Fulton J. Sheen

American religious leader

• Born: May 8, 1895
• Birthplace: El Paso, Illinois
• Died: December 9, 1979
• Place of death: New York, New York

A candidate for sainthood, Sheen was a successful author and media personality, particularly known, by Roman Catholics and non-Catholics alike, for his radio program The Catholic Hour, which aired during the 1930’s and 1940’s. He also had television shows, Life Is Worth Living and The Bishop Sheen Program, which aired during the 1950’s and 1960’s.

Early Life

Fulton J. Sheen, born Peter Sheen in El Paso, Illinois, was the oldest of four sons of Morris Newton Sheen and Delia Fulton Sheen. Sheen’s father ran a hardware store in El Paso, but when the store was destroyed in a fire shortly after Sheen’s birth, the family eventually settled in the city of Peoria, located thirty miles to the west. When he entered the first grade at St. Mary’s School in 1900, his first name was formally changed from Peter to Fulton, apparently by his maternal grandfather.

Sheen grew up in a strict Roman Catholic family and began his service in the Church by serving as an altar boy at St. Mary’s Cathedral in Peoria. He also showed early academic promise, graduating as valedictorian of his seven-member class at Spaulding Institute in Peoria and then attending St. Viator College in Bourbonnais, Illinois. In 1917 he entered the St. Paul Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota, and following two years of study there, was ordained to the priesthood on September 20, 1919, at St. Mary’s Cathedral.

Sheen continued his education at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., and then at the University of Louvain in Belgium, where he completed a doctorate in philosophy in 1923. His work at Louvain so impressed his teachers that he was invited to work on a prestigious postgraduate degree in philosophy, which he completed in 1925. The dissertation written for this latter degree formed the basis for his first book, God and Intelligence , published the same year.

While completing his work at Louvain, Sheen lived for a time in England, where he made the acquaintance of such famous English Catholics of the period as Father Ronald Knox and writer G. K. Chesterton. After finishing his postgraduate degree, Sheen was called back to Peoria by his bishop and served for eight months at St. Patrick’s Church, which was located in one of the poorest sections of the city. At the end of this period he was informed that he was being sent to join the faculty at Catholic University, where he arrived in the fall of 1926.

During the years that followed, Sheen built a reputation both as an academic and as a highly sought-after public speaker. It was this latter direction that led him in the late 1920’s into radio broadcasting, and he launched his career as a media personality.

Life’s Work

Sheen first appeared on radio in the spring of 1928 when he delivered a series of Lenten sermons on New York station WLWL. In response to the controversy surrounding the popular Catholic “radio priest” Father Charles Coughlin, who had begun broadcasting a weekly program in 1926, the major networks of the day, NBC and CBS, offered free time to religious groups that were offering a more moderate program content. When The Catholic Hour began under these auspices on New York station WEAF in the spring of 1930, Sheen quickly became a regular speaker. By 1933, fifty-four NBC affiliates were carrying the program and many individuals Sheen claimed as many as fifty a week in 1936 were said to be converting to the Catholic faith as a result of listening to the broadcasts.

Sheen remained with The Catholic Hour until 1952. During these years his popularity continued to grow. A steady stream of books appeared, including printed copies of his radio talks as well as more extensive works based on them. Some of the latter, such as Peace of Soul in 1949, became best sellers. He was also instrumental in converting a number of prominent personalities of the day to the Catholic religion, among them American Communist writer Louis Budenz, Austrian American violinist Fritz Kreisler, American journalist and playwright Clare Booth Luce, and American industrialist Henry Ford II. Also during this time he moved up the ecclesiastical ladder, being granted the title of monsignor in 1934 and becoming an auxiliary bishop in the Archdiocese of New York in 1950. In 1950 he was also named director of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, an organization for which he did extensive fund-raising in support of the Church’s missionary activities over the years.

In 1951, in the early days of television, Sheen was approached about the possibility of doing a television show. His weekly program, Life Is Worth Living , premiered on the Du Mont Network on February 12, 1952. Despite stiff competition from rival networks NBC and CBS, which were running shows at the same time starring comedian Milton Berle and actor-singer Frank Sinatra, Sheen’s half-hour program quickly caught on. The show’s format had Sheen appearing in full bishop’s regalia in what looked to be a study and giving talks on popular religious and moral topics of the day. Unseen stage-hands, whom he referred to as “angels,” would erase off camera the blackboard he used to illustrate his talks. The show’s success won Sheen an Emmy Award for Most Outstanding Television Personality in 1952. Viewed by Catholics and non-Catholics alike, Life Is Worth Living remained on the air until 1957, and after an absence of four years, he returned to television with a syndicated program entitled The Fulton Sheen Program that ran from 1961 to 1968. Although he generally stayed clear of politics in his programs, Sheen was an outspoken opponent of communism throughout his radio and television careers.

In 1966, Sheen was named bishop of Rochester, New York. Some questions exist regarding the reasons underlying this appointment. While it gave him a diocese of his own to head, it also removed him from the running as a successor to Cardinal Joseph Spellman as archbishop of New York. (Spellman and Sheen had a stormy relationship during the years that Sheen served under him as auxiliary bishop, and it has been suggested that Spellman engineered Sheen’s appointment some called it exile to Rochester.) The years in Rochester, although marked by some successes, particularly in the area of ecumenical relations, were also years of controversy for Sheen, and he resigned the position in 1969. These also were the years of the Church reforms resulting from the Second Vatican Council, which Sheen, for the most part, supported, and of the Vietnam War, which he opposed. He again clashed publicly with Spellman on these issues in particular.

Sheen’s health began to deteriorate in the 1970’s. In July of 1977 he underwent open heart surgery and, although he survived the operation, he continued in a gradual decline. He died on December 9, 1979, in New York City. A famous photograph taken just two months before his death shows him embracing Pope John Paul II, the last of five pontiffs he had known personally during his lifetime. The process of Sheen’s canonization (elevation to sainthood within the Church) was officially begun in 2002.

Significance

Sheen was quite probably the best-known American Catholic clergyman of the twentieth century. While his success on both radio and television formed the basis for his celebrity, he was also a prolific author, with well over sixty books to his credit. In his radio and television programs and in his writings he spoke out on what he considered to be the great issues of the times: secularism, moral decline, and the importance of religious faith. He remained throughout his career a brilliant, charismatic, and sometimes enigmatic figure who specialized in bringing his strongly held beliefs and ideas to the masses.

Bibliography

Ladd, Gregory Joseph. Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen: A Man for All Media. San Francisco, Calif.: Ignatius Press, 2001. A sumptuous collection of photographs of Sheen at various stages of his career, accompanied by quotations from his writings, speeches, and sermons.

Massa, Mark J. Catholics and American Culture: Fulton Sheen, Dorothy Day, and the Notre Dame Football Team. New York: Crossroad, 1999. Contains a chapter on Sheen placing him in the context of the history of the Catholic Church and American culture in the twentieth century.

Noonan, D. P. The Passion of Fulton Sheen. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1972. An early, somewhat negative biography written by a priest who once served as his assistant.

Reeves, Thomas C. America’s Bishop: The Life and Times of Fulton J. Sheen. San Francisco, Calif.: Encounter Books, 2001. A well-researched and thorough biography of Sheen.

Riley, Kathleen L. Fulton J. Sheen: An American Catholic Response to the Twentieth Century. Staten Island, N.Y.: St. Pauls/Alba House, 2004. An excellent biography based on the author’s 1988 doctoral dissertation on Sheen and his place in American Catholic history.

Sheen, Fulton J. Treasure in Clay: The Autobiography of Fulton J. Sheen. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1980. Sheen’s posthumously published autobiography, dated but still valuable as a primary source.