The canonisation cause for Emmy Award-winning Archbishop Fulton Sheen is gaining considerable groundswell, especially in Perth, just as the Church reels from the sexual abuse crisis
By Anthony Barich
Analysis
THE sainthood cause of Archbishop Fulton Sheen could prove a defining moment for the Catholic Church and its priesthood in Australia as well as in the US, where the late prelate worked.
There is a groundswell of support for his cause which in Australia is led by Perth father and son team Daniel and Martin Tobin who annually organise a fundraising concert which, along with promoting the cause, funds initiatives like Archbishop Barry Hickey’s occasional spots on Channel Nine.
Sheen himself was a success on commercial television, beating contemporary pop-culture icons Lucille Ball and Edward R Murrow for an Emmy award for Most Outstanding Television Personality in 1952 for his show Life is worth living, which he hosted for six years. In his acceptance speech, he thanked his “writers” – Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
Sheen was the 1950s-era TV Bishop who, at the height of his fame, commanded an audience estimated at 30 million. He also hosted for 20 years The Catholic Hour on radio and The Fulton Sheen Programme on TV for seven years.
Sheen’s success a half-century ago came at a critical moment when American Catholicism was “struggling to emerge from the ghetto”, seasoned Vatican observer John Allen Jnr of the National Catholic Reporter said during the week of the 30th anniversary of Sheen’s death in December last year.
Today, as the Church reels from the sexual abuse crisis and, in the US, divisive forays into the world of politics, there has arisen a man some say is the new Fulton Sheen – self-deprecating, with a sense of humour, yet with an apparently equally insatiable appetite for Catholic tradition, teaching and lore: Archbishop Timothy Dolan.
Sheen’s cause received a significant shot in the arm when Archbishop Dolan, in his 14 July installation speech as Archbishop of New York, cited Sheen as one of the “great priestly heroes” of the influential Archdiocese’s history, along with Cuban Fr Felix Varela who fought for the abolition of slavery in the early 1800s and renowned theologian and diplomat Cardinal Avery Dulles.
“When the Archbishop of New York gives his installation speech, people listen; and when he says in that speech that Fulton Sheen was one of his greatest inspirations, he’s sending a message,” Martin Tobin told The Record.
But Dolan went further. The Archbishop, who also has a regular weekly radio programme and whom The New York Times called the “Archbishop of Charm”, celebrated a special Mass marking the 30th anniversary of Sheen’s death on 9 December last year in New York’s St Patrick’s Cathedral.
“He wanted to get to Heaven, and he wanted bring the whole world with him,” Dolan said of Sheen in his homily. “As members of a supernatural family, the Church, we gather to thank God for him, eager to swap stories about a particular episode, a witty comment, a word of advice, a particular quote, his hypnotic eyes, his soothing yet challenging voice, or an occasion when we were with him.”
For Sheen, Jesus was “alive, still active, still powerful, still teaching, still healing, still leading us to heaven” because the Incarnation was “still going on,” Archbishop Dolan said, adding that Jesus is as alive in His Church as He was “on the shores of the Sea of Galilee.”
Dolan related in his homily how, when he met Sheen while a seminarian in Rome, a crowd had gathered around Sheen as he said he’s just met with Pope Paul VI, who took his hand and said: “Fulton Sheen, you will have a high place in heaven”.
Sheen quipped straight back with: “Your Holiness, would you mind making that an infallible statement?” On one of his own weekly radio programmes, Dolan said of Sheen: “He was sometimes styled as a shallow populariser, but deep down he had a towering intellect” – an attribute Allen also says Dolan has in spades.
However, canonisation causes are difficult to gauge. Speculation was rife in Australian secular media for months about when Mary MacKillop would be made a saint.
While one miracle must be verified for beatification and another for canonisation, the public never hears about it until the Pope declares it has been approved.
Many secular news outlets speculated without any actual evidence that MacKillop’s canonisation would occur during World Youth Day 2008, when the second miracle had not even been approved yet.
Sr Pauline Morgan, WA Provincial head of the Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart which Mary MacKillop founded, told The Record that while the process is known, how long it takes is anyone’s guess.
“Whether it takes three months or three years to assess the miracles we have no idea, so it was a lovely surprise that things happened so quickly in the past year. People say that, as the Pope prayed at Mary’s tomb it would move quickly, but while it probably made it more personal to him by having been here, we have no idea what particularly motivated the process to speed up” she said.
A sainthood cause for Sheen was launched in 2002 by the diocese of Peoria, Illinois, where he was born Peter John, the oldest of four sons, but became known as Fulton, his mother’s maiden name.
Franciscan Friar of the Renewal Fr Andrew Apostoli, the Vice-Postulator of Sheen’s cause whom Sheen ordained to the priesthood, confirmed to EWTN that two miracles have been submitted as possible miracles for Sheen’s beatification.
One is the alleged cure of an infant boy whom doctors discovered had a life threatening condition 12 hours after his birth, now aged six and in perfect health; the other is the case of an “older woman” with a burst aorta who “should have died on the operating table” and whose husband prayed for two hours to Sheen for God’s healing. The boy is now named Fulton John, while the woman is also in good health.
Sheen, who died of heart disease on 9 December 1979, is now a Servant of God, a term used for people whose lives are being investigated in consideration for official recognition by the Pope and the Church as a saint.
Pope John Paul II – who in October 1979 embraced Sheen, saying “You have written and spoken well of the Lord Jesus. You have been a loyal son of the Church” – also has Servant of God status.
Sheen’s teachings are gaining a new foothold with today’s generation as the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN) started re-broadcasting his shows last year. While he wrote 65 books himself and numerous articles and pamphlets, new books are still being written about his life.
“If there is a Fulton Sheen of this generation – meaning an American Bishop with the same capacity to engage a national audience, to make Catholicism seem attractive to a secular world – it’s probably Timothy Dolan,” Allen said, describing Dolan as “relentlessly upbeat”.
“The most immediate thing that strikes the casual observer is this: He doesn’t seem to be mad at anybody. Dolan just radiates hope, and that alone is sometimes enough to move mountains,” Allen said of Dolan.
Fr Apostoli said that Sheen, who had a “flair for the dramatic”, had a chief concern for the reform and renewal of the priesthood.
“At my ordination he said something that still haunts me: ‘if there’s any key to reform of Church and salvation of world it lies in a renewal of the priesthood’,” Fr Apostoli said.
Sheen had a particular passion for the true reforms of the Second Vatican Council to be implemented, but lamented how “the spirit of the world” had entered the Church, Fr Apostoli said.
This was highlighted powerfully for Sheen when Bella Dodd, a Communist he converted to Catholicism, told him that Russian dictator Josef Stalin said the greatest enemy of Communism was the Catholic Church, and the best way to destroy the Church was to have men who have no faith enter the priesthood.
Bella had spent 20 years helping over 1,000 of such men to the priesthood.
While Sheen also had a particular focus on empowering lay people realise their universal baptismal call to holiness, Martin Tobin believes that Sheen’s hopeful canonisation could spell a renewal of the Church and the priesthood and their perception in the wider world, especially in light of Sheen’s particular concern for the priesthood.