The Man Who Knew Communism Best | Bishop Fulton J.Sheen

friends a week or two ago we asked for suggestions of subjects and personalities which we might discuss on this show one little girl wrote in from Akron Ohio and she said I don't care what you talk about as long as you keep on talking and that can prove very dangerous because some years ago on the way back from Europe a steward came out on the deck of the ship one night he said are you the one who preached sermon at st. Patrick's Cathedral substance at your time yes samaya that was a wonderful sermon wonderful I enjoyed every minute of that hour-and-a-half I said my good man I never talks an hour and a half in my life well he said it seemed that long to me so tonight we're going to discuss a very remarkable man of literature the man who forced all communism and who understood it better than many who have lived through it and his name it has we should mention some alternate spellings fyodor dostoyevsky born in 1821 in Moscow father was the doctor in one of the four hospitals of Moscow father was not very kind to the family or the peasants when he bought a farm the peasants later on kill me but the Sun live from 1821 waiting under than 81 and in that relatively short span of life had three great creative moments the first creative moment appeared or Dostoevsky was when he learned the moment the meaning of freedom those were days when students were rather radical and young Dostoyevsky belong to a radical group as he was studying engineering though we always loved literature and he was interested not in the German philosophers as many were the time fancy mo for EI and others he wanted to establish some kind of a system where there would be no marriage no private property but some weird kinds of socialism in kings and czars were jittery in those days in the year 1848 Louis Philippe was the last king of France he lost his throne Nicholas the first was afraid of losing his so when he heard of this young group of revolution a Peter and Paul queer name for a prison so it was and then after several months in jail on the 22nd day of December 18 hundred and forty nine twenty youths were led up on a platform whose komoroske square of st. Petersburg there were lines of ten Dostoyevsky was sixth in the second line a sheriff mounted the platform he walked to each of them he gave the sentence of the court condemned to death condemned to death and them to death 20 men 20 minutes to wait for death Dostoyevsky nudged someone alongside him there was a car down below 20 coffins in it black cloth over the coffin the temperature 20 degrees below zero they were stripped of all their clothing except a shirt with seven o'clock in the morning the styrsky looked up and son was just coming through the clouds we began reflecting itself against the dome of a church he said in five minutes I will be this where the source of all that light is and then one minute more and he said oh if I could only live what an eternity of days would be mine and how I would treasure each moment and at that moment a soldier came across the yard waving a white flag and announced it through the mercy of the czar they would not be shot but Dostoevsky was to be sentenced to four years imprisonment in Siberia he breathed the air of freedom he began to be a kind of an embodied spirit the soul had come back into his body daddy because he wrote Inferno has been described as the man who has been to hell Dostoyevsky was the man who looked death in the face and got back that elemental freedom the freedom to live and move and have your being you would understand freedom as well as any man in the world that was his first creative moment the second was when he learned the implications of that freedom Christmas Eve of that year he was put into a sleigh driven out of st. Petersburg on a three weeks journey to Siberia and as he left st. Petersburg it was Christmas Eve he was no room in the inn you could see houses ablaze with lights Christmas parties on the inside so after the stable of the world he goes to Siberia and what a place that was as Dostoyevsky describes he said we were huddled in this barracks like herrings in a barrel no room to turn around fleas and lice by the bushel temperature 30 and 40 degrees below zero ice three inches thick on the windowpane one stove in the center of a room never melted the ice in the room a sheepskin to cover us but it never covered our feet in our feet froze filth on the floor too cold to go outside to satisfy nature men would attempt to cross the floor and their chains would get caught in the chains of others and they would fall crack their heads and curse was a veritable inferno of imprecation and curses and lecherous laughter and out of it later on came the books describing what he had been through letters from the underworld and the House of the Dead some of the most terrible pages of all literature what did he learn during this captivity in Siberia learn three lessons and he puts them down in these books and the first lesson that he learned was how evil men can be he lived with characters and he saw guards it could not be divided as novelists divide their characters into good and bad he said there are some people who will abuse freedom to a point of wishing only evil they lose the distinction he said of right and wrong they will they do not deny God merely he says they challenge God they set themselves up as an absolute he said I found that while I was there that man is open that two ends first he's open to the inspirations of grace and then he said he's open to the devil himself some of these men he said wanted to do evil just for the sake of evil even to make good evil not as a result he said they became cruel and I learned he said that it is possible for a man to become more cruel and bloodthirsty than any beast is one of the characters said there only there are only two periods in history one is our ascent from the gorilla to the depth of God and the other is from the death of God for the making of a new earth through comings that was his first list how evil men can be in the second lesson that he learned was about a social system that evil men can create that social system that exists in the land where he lived Churchill describes that land as the dividing of it as the Iron Curtain that description would never satisfied or styrsky why why because the Iron Curtain is from our side the comfortable side the side of real freedom looking up against something opaque when you pass through Siberian see evils such as Dostoyevsky saw that description would never fit it and so on letters from the underworld he described the new race of men and what it means to live under this type of man and he describes it is the mouse facing the wall he said a mouse will ultimately can't come to the last wall and he will gnaw but he cannot get through a bull in the face of a wall were respected he will not charge it it's something sacred when a mouse a mouse will gnaw and no and no and be frustrated because he cannot get through what is the wall the wall is the impossible it is that social system under which men must live unto eternal frustration the third lesson that he learned he described it in these two books that I mentioned was that the only alternative to this social system is Christ in whom is he rightly said his God in the image of man he said I thank the Almighty that I have passed through Siberia because I've learned now the essence of man and I have also learned he said that it is only in Christ that I must repose later on when belinskiy the atheists would try to win him over to his atheism Dostoyevsky said in his own queer way he said bill billion ski he said I would rather be wrong with Christ and right with you prison spoils some in spoiled Oscar Wilde he lost all of his creativity in prison he came out of prison wandered the streets of London under the under a diabolical pseudonym lost his power of writing because he'd been in prison but not so Dostoevsky he learned these great lessons in Dostoevsky came out in order to come to the third moment of his life truly creative literary moment in which he wrote some of the great pages of literature for example this is the man Dostoevsky wrote in first of all the one that we will discuss first crime and punishment in 1866 the possess 1872 we will not have time to discuss Brothers Karamazov around 1809 79 80 before he died in these works he describes communism that is to come and he describes it well first of all in crime and punishment where one of the characters is Russ Carly caught the individual communist Skolnick off does not believe in a distinction between right and wrong good and bad but he's interested in the masses he's concerned about the poor wants to build up a social system it's concerned with the proletariat in this new social system that loves the masses must be built up but in order to build it up says Roscoe only caught you ought to have money so he kills a poor old woman pawn broker to get money to establish his socialistic state and he argues she was vermin anyway you see the system you kill one you ate a thousand of the masses that simple arithmetic let's comunism no concern whatever for the individual person all that matters is the party state the totalitarian structure hence that individuals wherever they'd be in Poland Hungary Albania anywhere else let them be wiped out all that matters is the regime that professors who love the poor and tramples on Dostoyevsky's Menenius work the possessed describes the state that has been set up by this philosophy no longer concerned now with the individual communists in their home in ski rare oven ski says the Russian Revolution we'll begin with an atheistic base you see the characters of Dostoyevsky bacterial off sigilyph barrow Minsky father of our Brothers Karamazov and others oh yes they're in pages here they are in the possessed but if these men they you cut a page blood comes out and they walk across the streets of Russia they're living characters they just have other names Stalin Lenin Berg enough Bogany to talk heroes about them he knew the wall he lived through them he saw it coming so Vera Minsky said they don't foundation would be atheism and then he talks to Stavro Jin and he tells Stavro Jin just how he must develop this system and salvage and prepares for it so he violates the girl and then after he's violated her he locks her in a room and there's little opening in the door she sips tea can look at her until she goes mad he enjoys his tea and finally she goes mad and she hangs herself--and stavrogin said now now I no longer know the distinction between right and wrong now I am ready to establish the system so the characters walk out on the pages of the possessed would you not think that some of these are reading from the possessed some of these pages were written by someone what passed through the experiences and communism today in Russia he suggests a system of spy every member of societies fires on the others and it is his duty to inform against them all are slaves and equal in their slavery see equality all comments they will be banished and put to death sister all will have his tongue cut out Copernicus will have his eyes without Shakespeare will be stoned slaves are bound to be equal there never has been any freedom or equality without despotism but in the heard everyone will be equal the moment you have family ties or love you get the desire for property will destroy that desire we will make use of drunkenness slander spying will make use of every incredible corruption will stifle every genius in its infancy we will reduce all to a common denominator complete equality only the necessary is the necessary that's the motto of the whole world from now on the world needs a shock and that's for us the dictators to look after absolute submission absolute loss of individuality but once in 30 years The Dictator will let them have a shock and they will suddenly begin eating one another up just as a precaution against boredom and then Dostoevsky knowing that this philosophy that has no respect for persons that speaks of the love of the masses will be a menace to the world tell us how it will win over does not mention America how true he was writing too soon for us perhaps when he told how all the intelligentsia the riffraff the false liberals all of the people without a plain distinction of right or wrong with Paulo after these individuals and do you know says the leader that we are tremendously powerful already our party not only consists of those who commit murder and arson fire off pistols in the traditional fashion or bite kernels they're only a hindrance I reckon them all up a teacher who lost with children at their God is on our side the lawyer who defends an educated murderer because he's more cultured than his victims and could not help murdering them to get money he's one of us the schoolboys will murder a cousin for the sake of sensation they are ours the juries who acquit every criminal they're ours the prosecutor who trembles at a trial for fear he should not seem advanced enough as ours and among officials and intelligence the and literary men we have lots and lots of them but they do not know it and so we'll have a little fresh blood now and then they will set Legends going and every scurvy group will be of use to loss I'll pick up some of you fellows it will be keen for shooting well there's going to be an upheaval there's going to be such an upset as the world has never seen before Russia will be over where onde with darkness and the caller will weep for it's God in 1872 did he despair though he knew the world would run after these rust colony cops and shitty lofts interior loss now for the end of his life and the Journal of an author he wrote about soldier socialist soldier would say who said he would commit the worst crime that one could ever commit he would steal a host he stole a host invested sacrament and then said he would shoot it he leveled his gun and he saw the image of Christ above him he knelt down in penance and that the Dostoyevsky is what Russia would do one day recover its soul when it got rid of these individuals would bought ruin upon it and then on another occasion he said remember the young man in the land of the Gerasenes who was possessed with Devils and the Lord called The Devil's out of the young man into the swine and the swine who were driven into the sea naw Strahovski said that's my Raja my beloved Russia full of sores putrefaction fouls corruption fool even of devil but one day these devils the shigellosis the Kira lofts Ross colony coughs one day these Devils will be driven out of Russia and they will be pushed back and back and back into the sea and where there they will be drowned that it will be good enough for them and Russia Russia will sit at the feet of Christ and learn his gospel [Applause] [Music]

Channel: The Catholic World

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Keywords: english catholic songs, catholic songs, malayalam catholic songs, christian songs, malayalam christian songs, devotional songs, religious songs, malayalam religious songs, tamil catholic songs, kerala devotional songs, thecatholicworld, the catholic world, malayalam songs.jesus songs, Bishop Fulton J.Sheen, Bishop Fulton Sheen

Id: K8qqZup3Bg4

Length: 25min 29sec (1529 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 24 2014