© Catholic Online 2004
It was the fall of 1951. He wore a black cassock [1] with violet 'abito piano' or piping. The wide violet 'sincture' was wrapped at the waist. A beautiful violet wool 'cappa magna' over his cassock, similar to that of a toreador, flowed from his shoulders. The violet silk zucchetto was on the back of his head. [2]
The man was Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, auxiliary bishop of the archdiocese of New York. He was ready to make television history as no other religious man has before or since.
On the bishop's chest was an impressive gold 'pectoral' cross. [3] He bowed deeply to the crowd and said, "Thank you for allowing me into your home."
Bishop Sheen was beginning yet another successful role. He was making the transition from radio to television.
A television star was born.
The name of his new television show would be, "Life is Worth Living." It would soon win an Emmy Award, beating the very popular Milton Berle. In fact, the rating showed the flamboyant Catholic preacher was more popular than romantic crooner Frank Sinatra.
This new television medium was to make Bishop Sheen the most famous preacher of the twentieth century, according to the Word Book Encyclopedia. [4]
By 1956, the bishop was appearing on 123 ABC-TV stations and 300 radio stations around the country. It was estimated that he reached 30 million people a week.
Every Tuesday evening, at 7:00 p.m. Eastern Time, the Bishop, with only a blackboard for a prop, would for the next 27 minutes eloquently discuss his topic.
His topics were always straight from real life. He spoke of contracepting, of sodomy, of fornication, of adultery. His audiences were held spellbound.
He did this with humor but without any nudity, without filthy language, without compromising the Catholic faith.
Revealed truth, when taught without fear, attracts and convinces multitudes because it is a sacred gift, because it is plain and reasonable. Truth needs no gimmicks, unless you call the simple blackboard a gimmick.
Bishop Sheen always chalked out words and diagrams onto a large blackboard framed on a wood stand. When the blackboard was filled, the bishop would walk to the other side of the stage set and continue his catechesis. A few moments later, he would return to the blackboard "that had been wiped clean by my Angel," he quipped each week.
The Admiral Corporation rather than the Catholic Church sponsored the program. He had no difficulty finding commercial sponsors for his religious message. [5]
The resonant tones of his voice from our black and white television screens enticed us all each Tuesday. Catholic and non-Catholic, it did not matter. In fact, the bishop said he received more mail from non-Catholics than from Catholics.
Stars of religious television programs acknowledged that Bishop Sheen provided the ideal role model for televangelists still today.
One time during his program, he told his listeners he liked chocolate chip cookies. By mid-week, he and his staff could barely fit into the studio. People across America sent thousands of boxes of chocolate chip cookies. He was America's beloved preacher.
Fifty years later, his lectures, addresses and witty anecdotes are more relevant, and more needed, than ever before. Truth is timeless. Sheen was a prophet for our time. He was a great evangelizer, long before the term became popular.
Archbishop Sheen often spoke at many world religious events as well as on the street corners of New York.
Just as Jesus did himself, Sheen taught through images, stories and parables. His gift of oratory and communication has, sadly, not been seen nor heard since.
Cardinal Mercier of Louvain taught Sheen to always keep current and know what the world is thinking, reading and listening to. In other words, know your audience.
Sheen always believed that at the end of a lecture one must tear up their notes.
"There is nothing that so much destroys the intellectual growth of a teacher as the keeping of notes and the repetition of the same course the following year."
Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen died in 1979 at the age of 84.
In 1999, the late John Cardinal O'Connor of the Archdiocese of New York approved the start of the long canonization process for Sheen, meaning he could one day be sainted.
Today's audience is slightly different from the audiences of 1954. Pope John Paul II exhorts all Catholics not only to evangelize but also to re-evangelize our communities. In fact, the Pope warns that it is even necessary to re-Christianize the world. Evangelized people have discarded the Word of God. They live by the tenets of relativism. As Catholics missionaries, we must be ready always to re-evangelize anew, as in the spirit of Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen.
Each week, I will present a new column based on the teachings of Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen. The topics will vary and so will my preceding catechetical introduction. Let me know how you like this new column.
Here, below, is a popular Sheen vignette.
By Bishop Fulton J. Sheen [6]
Many people, having seen my "angel" clean my blackboard on television, will ask on meeting me, "How is your angel?"
So, let us talk about angels and their role in our lives.
However, here we use the word angel in a very restricted sense — not as a spiritual invisible messenger, not a special illumination or a winged creature bearing a summons, not even as a vision or anything preternatural.
By an angel we mean here any person or event that has changed the whole course of our life, influenced our behavior, made us turn right when we were about to turn left, and in general made us better.
What lifts such a concept out of the natural order is that eventually it is seen as being an act of God.
Take, for instance, in the book of Tobit, the story of young Tobias, who was sent by his father Tobit to the land of Media on a kind of economic mission.
His mother was worried about sending the son on such a long journey, so she went out and found a guide, whose name was Raphael.
Raphael not only protected Tobias from dangers and helped him to collect a debt, but even found a good wife for him. The Book of Tobit says, "Raphael was an angel, but he knew it not."
God sets many angels in our paths, but often we know them not; in fact, we may go through life never knowing that they were agents or messengers of God to lead us on to virtue, or to deter us from vice.
However, they symbolize that constant and benign intervention of God in the history of men, which stops us on the path to destruction or leads us to success or happiness and virtue.
God is generally operating behind secondary causes, like an anonymous benefactor. His direction of our lives is so hidden that most of us are unaware of how we were made an angel to help a neighbor, or how a neighbor was made an angel for us.
When I finished college, I took an examination for a national scholarship worth several thousand dollars. I was anxious to complete my education by working to a Ph.D., but at the same time, ever since my earliest recollection, I had wanted to be a priest. Accepting the university scholarship would have meant postponing my call to the priesthood and maybe endangering it.
During the summer vacation after college graduation, I visited our professor of philosophy and told him with great glee that I had won the university scholarship.
He grabbed me by the shoulders and said, "Do you believe in God?" I told him the question was silly. However, he challenged me, "But do you believe in God practically?"
When I answered in the affirmative he said, "You know your duty. Go to the seminary now and begin studies for the priesthood. Tear up the scholarship."
However, I protested, "Why cannot I work now for my Ph.D. and then go later to the seminary?"
He retorted, "If you make that sacrifice, I promise you that after your ordination to the priesthood you will receive a far better university education than before."
I tore up the scholarship, followed my duty, and after ordination as a priest, I spent almost five years in graduate studies — most of them in some of the great universities of Europe.
The professor was my angel. I saw it then, but I see it more clearly now.
- The cassock or 'soutane' is the central vestment of all clerics of the Catholic Church except those members of orders or congregations who have a distinctive habit. It is floor length, with 33 buttons total, representing Christ's earthly years, topped with a roman collar. The piping and buttons are scarlet for cardinals. It is white for the pope, red of the cardinals, purple for prelates, and everybody else is black. In Catholic countries, it is by law the ordinary dress of the clergy; in England, they are supposed to wear it always in the church and presbytery.
- The small round silk skullcap worn by Catholic ecclesiastic. It is white for the Pope, scarlet for a cardinal, violet for a bishop. It is worn under the mitre. Bishops and cardinal wear it at Mass, except during the Canon. Priests may use a black cloth zucchetto for everyday wear, but not during the Mass at anytime without special permission from the Pope. The zucchetto originated in the very early Church, around the 13th century, as the covering of the clerical tonsure. During the Middle Ages and early Renaissance, different colors were allowed to the different ranks of the hierarchy.
- Pectorale is the name of the cross used by the pope, cardinals, bishops, abbots and other prelates entitled to use the pontifical insignia. It is worn on the breast attached to a chain or silken cord, the colour differing according to the dignity of the wearer, i.e., green, violet, black. It is made of precious metal, ornamented with diamonds, pearls or similar embellishment and contains either the relics of some saint or a particla of the Holy Cross. It is worn over the alb during liturgical functions.
- Article from 1977 "Word Book Encyclopedia," by John Tracy Ellis.
- Paul a. Soukup, The MCB Encyclopedia of Television.
- Excerpt from "In Media Ecclesiae — Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen: master preacher, pastor of the air waves," by John Baptist Ku, O.P.
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