That Bishop Fulton Sheen’s beatification received an official White House proclamation from the Trump regime should raise some doubts about the propriety of his canonization:
‘Melania and I join all those celebrating the life and legacy of Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen—the Catholic priest who pioneered the use of media to speak the truth, preach the Gospel, and bring many souls closer to Christ. Today, Archbishop Sheen will become the first-ever American-born bishop to be beatified by the Catholic Church.’ Etc.
A little digging confirms the suspicion. Two major problems emerge: his friendliness towards Americanism and his acceptance of the Second Vatican Council.
Bishop Sheen was quite bold in his statements in support of the latter and quite strident in his condemnation of those who rejected it:
‘Archbishop Fulton Sheen’s autobiography Treasure in Clay, which was written just before his death in 1979 and published posthumously, devotes an entire chapter to Sheen’s experience at Vatican II. In his memoirs, Sheen deemed the Council’s document Gaudium et Spes to be “brilliant” (p. 247); he fondly recalled his audiences with both pre-Vatican-II popes such as Pius XI and Pius XII and post-Vatican-II popes such as Bl. John XXIII and Paul VI. Within one year of John Paul II’s election, he was already predicting that John Paul II would be one of the greatest popes in the history of the Church (p. 244).
‘In addressing the post-conciliar upheaval in the years since the close of the Second Vatican Council, Sheen had this to say:
‘“The tensions that developed after the Council are not surprising to those who know the whole history of the Church. It is a historical fact that whenever there is an outpouring of the Holy Spirit as in a general council of the Church, there is always an extra show of force by the anti-Spirit or the demonic. Even at the beginning, immediately after Pentecost and the descent of the Spirit upon the apostles, there began a persecution and the murder of Stephen. If a general council did not provoke the spirit of turbulence, one might almost doubt the operation of the third Person of the Trinity over the assembly.” (pp. 292–293)’
As part of that enthusiasm for Vatican II, Bp Sheen was prominent in promoting ecumenism:
‘In promoting Vatican II decisions, Sheen was highly active in the area of inter-confessional relations. For example, on January 30, 1967 as Bishop of Rochester, he addressed a crowd of 2,300 in a Jewish synagogue. It is good to remember that at that time to visit a synagogue was a very bold step that only a few ardent promoters of Progressivism would dare to take.
‘A month later, he addressed an audience of 900 Jewish and ‘Christian’ leaders, sharing the platform with a rabbi. In his speech he stated: ”We have the same God and we are His people.” (Reeves, pp. 306-307).
‘As Bishop of Rochester, he promoted many inter-faith meetings and events. He was one of the main speakers, for example, at the second annual Ecumenical Day of Prayer for Christian Unity held at Eastman Theater in 1967. When Billy Graham came to Rochester to preach, Sheen urged all his staff to attend as a gesture of good will.
‘He personally owned some 3,000 books on Scripture by Protestant scholars, which he read and encouraged his priests to use. When a priest argued that they were taught in seminary not to read Protestant commentators, Sheen laughed and responded, “Vicar, you’ve got to remember that the Holy Spirit works through them too.” (Reeves, pp. 307, 309)
‘In order to encourage good will with other religions he founded the Sheen Ecumenical Housing Foundation that exists to this day.’
Bp Sheen’s affinity for Americanism also raises some serious concerns. Here he affirms classical liberal (i.e., non-Christian) ideas about man:
‘Firstly, his rights come from God, and therefore cannot be taken away; secondly, the State exists to preserve them. . . . The recognition of the inalienable rights of the human person is Americanism, or to put it another way, an affirmation of the inherent dignity and worth of man.’
This is against the Scriptures and Church history. For the State was given to us by God not to preserve ‘human rights’ but for the sake of punishing evildoers and honoring those who do what is good and right (I Peter 2:13-14). Orthodox Christian rulers (both clergy and non-clergy, bishops and kings) from the 4th century onward from Ethiopia to Georgia and all across Europe also expected the State to protect and favor the Church, promote Christianity among the people, and suppress heresy – not to take on the functions of the Church, not to become the Church, but to cooperate with Her for the salvation/deification of man. All the nonsense about government being concerned with protecting rights was a fairly recent development, beginning in earnest after Protestants and Roman Catholics had slaughtered one another and devastated much of western Europe in the Thirty Years War (1618-48) and the Enlightenment philosophy began to arise.
He gives credence to the silly notion that government is a contract of consenting citizens:
‘For Sheen, freedom in spiritual matters required freedom in temporal affairs. The power of government comes from God, Sheen granted, but only through persons’ consenting to form that government: “Our rights come from God. . . . If God is the ultimate source of rights and liberties, what is their proximate source? The person. Only a person has rights, because only a person has a reason and a will.” Each person exercises this reason and will to consent to government, and the inherent dignity of the person sets limits on what the state may do. Sheen located this idea in the Declaration of Independence. Citing the work of the legal scholar James Brown Scott, he insisted that Thomas Jefferson had learned that “government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed” not from John Locke, but from Robert Bellarmine’s arguments in De Laicis. But more important to Sheen than provenance was the fact that what Jefferson and Bellarmine argued was simply true: Popular sovereignty, arising from “the affirmation of the intrinsic rights of man,” was “the only solid basis upon which any government can be built.”’
And he backed the canard of religious liberty/pluralism:
‘At the Council, Sheen contributed to the passage of the Declaration on Religious Liberty, in which Fr. John Courtney Murray – an American Jesuit – played an important role supported by the American Bishops. Sheen applauded the Council Prelates because “they generally followed the American Bishops and their stress on religious liberty” (ibid, p 293).
‘Like many American Prelates of the time, he championed freedom of religion and liberty of conscience as established in the Declaration of Independence of our country, a liberal position that had earned the condemnation of pre-Conciliar Pontiffs (see condemnation of religious liberty here; of liberty of conscience here).’
Like many Protestants with their denominations, Bp Sheen tried to reshape Roman Catholicism into a form that could fit within the mold of non-Christian Americanism.
This is generally not what one finds with the holy men of North America in the Orthodox Church like St John of Shanghai and San Francisco, Elder Ephraim of Arizona, or Archbishop Averky of Jordanville, New York. While they were glad to not be harassed for their Faith as they were in places like Turkiye or the Soviet Union, they nevertheless recognized the shortcomings and dangers of the post-Christian United States and remained thoroughly committed not to the Modern Masonic governmental arrangement, but to the salutary and God-blessed arrangement of symphony between Church and state, bishop and king.
St John of San Francisco, for example, said this in a report on the Russian diaspora:
‘With the hope of saving and resurrecting Russia by the realization of their programs, these social activists almost always lose sight of the fact that besides the acts of man in historical events, there moves the hand of God. The Russian people as a whole have committed great sins which are the reasons for the present misfortunes, namely oath breaking (disloyalty to the government) and regicide (allowing the Czar to be murdered). Social and military leaders renounced their obedience and loyalty to the czar, who did not want internal bloodshed, even before his abdication forced it from them. The people openly and noisily greeted this deed, without any loud protest anywhere. This renunciation of obedience was a breach of the oath taken to the Emperor and his lawful heirs. On the heads of those who committed this crime fell the curses of our forefathers, of the Zemsky Sobor of 1613, who imposed a curse on those who disobeyed their resolutions. The ones guilty of the sin of regicide are not only those who physically performed the deed, but the whole people who rejoiced when the Czar was overthrown and allowed his degradation, arrest and exile, leaving him defenseless in the hands of criminals, which itself foreordained the end.
‘Thus, the calamity that befell Russia is the direct result of terrible sins and her rebirth is possible only when she has been cleansed from them. However, until now there has been no real repentance, the crimes that were committed have clearly not been condemned, but many active participants in the revolution continue to assert that at one time, it was impossible to act otherwise.
‘By not expressing a direct condemnation of the February revolution, of the uprising against the Anointed One of God, the Russian people continue to participate in the sin, especially when they defend the fruits of the revolution. For in the words of the Apostle Paul, they are especially sinful, who know, that they who commit such things are worthy of death and not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them (Romans 1:32).’
Where in those words is any spirit of accommodation to Americanism, liberal democracy, etc., that Bp Sheen preached?
Likewise, Elder Ephraim was not interested in baptizing Americanism but in replacing it with the ethos of Orthodox living:
‘A peaceful, spiritual conqueror of America, and even a Christ-bearer, a new Christopher* Columbus, Elder Ephraim of Arizona. Thus he began the “annexation” of America to Orthodoxy. And yes, once again the Hellenism of the mighty Romiosine will once again conquer its conquerors! At a time when American civilization has conquered the world. . . .
‘And the little Johnny from Volos, the Athonite Elder, Hieromonk Father Ephraim of Arizona and all America, and the former Abbot of the Monastery of Philotheou, he appears to spread out and unfolded Orthodox spirituality in the epicenter of the modern world in the USA. And thus, the Athonite huts have “conquered” the world, offering indelibly the Light of Christ, Who shines upon all!
‘May we have his blessing!’
In light of all of this, all the hoopla about the ‘rock star’ popularity of Bp Sheen and the attention being drummed up around his beatification seems more like a propaganda effort to prop up the weakening, un-Christian institutions of the papacy and the American Empire than a real desire to promote holiness in the world. Yet that is precisely the work that the Orthodox Church carries on in the world, as She has since the days of the Holy Apostles 2,000 years ago. Her doors are open to all those sincerely interested in undertaking such a wonderful and heroic work, awakened Roman Catholics included.
Sources
https://www.catholic.com/qa/did-fulton-sheen-support-vatican-ii
https://www.traditioninaction.org/HotTopics/f041ht_Sheen_VatII.htm
https://firstthings.com/taking-sheen-seriously/
https://www.fatheralexander.org/booklets/english/johnmx_sermons_2.htm#n6
https://full-of-grace-and-truth.blogspot.com/2019/12/a-reflection-of-joy-making-sorrow-at.html
