A superb showman, he appeared on
television before a live audience on Tuesday nights at 8:00 p.m. in full
episcopal regalia: a long purple cape over a black cassock, and on his chest a gleaming
gold cross. Of medium height and slender
build, he had graying wavy hair, deep-set, penetrating eyes with a hypnotic
gaze, and the look of an ascetic – albeit a sumptuously garbed ascetic. His rich, cultivated voice caressed,
compelled. Looking right at the camera, with
graceful arm gestures and quick changes of facial expression he spoke of good
and evil, marriage problems, prayer as a dialogue, the holy spirit, the
commandments, sin and penance, the sacraments, but in such a way as to appeal
not just to Catholics but to a nationwide audience. The set was a study with a desk, chairs, and
in the background, shelves of books, perhaps a reminder of his solid Catholic
scholarship. At times he drew simple
diagrams or wrote significant phrases on a blackboard, his only prop; if the
blackboard was full, an unseen stagehand whom he called his “angel” would erase
it, so it could receive more simple diagrams and significant phrases.
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| Archbishop Fulton John Sheen Spiritual Centre |
The bishop’s stage presence and
sensitivity to the audience’s mood were remarkable, and he was, to use a newly
current word of the time, supremely telegenic.
Competing with comedian Milton Berle, “Mr. Television,” whose program
was on at the same time as his, the bishop’s program “Life Is Worth Living” had
an audience of some thirty million a week.
In 1952 his face appeared on the cover of Time magazine – itself a consecration – and the magazine proclaimed him “perhaps the most famous
preacher in the U.S., certainly America’s best-known Roman Catholic priest, and
the newest star of U.S. television.”
Such were the unexpected fame and success
of the Most Reverend Fulton J. Sheen, Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of
New York, in the 1950s. The number of
stations carrying his program, which was filmed at the Adelphi Theater on West 54th
Street in New York, went from three to fifteen in less than two months. The demand for tickets for the show was too
overwhelming to be met, and fan mail came pouring in at the rate of 8,500
letters a week. For instance:
A Massachusetts nurse: “I looked to my minister for advice, but
because the matter was so personal I resisted asking him outright. Therefore I am writing to you….”
A South Dakota housewife: “I feel worried….”
A Philadelphia professional woman: “Last year it was made clear to me that my
husband had an affair with a married woman….
Please use some theme which you think might bear on the remorse and
regret which will follow if homes are wrecked by such relationships.”
He had a good sense of humor, used jokes and
memorable one-liners:
“I see you’ve come to have your faith
lifted.”
“An atheist is a man without visible means
of support.”
“Long time no Sheen.”
Once, imitating his friendly rival Milton
Berle, known to viewers as “Uncle Miltie,” he began, “Good evening, this is
Uncle Fultie.” And he gave credit to his
writers, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
Though inspirational, he was fun as well.
 |
| Uncle Miltie and friends. |
“Hearing nuns’ confessions,” he confessed,
“is like being stoned to death with popcorn.” “The big print giveth,” he observed, “and the
fine print taketh away.” And perhaps his
Irish American background inspired the comment, “Baloney is flattery laid on so
thick it cannot be true, and blarney is flattery so thin we love it.” Being famous and acclaimed, he probably got a
good bit of both.
Born
in 1895 to a farming family near Peoria, Illinois, he was Irish on both sides, showed
an early preference for books over farm work, and was ordained a priest in
1919. Subsequently he earned a doctorate
in philosophy at the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium, and claimed to
have earned another doctorate in Rome, though this has been challenged; he may
have invented it so as to speed up his advancement. Be that as it may, he had a solid foundation in Catholic philosophy
and theology before beginning his career in media with a weekly radio broadcast
in 1930. Time magazine in 1946 referred to him as “the golden-voiced
Monsignor Fulton J. Sheen, U.S. Catholicism’s famed proselytizer,” but his real
career and fame began in 1952, when Sheen, lately made a bishop, began his
program “Life Is Worth Living” on television, the medium in which his splendor
of presence could at last be fully conveyed to an audience. And conveyed it was, magnificently, to
millions. Soon hailed as the first
televangelist, he was unpaid, and the commercials were kept to a minimum.
Especially memorable was a program in
February 1953 when Sheen, a fierce anti-Communist but no follower of Senator
Joe McCarthy, denounced Stalin’s regime in Russia and gave a reading of the
burial scene in Shakespeare’s Julius
Caesar, substituting the names of the most prominent Soviet leaders, with
Stalin as the murdered Caesar. “Stalin
must one day meet his judgment,” he concluded.
Stalin suffered a stroke a few days later and died on March 5, 1953.
It is no surprise, then, that FBI director
J. Edgar Hoover admired Sheen and kept a file on him, since he liked to keep
track of friends as well as enemies. On
June 12, 1953, at Hoover’s invitation, the man who some thought had foretold
the death of the villainous Stalin addressed the graduation exercises of the
FBI National Academy in Washington, following which J. Edgar wrote him to say
that his address was one of the most inspirational talks he had ever
heard. And from the FBI files on the
bishop we can glean an array of interesting tidbits:
· Sheen likes ice cream and angel food cake.
· He likes to play tennis and wears a white scarf and
white flannel trousers when doing so.
· At a dinner for a group of men, when asked if he got
all he wanted for Christmas, he said no, he wanted some royal blue silk
pajamas. The next day he received twenty
pairs of the same, each of the men thinking he was acting alone.
· For years he drove a light cream-colored convertible,
wearing a camel hair coat, a white scarf, and dark glasses while driving, so as
to avoid being recognized. (His announced
appearances were always mobbed by fans.)
If stopped by a motorcycle cop for speeding, he used all his powers of
oratory to avoid a ticket.
· He lives simply in New York, rising at 6:00 a.m.,
attends a private Mass, isn’t at his desk before nine.
As these items suggest, Sheen
didn’t live the life of a saint; he dressed fashionably, lived luxuriously, and
enjoyed the attention he got in the media and the applause of adoring
crowds. Humility was not his thing.
Even so, he brought Catholicism into
mainstream television and was responsible for some remarkable conversions: author
and Congresswoman Clare Booth Luce, Henry Ford II of the automobile dynasty,
violinist Fritz Kreisler and his wife, actress Virginia Mayo, and ex-Communist
turned anti-Communist Louis F. Budenz, whose conversion must have especially
delighted him.
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| Less elegant than Sheen, but more powerful. |
The bishop was said to be at times
difficult, if his authority was challenged.
Why his TV program ended in October 1957, when he was at the height of
his television fame, was at the time something of a mystery. It seems that he tangled with another man who
could also be difficult, if challenged: his superior, Cardinal Francis J.
Spellman of New York. (For more on
Spellman, see post #136.) In 1950 Sheen had
become director of the New York-based Society for the Propagation of the Faith,
and in 1957 he and Spellman engaged in a bitter feud. When Spellman demanded that the Society pay
his archdiocese millions for a large quantity of powdered milk that Spellman
had given the Society to distribute to the poor, Sheen flat-out refused.
 |
When two colossal egos, one a powerful
cardinal archbishop and the other a beloved and charismatic television star,
collide, clerical sparks fly. Spellman
took the issue all the way to Pope Pius XII, a personal friend, and a private
audience resulted where he and Sheen pleaded their respective cases. To get the facts straight, the Pope phoned
President Eisenhower, who confirmed Sheen’s account that the U.S. government
had given the food to the Church free of charge. His Holiness then sided gently with Sheen, urging
reconciliation and dismissing them while giving both men his blessing. Infuriated, the Cardinal reportedly told
Sheen afterward, “I will get even with you.
It may take six months or ten years, but everyone will know what you’re
like.” Spellman quickly got Sheen’s
television program canceled and saw to it that his speaking invitations
declined and his fund-raising became more difficult. Sheen was, in effect, hounded out of the
archdiocese
That was not the end of Fulton J.
Sheen. He hosted another TV series in
the 1960s, wrote numerous books, and became Bishop of Rochester in 1966, and
when, at age 74, he resigned the position in 1969, he was made Archbishop of
the Titutular See of Newport, Wales, a ceremonial post that let him devote his
time to writing. In 1977 he underwent
surgeries that weakened him and made preaching difficult, and two years later
he died of heart disease in New York and was interred in the white marble crypt
of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, in close proximity to his nemesis, Cardinal
Spellman. Reruns of his programs are
still aired, his talks are available on DVDs, and a museum bearing his name
houses a collection of his personal items in Peoria, Illinois, where he was
first ordained and said his first Mass.
In 2002 Bishop Daniel Jenky of the Diocese of Peoria launched a campaign
for his canonization.
But that is still not the end of the
story. In 2010 the canonization campaign
was suspended, owing to a disagreement between the Archdiocese of New York,
which possesses Sheen’s remains, and the Diocese of Peoria, which wants the
remains returned to Peoria, so they can be examined and relics secured, as
required prior to beatification and canonization. In 2012 the Vatican announced that it had
recognized Sheen’s life as one of “heroic virtue,” a significant step toward
canonization; as a consequence, Sheen is now to be referred to as a “Venerable
Servant of God.” For the canonization process
to continue, two miracles are necessary, and one was soon forthcoming: a
stillborn infant who, thanks to Sheen’s prayers, is said to have lived to be
healthy.
Meanwhile the fight continues. Peoria has drawn up blueprints for an
elaborate shrine in its cathedral to house the tomb, but Cardinal Timothy Dolan
of New York refuses to part with the body, citing the wishes of Sheen’s family
and Sheen himself, who spent only a few years in Peoria and many in New York, a
city that he loved. Also, Sheen is a
personal hero for Dolan, who knew the TV programs as a young boy. He has offered Peoria some bone fragments and
other relics from the tomb, but not even a limb or two, much less the body
itself. So last September Bishop Jenky
announced “with immense sadness” that the campaign had been suspended yet
again. There is lamentation in Peoria,
but some Catholic observers applaud the delay, saying that canonization should
not be rushed, that the old fifty-year rule should be restored, allowing time
for a cult to grow organically and prove itself genuine or, in some cases, time
for it to die out. And so matters stand
to date. Meanwhile the archbishop has
been inducted into the Irish American Hall of Fame, an award now proudly
displayed in … Peoria.
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| Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who just can't let go. Cy White |
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| Reliquary with a thorn from Christ's crown of thorns, in the Archbishop's Museum in Cologne. Raimond Spekking |
Perhaps this fixation achieved the ultimate in the worship of the Holy Prepuce, which various churches in Europe have claimed to possess in the past, some even insisting it was a gift from Charlemagne. And if Jesus' foreskin is preserved and enshrined, why not some shorn locks (assuming he ever saw a barber) or some nail clippings? Where indeed does it end? (Incidentally, I have a number of Catholic friends quite firm in their faith, none of whom is concerned about relics.)
And the very idea of Sheen’s body being, as a compromise, divided between Peoria and New York – poor provincial Peoria, so often derided as the quintessential small Midwestern town, and huge, exciting, cosmopolitan New York – the very idea of it shocks and amuses and perplexes me.
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| Reliquary with the tooth of Saint Apollonia, in the cathedral of Porto, Portugal. |
But there is a long
history of dividing up sanctified remains. Saint Catherine of Siena’s body is enshrined
in Rome, but Siena, allegedly after a bit of smuggling abetted by a miracle, has
her head. (Legend has it that the people
of Siena tried to sneak the head out of Rome in a bag. When the Roman guards inspected the bag, they
found only rose petals, but back in Siena the head reappeared.) And Saint Francis Xavier’s body is in Goa,
India, but his right forearm is enshrined in a reliquary in Rome.
Be that as it may, in the case of the
Venerable Sheen I wish both dioceses well and hope the process of canonization
can continue, so I can go on being shocked and mystified and fascinated, and the
deceased archbishop can be properly and definitively entombed somewhere and
venerated, bringing comfort and joy to many, as his presence on television did
in life.
* * * *
Sheen was not without critics in his own
time. He was called glib and
superficial, an exponent of the “feel-good religion” of the time. “Americans like to feel good about
themselves,” a young Russian acquaintance once said to me with a mischievous smirk,
and I can’t deny the truth of his statement.
We are an irrepressibly and
incurably optimistic race, as witnessed by President Reagan’s cheery message,
“It’s morning in America.” There is a
whole industry devoted to making Americans feel good about themselves, and to
make sure they do, there’s another industry devoted to their
self-improvement. In 1923 the French
psychologist Émile Coué toured the U.S., teaching audiences to recite,
mantra-like, “Every day in every way I’m getting better and better.” In 1936 Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People was published and soon
became a huge best seller still selling today, telling Americans that one could
change how other people behave toward you by changing how you behave toward
them. “Happiness doesn’t depend on any
external conditions, it is governed by our mental attitude,” he asserted. To which he added, “Most of us have far more
courage than we ever dreamed we possessed.”
It cannot be denied that Sheen’s television program, “Life Is Worth
Living,” for all its solid foundation in Catholic thinking, partook of this
tradition. Which needn’t mean that it
was glib and superficial, though it was certainly of its time.
Also of its time and partaking of that
tradition was Dr. Norman Vincent Peale’s The
Power of Positive Thinking: A Practical Guide to Mastering the Problems of
Everyday Living, published in 1952, whose introduction announced that “you
do not need to be defeated by anything, that you can have peace of mind,
improved health, and a never ceasing flow of energy.” The book stayed on the best seller list for
186 weeks, sold 5 million copies, and was translated into 15 languages.
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| No glamor, just a friendly smile. |
Born in Ohio in 1898 and ordained a Methodist
minister in 1922, ten years later Peale switched to the Reformed Church in
America so he could become pastor of the Marble Collegiate Church at 272 Fifth
Avenue, on the corner of West 29th Street in Manhattan. (Protestants change sects as easily as they
change a hat or a suit of clothes; for Catholics it’s a bit more
complicated.) Walking down Fifth Avenue,
many a time I passed the church’s marble façade, Romanesque with a dash of
Gothic, and saw the reverend’s name emblazoned on a plaque, until one day his
name was replaced by another. That would
have been in 1984, when he ended his 52-year tenure as pastor, during which the
membership grew from 600 to over 5,000, and he became one of the city’s most
renowned preachers. He was also on radio
for 54 years and later transitioned to television.
Here are some examples of Peale’s “applied
religion”:
· Anybody can do just about anything with himself that
he really wants to and makes up his mind to do.
· Throw your heart over the fence and the rest will
follow.
· Don’t walk around with the world on your shoulders.
· Believe it is possible to solve your problem. Tremendous things happen to the
believer. So believe the answer will
come. It will.
· Start each day by affirming peaceful, contented and
happy attitudes and your days will tend to be pleasant and successful.
· Practice happy thinking every day. Cultivate the merry heart, develop the
happiness habit, and life will become a continual feast.
· It’s always too early to quit.
· Fill your life with love. Scatter sunshine. Forget self, think of others.
For Peale, religion and psychology were
fused to the point that you could hardly tell one from the other. His followers lapped it up, but not everyone
was impressed. When I saw the 1964 film One Man’s Way, Hollywood’s version of
his life to date, and his name was pronounced early in the story, there were
groans throughout the theater; most of the audience had come for the other film
being shown and had no idea what – or who – this one was about.
But there were serious criticisms of his
book as well. Mental health experts
didn’t hesitate to label him a con man and a fraud. The book was full of vague references to a
“famous psychologist,” a “practicing physician,” and countless others, none of
them identified. Critics called his
understanding of the mind inaccurate, superficial, simplistic, false, and said
his reliance on self-hypnosis was potentially dangerous. For him, they asserted, such unpleasant
phenomena as murderous rage, suicidal despair, cruelty, lust, and greed don’t
really exist; they are simply trivial mental processes that will evaporate if
one’s thoughts become more cheerful. And
on a lighter note, when Adlai Stevenson, running for the presidency in 1956,
was told that Peale had endorsed the incumbent, Eisenhower, Stevenson replied,
“Speaking as a Christian, I find the Apostle Paul appealing and the Apostle
Peale appalling.”
These criticisms evidently stunned Peale,
who later said he even considered resigning his post at the Marble Collegiate
Church. What kept him there was the
realization that, whatever his critics said, he was sure he was helping
millions. On occasion he voiced a
political opinion, as when he opposed the election of John F. Kennedy in 1960,
insisting that Kennedy would serve the interests of the Catholic Church before
those of the United States. This
statement provoked condemnations by Harry Truman, the Board of Rabbis, and the leading
Protestant theologians of the day, following which Peale seems to have gone
into hiding and once again threatened to – but did not – resign from his
church. (It’s always too early to
quit.) After that he refrained from
partisan political pronouncements. But
did he ever read Dale Carnegie’s book?
When Richard Nixon was in the White House,
Peale was persona most grata there and even officiated at the wedding of Julie Nixon
and David Eisenhower. During the
Watergate crisis that forced Nixon from office, he continued to frequent the
White House, explaining that “Christ didn’t shy away from people in trouble.” One wonders if he told the besieged President
to cultivate a merry heart, or advised him that it was always too early to quit.
Presidents simply couldn’t ignore the man,
whether living or dead. In 1983
President Reagan awarded Peale the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest
civilian honor in the U.S., for his contributions to the field of theology
(which must have been news to Protestant theologians of the time). And when Peale departed this earth in 1993
(scattering sunshine, one hopes), President Bill Clinton said that Peale’s name
would always be associated “with the wondrously American values of optimism and
service.” As regards optimism, who could
argue?
The 1950s are often dismissed as dull and
conformist, when compared with the raging ’60s, but for spiritual sustenance
they offered a range of options. For
those not attuned to the splendor of Bishop Sheen’s Catholicism or the merry optimism
of Dr. Peale’s Protestantism, there was always Billy Graham.
 |
| Square-jawed, and as clean-cut as they come. |
A memorable Wednesday: At 1:00 a.m. I was wakened by a loud crash in
the apartment. My flashlight revealed nothing
out of order in the bedroom, but when I looked into the middle room I saw
chaos. Four bookshelves attached to the
wall had come loose and fallen down, heaping my partner Bob’s books on my
computer, Bob’s wheelchair, and the floor.
I have never seen such devastation in the apartment. Had I been sitting at my computer, I might
well have received a concussion from the falling shelves. The books have now been removed to a bunch of
cartons, and I shall see about restoring the shelves, which I installed when we
moved in a mere 44 years ago. Bob has
vowed to get rid of many books, which is music to my ears, since there are more
shelves attached to a longer wall behind the computer, likewise installed 44
years ago. Nothing lasts forever.
Though neither of us had a full night’s
sleep, I went to the Union Square greenmarket as usual, and there encountered
the following:
· A woman whose T-shirt proclaimed, GOD BELONGS IN MY
CITY.
· Little kids four feet tall with clipboards, making
notes on what they experienced in the market.
· A bearded drummer sitting shrouded in a long plastic
bag, beating obsessively on a cardboard box and being photographed by tourists.
· An Asian couple, each with a tiny infant suspended on
their chest.
· A six foot plus young black man being towed on a
skateboard by his girlfriend.
· An Asian and a Caucasian woman, surprised to see each
other there and flashing smiles and greeting each other rapturously.
· An older black woman in radiant blue, walking slowly,
inch by inch, with a cane.
· Little kids staring in wonder at pumpkins almost as
big as they were.
· A vendor at my organic bread stand whose T-shirt
insisted, “Tibet sera libre.”
· And a vast array of apples (maybe fifteen kinds),
peaches, plums, root vegetables, a dozen kinds of winter squash, celeriac (“The
frog prince of vegetables”), broccoli, kale, bison meat, cheeses, bread,
preserves – you name it.
For a taste of the energy and
diversity of New York, you can’t do better than the Union Square greenmarket.
Coming soon: Wall Street, greed, and addiction. And when a former president of the New York
Stock Exchange pleaded guilty to grand larceny, what one offense did his
colleagues find unforgivable?
©
2014 Clifford Browder
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