Blessed Fulton Sheen: A Saint for America
I was fortunate and (no pun intended) blessed to attend the beatification of Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen on Thursday, along with my colleagues at the invaluable CatholicVote. As I sat in the press box in the Dome at America’s Center in St. Louis, Missouri, I was deeply moved watching the priests process into the stadium.
The orchestral music was full of solemn pomp and an almost martial majesty, ushering an estimated 1,000 priests down the center aisle. They lined up in rows of five or six, and the columns of men clad in white vestments never seemed to end. Their flowing chasuble had the aura of knights of a military order, soldiers in uniform on the march to confront some evil or celebrate some triumph.
Then came the bishops, many of them older, some of them stooped or bowed, but all crowned beneath their miters. If I may continue the military analogy, they were clearly the officers, the generals, weighed down with the enormous gravity of their responsibilities. The procession alone lasted well over half an hour.
The moment was an awe-inspiring one — the mere scale of clerical presence alone would have made it so — but what struck me particularly was the fact that these were, largely, American men marching below me. The astounding columns of white robes represented over 1,000 of my fellow Americans and my fellow Catholics — all gathered together to celebrate an American Catholic hero: Blessed Fulton Sheen. (RELATED: Fulton Sheen and the Saints Who Still Walk Among Us)
Sheen is distinctly American. Although he is being raised to the altars of the Universal Church, and is therefore upheld as an example of virtue and holiness for Catholics around the globe, he exudes the American spirit and somehow managed over the course of his life to perfectly marry his American nature with the truth, beauty, and authority of the Catholic Church, which he devoted his whole life to loving and serving. (RELATED: Fulton Sheen and a Real-Life Miracle)
Born in El Paso, Illinois, in 1895, Sheen dedicated himself to the Church and to American excellence early on, serving as an altar boy at the Cathedral of Saint Mary of the Immaculate Conception in Peoria and graduating from the Catholic Spalding Institute as a valedictorian before heading into the seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota. Ordained a priest in 1919, Sheen studied at the Catholic University of America and the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium, earning a doctorate in philosophy and becoming the first American to win the prestigious Cardinal Mercier Prize for the best philosophical treatise.
A gifted scholar, Sheen was pursued by both Columbia University and the University of Oxford in England, but humbly submitted to taking a parish assignment in his home diocese of Peoria instead. He then went to England, where he met Monsignor Ronald Knox and taught theology at St. Edmund’s College. Upon returning to the U.S. in 1928, Sheen took a post teaching at the Catholic University of America, where he remained for the next 22 years.
Starting in 1930, Sheen began a weekly NBC radio broadcast, The Catholic Hour, which was the beginning of a nearly-40-year crusade in media. His television show Life Is Worth Living, launched in 1952, became one of the most popular shows in the country, drawing 30 million weekly viewers and netting Sheen three Emmy nominations — and one win.
Sheen’s success is a uniquely American story: a theology professor with a cape and a chalkboard not only soared to popularity on the airwaves but bested the well-known Texaco Star Hour starring Milton Berle and The Frank Sinatra Show, which was cancelled shortly after Sheen’s show premiered, likely due to the success of the priest’s program.
Berle is said to have acknowledged Sheen’s popularity and humbly celebrated the success of Life Is Worth Living, even at the expense of his own show’s popularity. “If I’m going to be eased off the top by anyone, it’s better that I lose to the One for whom Bishop Sheen is speaking,” the comedian quipped.
America loves an underdog story, from a ragtag band of farmers and tradesmen besting the mightiest military power in the world in 1776 to Rocky and The Karate Kid — even President Donald Trump’s successful White House campaigns. Sheen’s was a classic American tale: a Catholic priest with no laugh track, no writing staff, just a chalkboard and a philosophy degree, not only competing with but outshining the most popular professional stars of his age.
So much more could be said of Sheen’s life and legacy — and much more has been said, by those far more knowledgeable, far more virtuous, and far more eloquent than I — but what so moved my heart on Thursday was the reality that Sheen is America’s saint, and his unique union of the American spirit with the Catholic Faith inspired over 1,000 men, his own fellow priests, to march in his honor, to joyously celebrate the honor being bestowed upon him, and to model themselves more and more closely in his image of virtue, courage, and clarity.
America now has a Blessed in Heaven, securing graces and blessings for the nation that he loved so dearly in his earthly life. Nor do we have just any Blessed — it’s Fulton J. Sheen, one of the most articulate, ingenious, and indomitable souls of the past century. Many of us are familiar with his oratory prowess; imagine that voice, so clear, so strong, so American, beseeching Our Blessed Lord, whom he loved and served so well, for graces for our nation.
Sheen may now be formally known as Blessed, but our nation is also blessed to have such an advocate in Heaven. As America continues to face existential and moral threats — from mass immigration and abortion to foreign enemies and domestic subversives — do not forget to ask for the intercession of America’s saint. Blessed Fulton J. Sheen, pray for us.
READ MORE from S.A. McCarthy:
Fulton Sheen and the Saints Who Still Walk Among Us
Charlie Kirk and the 9/11 Heroes Show that Life Is Worth Living Well