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.

Goodbye! Bad Men: Rochester Bishop Clark Resigns

Earlier this month, Bishop Matthew Clark of Rochester reached mandatory retirement age and submitted his resignation. Thank God! Let's pray the Vatican accepts it quickly. During his 33 year tenure in Rochester, the bishop advanced homosexuality, supported dissenter theologians like Charlie Curran, promoted women's ordination, welcomed Dignity Masses, destroyed vocations, and closed about half the Catholic schools in the diocese. Talk about decimating the faith! The Vatican ordered him to remove the imprimatur from a sexuality handbook, by Fr. Matthew Kawiak that distorted Church teaching. A timeline of some of his other disgraceful acts is posted here. And another post here. One of the most public scandals to his discredit involved Fr. Jim Callan at Corpus Christi. Callan regularly "concelebrated Mass" with Mary Ramerman for years, Clark finally ordered him to stop and Callan was excommunicated when he left taking much of the parish with him. While the bishop claimed he took action on his own, Callan publicly stated that he believed the bishop was sympathetic and was ordered to act by then Cardinal Ratzinger at CDF (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith).

 An atheist could hardly have done more to damage the Church in Rochester than Bishop Clark over the past three decades. And to think he took over the seat of one of the greatest modern bishops in America, Fulton Sheen. You can read about Clark's exit  and the "indelible mark" he left in the local secular paper. The gushing article basically canonized him. But at least a few faithful Catholics like Jim Likoudis were quoted as well. As for the "indelible mark" Clark leaves, it is a deep and ugly scar on the Church in Rochester. Orthodox Catholics are shaking his dust off their feet as he wraps up his Beavus and Butthead show. They are praying for a true shepherd as a replacement. May God give them one in line with a former bishop of Rochester, a true shepherd.

And here's a video about that true shepherd. Please pray for Fulton Sheen's cause for canonization and ask his intercession for the restoration of the faith in Rochester.