Posted on 03/09/2014 1:11:05 PM PDT by NYer
Terrible! The old church was sort of a creaky monstrosity (literally, it creaked) with horrible statuary, but it was what it was, and Sheen did a wonderful job there. I don’t remember anything about his programs because I was just a tot when he went off the air.
I wasn’t there when the church burned but I was horrified I read about it the next day and I went down to see the ruins.
They did a great job on rebuilding it, but I no longer live in NY so I only go there once in a while when I’m in town.
That said, I do think Sheen should be canonized. He and Spellman didn’t get along very well, and Spellman assigned him to Rochester as a punishment. He rose to the challenge, although unfortunately he did some PC things that I think were mainly to prove what a good soldier he was (condemning the Vietnam war, trying to give away diocesan property to some black group, etc.). He was there for somewhat less than 3 years before his death.
However, the unfortunate thing was that this set the diocese on a bad course, which its subsequent bishops only fulfilled. But that was surely not Sheen’s intention.
The new bishop sounds good, and I hope he’ll be able to recover the diocese.
Bishop Sheen is correct: There are elements of truth in every religion. And there is nothing man alone can do to convert people to the Catholic Church. We can only present the absolute truth of her teachings and leave the rest up to the Holy Spirit. As Salvation pointed out: “Few Americans hate the Catholic Church, but millions hate what they think is the Catholic Church”. —Bishop Fulton Sheen
It is the greatest book I have ever read...a treasure to be enjoyed time and again.
What an awesome quotation!
Here’s another good quotation by Bishop Sheen:
“Why can’t the modern mind see there is nothing new in Communism/Socialism? It is a groan of despair, not the revolution that starts a new age. It is the logical development of a civilization which for the last 400 years has been forgetting God. I’m beginning to believe there are only two classes of people: those who believe and those who want to believe. The new era into which we are entering is what might be called the religious phase of human history. But do not misunderstand: by religious we do not mean that men will turn to God, but rather that the indifference to the absolute which characterized the liberal phase of civilization will be succeeded by a passion for an absolute. From now on the struggle will be not for colonies and national rights, but for the souls of men . . . The conflict of the future is between the absolute who is the God-man and the absolute which is the man-God “ - Fulton J. Sheen, Apr. 14, 1952.
Sheen was never a man of the left. He was Catholic and a very orthodox Catholic. He opposed the Vietnam War because the Vietnam War did not meet Catholic Just War principles. He tried to implement full teachings of the Second Vatican Council because what was exactly what he was supposed to do.
St. Agnes was always a highly intellectual church. The sermons alone were well worth attendance. I liked the old church with it’s statuary. I believe I contributed some money to replace them. Of course, then we had the scandal of Father Clark which sort of soured my love for St. Agnes...
I always reread This book. One of the greatest ever written on Christ. Awesome.
And to undermine the war effort when we had forces committed. Is that exactly what he was supposed to do too?
There’s a word for that.
He tried to end a war that should never have been started in the first place. The Vietnam War was started, and by that statement I meant started by LBJ who expanded the US presence to make himself richer and the war profiteers that he gave big, fat government contracts to because they helped him in his elections for years. When the war started LBJ was worth about a million dollars. When it ended he was worth 10 times that much. He and his old lady were Flying Tigers Airlines biggest shareholders. Flying Tigers flew the majority of GIs to and from Vietnam.
I flew back and forth on United.
And it’s personal with me having been in the thick of combat there several times, and knowing that our military was capable of kicking the living crap out of the NVA, and that we didn’t largely ‘cause of guys like Cronkite, Kerry and Sheen.
I’d had always liked the good Bishop. But Ho Chi Minh and his bunch were entrenched hard core commies which Sheen had always rallied against. To borrow a phrase from “12 O’clock High”, “Seems like we got us a talking Bishop.”
You saw what sustained bombing of Hanoi could do during Operation Linebacker. If we had started the bombing of Hanoi in 1965 and turned it into a parking lot the war would have ended 10 years earlier. Politicians didn’t want the war to end. Like I said LBJ made a fortune off the war. I also flew back and forth on United, but Flying Tiger was used extensively, and ole LBJ and Lady Bird were major stock holders. As they were major stock holders in Brown & Root. And although Sheen was a critic of the war he didn’t go on TV every night and end his newscast by saying we couldn’t win the war. That was traitor Cronkite. And that lying dog Kerry should have been brought up on treason charges for saying US soldiers were committing war crimes and that he had “personally” witnessed and participated in these so-called war crimes. He was a lying SOB and was allowed to lie to Congress without any repercusions whatsover. Most of the Kerry collaborators that were part of these so-called Winter Soldier hearings were never in the military and if they were never sat foot in Vietnam. Now the traitor is Sec of State. What a crock.
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