Let Catholic History Be Your Teacher. Develop a Catholic Memory!

One of my blog readers sent me this quote from Fulton Sheen about history: 

The English never seem to remember history; the Irish never forget it; the Russians never admit it; the Japanese never make it; and the Americans never learn it.

The importance of knowing history is lost on many people. But is there any greater teacher? Think of the Old Testament filled with the history of the Israelites. Think of God telling them to celebrate the Passover every year. In other words, never forget what the Lord did bringing them out of the slavery of Egypt. And today, thousands of years after that event, Passover is still a major feast for the Jews.

Wisdom from Fulton Sheen, Peter Kreeft, and St. Francis deSales

I  recently read a quote from Archbishop Fulton Sheen that made me laugh. "The proud man counts his newspaper clippings; the humble man his blessings."

And then the insight....Omigosh! How many bloggers count their visit statistics and views?

Mea culpa! Mea culpa! Mea maxima culpa!

Some days I think about throwing up my hands, deleting my blog, retiring my newsletter and saying with St. Thomas Aquinas, "It's all straw." Actually, if Thomas' magnificent writings were straw, mine are the poop-covered shavings from the chicken coop...or the waste products on the bottom board of the bee hive.

Bishop Sheen in Rochester: The Alinsky Connection

In a 1974 Playboy interview Saul Alinsky said,
"If there is an afterlife, and I have anything to say
  about it, I will unreservedly choose to go to hell."

What can I say? The bloom is off the rose. I can still appreciate much of Fulton Sheen's work, but I can never read it again without a critical eye.  Learning about Sheen's Teilhard enthusiasm got me looking a little deeper into his social justice work. Stephanie Block, an expert on Alinsky community organizing, told me awhile back about Fulton Sheen's connections to Alinsky activities in Rochester. I didn't look into it at the time and forgot about it. It's disturbing to see that Sheen was an active enabler of Alinsky's radicalism. If he were alive today, I hope he would realize the error of some of his beliefs and actions and repudiate them. We'll never know. 

Would Sheen have supported a priest like Fr. Michael Pfleger in Chicago? I can't imagine it, but the priest he made his social justice guru, Fr. David Finks, sounds a lot like Pfleger who's even too much for liberal Cardinal Blase Cupich. Finks worked with the Alinsky organization FIGHT that targeted Kodak. During his tenure at the USCCB, he helped to create the notorious Catholic Campaign for Human Development which allowed Alinsky organizing groups (that support intrinsic evils condemned by the Church) to pick the pockets of the faithful. He later left the priesthood and married. And this was the man in whom Sheen put so much trust. It is disheartening to see how a man can be misled into undermining the good he does with their right hand, by the evil he supports with the left. But I don't intend to inter the good Sheen did with his bones. We have much to thank him for: his vigorous opposition to Communism, his constant urging for priests to make a daily holy hour, the excellence of so much of his writing, the conversions he fostered like Bella Dodd. Pray for Fulton Sheen and learn a little more about him in this 50 year old snapshot from Catholic Digest.

Body Snatcher Dolan Finallly has to Let Archbishop Fulton Sheen Go to Peoria!

Fulton Sheen remains will move to Peoria, NY archdiocese says

After three years of litigation and beaucoup bucks paid to high profile lawyers, Cardinal Dolan and the Archdiocese of New York lost the final appeal to keep the remains of Archbishop Fulton Sheen in New York. It would be interesting to know the rationale behind New York's decision to renege on a 2002 agreement to allow the move, since they had no interest in pursing Sheen's cause for sainthood.

A Cause for Canonization Dear to the American Heart

Archbishop Sheen’s sainthood cause moving ahead

Fulton Sheen often spoke of his ordination day promise to make a holy hour every day. He was faithful to his promise throughout his priesthood. When his canonization takes place, it will be a witness to the power of daily prayer. 

If you've never read his Life of Christ or his autobiography, Treasure in Clay, you have some treats in store.

Thought for the Day: The "Hound of Heaven" is Your Friend

"The two greatest dramas of life are the soul in pursuit of God and God in pursuit of the soul."   Fulton Sheen 

One of my favorite poems is Francis Thompson's The Hound of Heaven.  I memorized the first stanza a number of years ago and often recite it to myself.

I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
    Of my own mind; And in the midst of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter....

I love the cadence which sounds the beat of the pursuing hound who follows "with unhurrying chase, And unperturbed pace." The poem fills me with wonder. The God of the universe pursues ME. In my youth when I was running away from God, he set the hound loose and he has been my friend ever since I stopped running and surrendered to the truth and listened in earnest to the voice of God. He loved me in my tragic state of rebellion and loved me into faithfulness; not a perfect faithfulness, unfortunately, but a striving one.

Alack! Thou knowest not
How little worthy of any love thou art.
Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee,
Save me, save only me?
All which I took from thee, I did'st but take,
Not for thy harms,
But just that thou might'st seek it in my arms.
All which thy childs mistake fancies as lost,
I have stored for thee at Home.
Rise, clasp my hand, and come.

I am still unworthy of His love, but he loves me anyway! And then comes that oh-so-personal message to Me, a creature, who is literally less to Him than a grasshopper is to me:

Halts by me that Footfall.
Is my gloom, after all,
Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly?
Ah, Fondest, Blindest, Weakest,
I am He whom thou seekest.
Thou dravest Love from thee who dravest Me.

If only all men would know that when they drive God away, they drive away Love Incarnate. He is all in all, but he loves each of us, as St. Augustine says, as if there were just one of us. Any suffering he allows in our lives is only the "Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly." Oh, if only we could see it!

The hound of heaven is, indeed, man's best friend.

Know Yourself and Recognize the Seven Pallbearers that Kill a Man's Character

Fulton Sheen wrote a wonderful book called Lift Up Your Hearts. In it he provides practical guidelines for knowing oneself, an absolute necessity for growing in the spiritual life. He introduces the book by discussing the "ego" and the "I." The ego is who each one of us thinks he is. The I is who I actually am. Because of our fallen natures, self-knowledge is difficult and self-delusion is easy. It's essential to understand where our personalities sink into egotism because, "Egotism - an inordinate love of self - is the basic cause of all sins and of all unhappiness which lacks a rational cause."

Egotism, Bishop Sheen says, leads to self hatred. "A man can hate himself in two ways: either by hating the vanity, conceit, and self glorification which do injury to his soul - and this is the way of purification - or by hating whatever in him interferes with his pretense of being God - and this is the way of self-destruction, one of hell that exists on earth." We need to know the difference. How? By growth in self knowledge through self examination. One way he offers is by examining what he calls the "Pallbearers of character," the seven deadly sins that make us egotists and destroy our integrity. By recognizing the signs and symptoms of the seven deadly sins, one can recognize his own greatest temptations and work to develop the opposing virtues. Bishop Sheen says that "Character grows by leaps and bounds as soon as one has ferreted out the master egotisms....As we depress the ego and face our own predominant fault, the neighbor who before seemed hateful takes on a new lovableness. By losing our own pride and vanity, we gain a world of friends."

So let's examine the seven deadly pallbearers of character that threaten to kill our integrity.

The first pallbearer: Pride
Definition: "too great admiration for oneself. The ultimate stage of pride is to make oneself his own law, his own judge, his own morality, his own god."

Signs of pride: boasting, love of publicity (conceit), hypocrisy (pretending to be what you are not), hardheadedness (stubborn adherence to one's own opinions), quarrelling when challenged, discord (refusing to give up your own will), and disobedience (not accepting any authority other than self).

The second pallbearer: Avarice
Definition: "Perversion of the natural right of every man...[to own] things which minister to the needs of his body and his soul.] desiring wealth as an end rather than a means, disregarding the rights of others in the way wealth is acquired and used."

Signs of avarice: harshness, indifference to the suffering and needs of others, anxiety and restlessness of soul, excessive love of luxury, always wanting more, acquiring and protecting possessions through dishonest means.

The third pallbearer: Envy
Definition: sadness at another's good

Signs of envy: snobbishness, jealousy, possessiveness, backbiting, gossip, tale-bearing, seeking to lower the reputation of another, resentment.

The fourth pallbearer: Lust
Definition: Inordinate love of the pleasures of the flesh. "No passion...more quickly produces slavery than lust [because its] perversions more quickly destroy the power of the intellect and the will."

Signs of lust: selfishness, narcissism, boredom, divorce, infidelity,intellectual blindness, inability to see the truth, imprudence, rashness, inconstancy, thoughtlessness, hatred of God and religion, denial of immortality

The fifth pallbearer: Anger
Definition: A violent desire to punish others (distinct from righteous anger)

Signs of anger: lowest degree - touchiness, undue sensitivity, impatience at small slights, grumbling; 2nd degree - flaring up, violent gestures, throwing things, redness of face; 3rd state - physical violence against another, hatred that seeks to "get even," doing physical harm to others.

The sixth pallbearer: Gluttony
Definition: abuse of lawful pleasure attached to eating and drinking

Signs of gluttony: taking more than necessary, too luxurious a manner of consumption, using food or drink at inappropriate times. Moral effects of gluttony are "despair, a weakening of the will, and the materialization of life."

The seventh pallbearer: Sloth
Definition: "Malady of the will which causes neglect of one's duty...a distaste of the spiritual."

Signs of sloth: procrastination, laziness, idleness, lukewarmness in prayer, contempt for self-discipline, careless execution of work, listlessness, aversion for effort, negligence in works of piety.

Do you recognize yourself among these "pallbearers?" If you do, you are making progress toward self-knowledge. Once a person recognizes his root vice, he can work on developing the corresponding virtue. He can begin to put the ego in its place and let the I, the image of the great I AM, shine forth.

A number of years ago I used Lift Up Your Heart for a two-day personal retreat. I found it a time of self-awakening and challenge. It was a grace that left a few important points stamped on my mind and heart. Bishop Sheen himself once said that, "Any book which inspires us to lead a better life, is a good book." I can't think of a better description for this one.

Would you rather be a monkey wrench or a window pane?

I love reading Fulton Sheen. His Life of Christ and his autobiography, Treasure in Clay, are filled with what I call "aha moments" that shimmer with truth, almost breathtaking in their simplicity. Reading each book, I often had to stop and ponder. I often returned to a sentence or paragraph a second or even third time, because it so moved me I could not go on without taking at least a few moments to reflect further.

Today, looking for a citation, I stumbled on FultonSheen.com which I've added to my list of Catholic websites on the sidebar. What a treasure! Already, I've run off several essays to tuck into my adoration bag to read in front of the Blessed Sacrament. Let me give you a taste from the beginning of his book The Sacraments on A Divine Sense of Humor: 

The Importance of Women

"The level of any civilization is always the level of its women." Fulton Sheen

Remember that old saying, "The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world?" It's absolutely true. One of the reasons we are sinking as a culture is because women have forgotten their natures as "custodians of life." Too many have accepted the Planned Parenthood/radical feminist lie that their nature is as sexpots "liberated" from fertility. Instead of being the natural custodians of life, they have been convinced to be custodians of the condoms. A woman can be a mother or have a career, but always be true to her nature as the custodian of physical and spiritual life.

George Gilder in his book, Sexual Suicide called women the civilizers of men. To the degree that women  return to their nature we will see a transformation of our culture from a culture of death to a culture of life.

I hope I live to see it.