America's Bishop: The Life and Times of Fulton J. Sheen

by Thomas C. Reeves

Book Overview

Among Fulton J. Sheen's thousands of converts were celebrities such as Clare Booth Luce and Henry Ford II, and former communists Louis Budenz and Elizabeth Bentley. Reeves discusses these conversions... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1893554252
• ISBN13: 9781893554252
• Release Date: October 2001
• Publisher: Encounter Books
• Length: 479 Pages
• Weight: 2.06 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.6" x 6.4" x 9.4"

Customer Reviews

A Brilliant Cleric: He Told Us So Himself

Fulton J. Sheen will never be canonized a saint in the Roman Catholic Church for two obvious reasons: his sins are bright scarlet and we know them too well. Sheen established a television intimacy with the American public in the 1950's that only a few individuals have achieved-Walter Cronkite and Johnny Carson come to mind-through his apostolic use of that explosive new video medium. I was a lad in Catholic elementary school when Sheen delivered his prime time homilies from 1952 through 1957. While I remember little of the content of those shows, I was captivated by the style. Sheen, I noticed, paused to let the audience think. None of my local priests did that, nor did they have Skippy the angel to erase the blackboard. Thomas Reeves is to be commended for the manner in which he tells the truth, the whole truth, about Sheen without defacing the Bishop's many good works and his positive influence upon a wide and diverse American public. Sheen's life was indeed a message "written with crooked lines" and one is reminded of Christ's words to the penitent woman, "her sins, many as they are, will be forgiven because of her great love." Though haunted by the pride and ambition that would seem to stalk nearly all television evangelists who followed, in the final analysis Sheen did love his God, though he himself ran a close second. Born in 1895 on a farm in rural Illinois, the youthful Peter John Sheen was devout, smart, and disdainful of manual labor and farming. He was hardly the first country boy to see the cloth as a step up from shoveling manure. We forget that he was originally a priest of the Peoria, Illinois, diocese, possibly because of his distinguished academic record at the Louvain. There is an air of mystery about Sheen's academic status, though. Desperate to escape a life in Peoria, Sheen joined the philosophy faculty of Catholic University in 1926 but never became "one of the boys" of the staff. In fact, tenure was denied him for some years, in part because the young priest was away from the campus three days a week for his growing number of speaking engagements. [In 1928 he hired a clipping service to track his press notices.] Catholic University itself was in academic, political, and organizational disarray. The school was frankly under-funded and underachieving. Perhaps to ease himself out of the philosophy department and into theology, Sheen invented for himself a second doctorate, an S.T.D. that suddenly appeared after his name in 1928 and which remained on his letterhead as late as 1966. Reeves speculates that Sheen got away with this massive deception precisely because it was so audacious and no one would have expected it of him. Reeves wonders if Sheen is under-appreciated today as a scholastic. Although brilliant and prolific, Sheen was not original, and added nothing of substance to twentieth century philosophy. Sheen's strength was apologetics: the presentation of Catholic faith and devotion in simple, straightforward, and

Wonderful book about a very great man.

This is a book that has been ignored by the media which does not want to hear about good Catholic clergy. The media only wants to know about scandal in the church - because the Catholic Church and that which it really stands for(as contrasted with the deedsof the fallible priests,and lay Catholics that can be found within it) is the mortal enemy to secular humanism, sexual license, abortion and the "if it FEELS right, do it" philosopy that is held so dear by much of the media.The book is a great inspiration because Bishop Sheen, with all his human failings, is an inspiration to us all.

A Great Book

Unlike some of the other reviewers, I found this book to be not only an excellent read, but I thought that Reeves truly makes a case for the canonization of Fulton Sheen. While not ignoring Sheen's vanity or love of the good life, Reeves points out that Sheen often emptied his pockets to help someone in need and that he worked tirelessly for the conversion of sinners. I thoroughly enjoyed the book and grew to respect Bishop Sheen even more.

Extraordinary Biography--Extraordinary Man

Thomas Reeves's biography of Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen (1895-1979) is superbly crafted. This is not hagiography, for Bishop Sheen had faults and flaws--pride and an inclination to luxury chief among them, Reeves tells us. But Reeves's balanced and thoroughly researched study reveals a man of whom it truly is not too much to say that he, Sheen, was holy. For Archbishop Sheen, Reeves explains, "believed himself driven by the Holy Spirit, loved by a Savior, supported by a Holy Mother, inspired by the Vicar of Christ" (348). A brilliant lecturer, prolific author, and passionate defender of the Catholic faith, the Archbishop was also persuaded that "the closer we get to Christ the closer [Protestants and Catholics] get to one another" (349). Here is the story of a priest-bishop who gave away millions of dollars to charity, traveled millions of miles to spread the Gospel he loved, and wrote millions of words (and hundreds of books and pamphlets), dedicating his life and extraordinary talents to the service of Christ. Although Bishop Sheen was given to bouts of vanity, he was at the same time intensely devoted to spiritual excellence, and he modeled his deep devotion for decades as, arguably, the best-known (and, no doubt, the best educated) preacher of his time. Reeves tells us, correctly of course, that the actor Martin Sheen took his last name from Bishop Sheen with his permission. Bishop Sheen converted to Catholicism numerous well-known people, including atheists and communists, and countless ordinary people who were seeking a spiritual center for their lives. Reeves's book is as clear, concise, and cogent as it is well documented. This book is a major contribution, not just to Church history, but to American history and biography. One cannot come away from it without concluding, as does Reeves, that Fulton J. Sheen's writing, and indeed his life, were about bringing "solace, healing, and hope to hearts; truth and enlightenment to minds; goodness, strength, and resolution to wills" (4). Bishop Sheen was an extraordinary preacher and teacher, and Reeves's superb biography is worthy of its subject.