Witnessing the growing threat of communism, Bishop Fulton J. Sheen recognized that modern atheism was a new type of Messianism threatening to beguile and conquer humanity.
Sheen stressed the use of reason as the unparalleled countermeasure to deceptive communism. The first three books contained in this anthology are a collection of Sheen’s classic Catholic Hour radio addresses that were heard by millions of listeners in the 1930s and 1940s. Here, in a single compilation, are Bishop Sheen’s most clearly delineated investigations into the underlying causes of communism — every bit as relevant today as when he spoke them — along with an entirely sound and hopeful program for defeating it.
In the fourth book of this anthology, The Philosophies of War, Sheen addresses the confusion felt by most people who were dissatisfied with the ephemeral and superficial commentaries about World War II. Like a master surgeon, Sheen applies the sharp scalpel of his crystal-clear logic to lay open the sources of the world’s infection. The fifth book, Seven Pillars of Peace, presents the principles upon which Sheen believes the foundations for a just and lasting peace must be built.
By making these five powerful resources your own, you’ll have in one volume the means to thrive spiritually in our current seemingly desperate time. Drawing from biblical, cultural, and contemporary examples, Sheen will show you:
Most notably, Archbishop Sheen proclaims the hope of Christ’s Cross and the immeasurable power of His resurrected love. He exhorts us to carry our individual fragments of the beam. It is always darkest before the dawn, Sheen teaches. Times of discouragement are moments when great spiritual transformations can occur. If we return to God and do penance, we will attain interior peace. The future of America’s freedom and restoration as a constitutional republic depend on our decision — now — to obediently trust in God.
Other books by Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen
Fulton John Sheen was born in El Paso, Illinois, in 1895. In high school, he won a three-year university scholarship, but he turned it down to pursue a vocation to the priesthood. He attended St. Viator College Seminary in Illinois and St. Paul Seminary in Minnesota. In 1919, he was ordained a priest for the Diocese of Peoria, Illinois. He earned a licentiate in sacred theology and a bachelor of canon law at the Catholic University of America and a doctorate at the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium.
Sheen received numerous teaching offers but declined them in obedience to his bishop and became an assistant pastor in a rural parish. Having thus tested his obedience, the bishop later permitted him to teach at the Catholic University of America and at St. Edmund's College in Ware, England, where he met G.K. Chesterton, whose weekly BBC radio broadcast inspired Sheen's later NBC broadcast, The Catholic Hour (1930-1952).
In 1952, Sheen began appearing on ABC in his own series, Life Is Worth Living. Despite being given a time slot that forced him to compete with Milton Berle and Frank Sinatra, the dynamic Sheen enjoyed enormous success and in 1954 reach tens of millions of viewers, non-Catholics as well as Catholics.
When asked by Pope Pius XII how many converts he had made, Sheen responded, "Your Holiness, I have never counted them. I am always afraid if I did count them, I might think I made them, instead of the Lord."
Sheen gave annual Good Friday homilies at New York's St. Patrick's Cathedral, led numerous retreats for priests and religious, and preached at summer conferences in England.
"If you want people to stay as they are," he said, "tell them what they want to hear. If you want to improve them, tell them what they should know." This he did, not only in his preaching but also in the more than ninety books he wrote. His book, Peace of Soul was sixth on the New York Times best-seller list.
Sheen served as auxiliary bishop of New York (1951-1966) and as bishop of Rochester (1966-1969).
The good Lord called Fulton Sheen home in 1979. His television broadcasts, now on tape, and his books continue his earthly work of winning souls for Christ. Sheen's cause for canonization was opened in 2002, and in 2012 Pope Benedict XVI declared him "Venerable."
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