Thomas C. Reeves,
America’s Bishop:
The Life and Times of Fulton J. Sheen
Encounter Books, 2001
479 pp., $25.95
If anyone deserves a good biography it is Fulton J. Sheen. And Thomas C. Reeves
has given him one.
Fulton Sheen, Titular Archbishop of Newport on the Isle of Wight, one-time
Bishop of Rochester (1966-1969), was likely the most famous American priest of
the twentieth century. Dead since 1979, he undoubtedly enjoys giving St. Peter
advice he doesn’t need, but he’s likely remembered on earth for the less
important aspects of his priesthood—66 books and an equal number of shorter
works, Advent and Lenten appearances in the pulpit of St. Patrick’s Cathedral,
weekly Catholic Hour radio talks, professor at the Catholic University of
America, becoming “Uncle Fultie” during the 1950s to “Uncle Miltie” Berle as a
result of his remarkable weekly performances on Dumont’s Life is Worth Living.
Few could match his TV glamour, and no Catholic could equal his talent as
evangelizer.
Essentially, Fulton Sheen was a priest of unusual and vigorous Catholic faith
with a remarkable piety (a holy hour before the Blessed Sacrament every day, a
devotion he passed on to others, e.g. John Tracy Ellis), an innate drive to
preach the gospel brilliantly, to help the needy and to “make disciples.” He
would poke his nose into other people’s lives, as converts Heywood Braun and
Clare Booth Luce could attest. In his lifetime he gave $10,000,000 of monies
that came his way. And to watch people in St. Patrick’s Cathedral reach out to
touch him only demonstrated the God-given charism he possessed. This is the
Sheen God created.
But the Sheen that the public knew best was the one the media reported. And
Thomas Reeves recalls this record with remarkable fullness. Any biographer who
discovers that Sheen as an infant was a “cry baby” and ended his days at 500
East 77th Street has done his homework. There was hardly a public subject Sheen
did not confront—American poverty, the Vietnam War which he opposed, the
secularizing of American culture, the Communist conspiracy in the U.S., Catholic
doctrine, etc. Reeves reports Sheen as saying: “While I fear a country which
outlaws prayer in the schools, I fear still more for a people who surrender
control of their law-making bodies.” The New York Times would look upon
him as an advocate of right-wing causes, especially since J. Edgar Hoover was
his good friend, although in truth Sheen was a broad ranged spokesman for
Catholic thinking on private and public morality.
Thomas Reeves has Sheen everywhere saying everything in eleven chapters, the
more fascinating being “The Loss of God, the Beginning of Tyranny,” “Global
Thinking,” advising scholars to go beyond their noses, “The Television Man of
the Year,” “Exile” (to Rochester), and “Frail Defender.” During his final days
Sheen was conscious that the Church would become a widow if she married
modernity, and affirmed that obedience, as well as enquiry, was always a badge
of Catholic thought. His very Catholicity brought out the worst in
Protestants and Others United for Separating Church and State, and he
suspected a certain anti-Catholicism in FDR.
The unfortunate thing in modern times about biographies is that the subject ends
up psychologized and politicized, as if, for all his virtues, the hero is
flawed, or an idol with clay feet. So Sheen is vain, ambitious, money-mad, “not
one to listen to the views of others.” Reeves is better than most, but his book
would receive less scholarly attention if Sheen came off simon-pure. We forget
that Sheen was unique—a “oner”—whose vices, such as they were, are merely the
seamy side of any man’s (or woman’s) virtues. A strong leader can become stem, a
compassionate leader wimpish or indecisive, even though particular vice need not
follow, nor be a vice at all, save in the mind of a sociopath.
Consider the battle between two “oners”—Sheen vs. Spellman. Somehow Sheen had
the idea in 1938 that he might succeed Cardinal Hayes as Archbishop of New York.
Foolish maybe, but he was so upset a year later when Spellman was named (“He has
nothing”) that “he took to bed for several days.” Perhaps Sheen was a seeker of
aggrandizement, but he was also a somebody, and I liked him. John Tracy Ellis,
who lived with him, brought me to his $80,000 home in D.C. (1943) and the place
seemed to fit him. We did not become friends until years later. In 1972 we were
both watching Paul VI greet an audience when he asked me what I was doing in
Rome. Once I told him that I was “attending the Congress of Catholic
Universities,” he rejoined: “I tell my relatives to send their children to
non-Catholic universities where they will have to fight for their faith, rather
than to a Catholic university where it will be stolen from them.” Six months
before he died, we both attended the 100th anniversary of St. Monica’s Church, I
the preacher, he a parishioner. During Communion time, from which we were both
exempt, Sheen asked where the church got its name. I simply told him that the
first pastor (1879) thought the teen-age behavior of the neighborhood was so
outrageous that the parish needed a patron saint who knew all about wayward
sons. At the Mass’s end Cardinal Cooke called upon Archbishop Sheen to say a few
words, Already 84, frail, and due to die before the year was out, Sheen rose and
gave the best disquisition on the relationship of Monica and her wayward son
Augustine that I ever heard, before or since.
Bishop Sheen made
one mistake, however. He forgot that “oner” or no, he was Number 2 to Spellman.
He might have prized the episcopacy as a place of honor, but Spellman prized his
Cardinal’s hat for its authority of governance. And he was a master at using it.
The Cardinal recognized Sheen’s gifts, made him national director of the
Propagation of the Faith (1950), almost immediately his own auxiliary bishop,
and gave him the go-ahead. Within a short time, Spellman was complaining to New
York priests at their annual retreat that New York’s Propagation of the Faith
was down several millions short that year because “Uncle Fultie” was poaching on
Spellie’s private millionaires in New York. (Even the National Council of
Catholic Men, which ran Sheen’s Catholic Hour, accused the bishop of
diverting to his Propagation the contributions coming to them, which paid for
the broadcasts.) Fultie might get the money, but it in time was a battle that
would cost him influence.
Bishop Sheen was transferred out of New York in 1966 to become Bishop of
Rochester. Some think it was a case of Spellman’s revenge but “the little man”
was not so crude. The Cardinal was old, conscious of his own end, and he wanted
Terence Cooke to succeed him. So it was important to him that Sheen not be on
hand in New York should he die. Some Italian Cardinal might have convinced Paul
VI that Sheen was the best choice to succeed. Being Archbishop of New York would
have been a brilliant move had Sheen Spellman’ s talent at having the right
coadjutor also in place. We used to say, “Mcintyre (later John Maguire) runs New
York. Spellman runs the world.” But as Rochester proved, the country’s greatest
preacher was inept as a diocesan pastor. He waffled in his ideology, trying to
prove he was post-Vatican II, when he was hardly that in the jargon of the day.
His smarty line “In four years John XXIII undid 400 years,” was what dissenters
intended to do with the Council of Trent. Rochester priests began to rebel
against decisions that he alone had the right to make. Reeves has him waffling
on Humanae Vitae, although Sheen’s reported response on the David Frost
show seems convoluted. Anyway by 1969—after only three years of Bishopping—the
last straw was laid on his 74-year-old body and he resigned.
In any event, Fulton Sheen was the 20th century’s most celebrated priest,
Spellman one of the Church’s most effective bishops, and Thomas Reeves one of
the best biographers it has been my pleasure to read. May, somehow, their kinds
be reduplicated in the 21st.
Msgr. George Kelly
is a renowned churchman, a keen observer of the American ecclesiastical scene,
and a best selling author.
