevant papers I think that's the language they used or no important papers pertaining to Archbishop Sheen which implied almost said we have nothing but it didn't quite say that so somebody was not telling the truth so after O'Connor's death I wrote to the new Cardinal Egan and I said do you have those letters in your home and he rolled back and he said no I do not that means Rome has them and while they may not be relevant my I would strongly suggest you that we will never see them again and I think it's a shame on the other hand what would they tell us really that we don't know there'd be a lot of vitriol a lot of venom a lot of nastiness we do know the outline of the story and maybe in the in the wisdom of the church that's probably all we need to know but anyway that's where they are now they're in the Vatican and I don't expect to be admitted in to see them very soon yes if you were to write a second book what stories would you include in that book which are not included in the present book that you wrote in other words what other fascinating points would you like to bring up that you did not include that's a good question the answer is I really don't have in I think that what I learned is in that book I wrote a conclusion which the publisher didn't like but I think that what I needed to say about Sheen is said in the book maybe the publisher was right I haven't there a lot of things I haven't talked about tonight for example his commitment to civil rights early and is early in the late 1920s his abhorrence of anti-semitism and so on he has secret money that he funneled down into the south to help blacks build a hospital in Arkansas and so on and so forth a lot of things I didn't talk about but they are in the book and I really think that that one reviewer said well there's still more to be said which is what you're implying and my response to that is I doubt it unless some new material shows up I think that I've told the story probably haven't told it well enough but if it isn't well enough reaching and and you'll see the man himself and it'll be worth your time yes jealousy among all the other bishops against Bishop Sheen Oh was there jealousy yo well sure I mean Sheen had everything he was the he was the premier bishop in the church and he was the most popular and nobody else was getting 20,000 letters a day coming into his office and I'm sure that there was a lot of jealousy but when I went around to talk to the people who had known him with the priests the bishops the people of his age and I talked quite a few there was no sense of jealousy or bitterness at all they knew that they were in the presence of somebody and something extraordinary yes I'd be interested in hearing a little more about the is supernaturalism that you described earlier perhaps of one or two of the miracles that he when world war ii broke out Sheen wrote he was always writing something and he wrote up little book to the Troops in which he took the position that accidents happen that that horrible things really do happen but he changed his mind later in life and believed that nothing was accidental he believed that the hand of God was in it you can't see it right now but that the hand of God was in it in the long run he believed that God was present in human history not just some deity who created us and left which was the view of several of the founding fathers who were deists it was not that way at all and when he said the rosary every day when he was in front of the Blessed Sacrament every day and said Mass his priestly rule every day he meant it and it was it's what sustained him he believed in the continuing presence of God in the sacrament and in the church and he lived that way that's all and taught others that the hundreds who came to him the thousands who wrote to him the millions who sent him money the message was always the same God loves you and he cares you can't see it right now maybe whale year old and maybe it'll become clear or maybe he will make it clearer to you when you meet him face to face and we all will so that was that's the essence of his supernaturalism he was a believer in every sense of the word he went to he had a give you one example he went to one of the times he went to the Lord he tested God we're not supposed to do that but Sheen did he had a miraculous vision when he was in seminary he was absolutely convinced that he had a special relationship of the Virgin Mary he wrote one of the great books on the Virgin Mary ever written is for sale back there and so he tested God if you really want me to do something for you he said show me I'm going to Lord and I want you to send me a twelve-year-old girl on her birthday to present me with a rose if you do that then I will know and it happened and she knew he had known all of his life you would know it to the very end lying desperately ill in a hospital bed so sick he could hardly move the man next to him was dying he was a Jew and the widow looked over and saw Fulton sheen moving his fingers up to bless his all he could move to bless the dying man next to him thus he lived in the sea died a man of supernatural faith would that we would have even the tiniest percentage of the joy that he experienced yes um and one anecdote one question you may or may not know you've got a Fulton sheen in the audience here tonight and probably do I didn't and the question where's Bishop Sheen buried well he is buried under the altar of st. Patrick's Cathedral and so is Cardinal Spellman and they're on opposite ends in one of his tapes he made a desire Duke Dianna's Saturday preferably the Feast of our Blessed Mother did he know we missed it my one day uh it was again an active you might even say spiritual arrogance he often said that he wanted to die on a festival day a Marian festival he missed it by one day but there are champions of Sheen who argue with the hours being such as they were days the eve of you know that it all worked out but one doesn't want to tempt God too far you know yes another question you mentioned earlier about he wanted to make the model diocese post Vatican 2 but then it wasn't well-received or failed as such what was this intention and then why did he fail and what wasn't well-received well that's a long story um there are two things you want to note I think one he deeply wanted to in to see people think of Sheen as being an example of the old church he isn't he's the bridge between the the old and the new he's the one who started the reforms in earnest in Rochester the first one and he was he wanted an active civil rights program and he wanted poverty programs and he wanted to spend money in more meaningful ways for outreach and for minorities and and on and on and that was one thing he loves services in the round which was becoming the fashion at that time he wanted more lay involvement he's really meant it he thought he really was opposed to clericalism I mean he loved people it's the short the long and short of it and he thought that lady should play a much greater role in the churches than they had when he was growing up that's part of it and the other part of it was that he wanted to stay in the New York Times and he wanted to be a famous person still and he would not give the latest lose releases to the local papers he called up the New York Times and in part this was to keep himself famous and also to rub it into Spellman that he was doing something that he was still famous when he became obscure at the very end a relatively obscure he went back home and sat at an airport a little man no one ever reckon owned recognized at all he took it very hard it's very you know it's easy for us who've never been famous but if we had our picture on the cover of Time magazine and it won the Emmy it's very hard to go back into obscurity and he was frail enough to have suffered for that he did not like obscurity and he talked about bitterly about fleeting Fame and yet and yet as he tells you in his autobiography he knew it was all vanity and it didn't really mean anything yes by my fault machine was my great-uncle and I'm also full machine and I remember the last time that I spoke with him he was he married one of my cousins in Wisconsin and that was in July uh in a few you know probably about five months later he passed away but when he stepped up on to the altar and he gave the message it was like at that time he was 84 but he probably dropped 20 years and gave a tremendously powerful message and I don't think that really two days goes by where somebody says you know I remember a Fulton sheen and he had the ability to share his faith and communicate that faith to to almost everyone he met and the television public as well and so I I think that's a great testimony to him if you didn't hear his name his name is Fulton J Sheen I interviewed him in the course of the book I've delighted to meet you sir thank you one more question yes upfront Fulton sheen were alive now at the height of his powers what a person like that be able to have as much success now as he had probably not because we're a much harder cruder people the media itself I blame almost everything on the media and they would not give him the avenue the openings he'd have to buy the time and it would be on an obscure network and he would not and yet the power of his message the vitae you said it is picked at the peak of his power watch these programs you're still moved by them there's not much competition available in our own time as far as I can tell I think he would still he's still capable of reviving much of the church and instilling

Channel: Remember This

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Keywords: biography, memoir, historical, europe, rome, leaders, notable people, books

Id: wr-hFMsZVxE

Length: 62min 53sec (3773 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 13 2017