Fulton J. Sheen

Based on Wikipedia: Fulton J. Sheen

The Bishop Who Beat Milton Berle

In 1952, television was ruled by comedians. Milton Berle, known affectionately as "Uncle Miltie," dominated Tuesday nights with his variety show. Frank Sinatra had his own program. And then, inexplicably, a Catholic bishop in flowing robes walked onto a bare stage with nothing but a chalkboard and started talking about philosophy, theology, and the meaning of life.

He destroyed the competition.

Fulton J. Sheen's show Life Is Worth Living drew thirty million viewers weekly—most of them not even Catholic. Frank Sinatra's show was canceled within months. When Berle joked that Sheen "uses old material, too" (a reference to the Gospels), Sheen fired back that perhaps people should start calling him "Uncle Fultie." But Berle, ever the gracious showman, acknowledged the deeper truth: "If I'm going to be eased off the top by anyone, it's better that I lose to the One for whom Bishop Sheen is speaking."

This was the golden age of television, and somehow a priest with no script, no cue cards, and no production budget became one of its biggest stars.

From El Paso to the Airwaves

Fulton Sheen was born Peter John Sheen on May 8, 1895, in El Paso, Illinois—not the famous Texas city, but a small farming town about a hundred miles southwest of Chicago. His parents, Newton and Delia, were of Irish descent, their own parents having emigrated from County Roscommon in Ireland's western province of Connacht. The name "Fulton" came from his mother's maiden name, and it stuck.

As an infant, he contracted tuberculosis—a diagnosis that in the 1890s often meant a short life. He survived.

The family moved to nearby Peoria, where young Fulton became an altar boy at the Cathedral of Saint Mary of the Immaculate Conception. He graduated as valedictorian from Spalding Institute in 1913, then enrolled at St. Viator College before deciding to enter the priesthood. He was ordained in 1919 at that same Peoria cathedral where he had once served at the altar.

What happened next reveals something essential about Sheen's character. After ordination, he continued his studies at the Catholic University of America in Washington, then traveled to Belgium to pursue a doctorate at the Catholic University of Leuven. His thesis bore the unwieldy title "The Spirit of Contemporary Philosophy and the Finite God." At Leuven, he became the first American ever to win the Cardinal Mercier Prize for the best philosophical treatise. He then went to Rome for another doctorate, this time in sacred theology.

By 1926, he was one of the most credentialed young Catholic intellectuals in America. Both Columbia University and Oxford wanted him to teach philosophy.

His bishop assigned him to a poor parish in Peoria.

The Obedient Scholar

Bishop Edmund Dunne of Peoria had made a promise to the Catholic University of America that he would eventually send Sheen to teach there. But first, he wanted to test this young man who had been "traipsing around Europe" collecting degrees. Would he be too proud for ordinary parish work?

Sheen took the assignment at St. Patrick's—a struggling parish serving a poor neighborhood—without complaint. He later said he enjoyed his time there. Nine months later, Dunne summoned him to his office.

"Father Cullen says you've been a good boy at St. Patrick's. So run along to Washington."

But Sheen didn't go to Washington. Not yet. Instead, he chose to teach theology at St. Edmund's College in Ware, England, where he met the brilliant convert and priest Ronald Knox, who would later produce his own celebrated translation of the Bible. Sheen also assisted at a parish in London's Soho district. Only in 1928 did he finally arrive at Catholic University of America, where he would teach philosophy for the next twenty-two years.

The Radio Priest

In 1930, Sheen began something new. Every Sunday night, he appeared on NBC radio for a program called The Catholic Hour. For twenty years, he spoke into microphones instead of facing classrooms, reaching audiences that eventually numbered four million weekly listeners.

Radio was different then. There was no television. Families gathered around wooden console sets the size of furniture, listening to dramas, comedies, and—apparently—Catholic theology. Time magazine in 1946 called Sheen "the golden-voiced Msgr. Fulton J. Sheen, U.S. Catholicism's famed proselytizer." His show received between three thousand and six thousand letters every week.

During World War II, Sheen didn't shy away from the conflict's moral dimensions. He called the war not merely a political struggle but a "theological one," and he publicly referred to Adolf Hitler as an "Anti-Christ." This was bold language for a religious broadcaster, but Sheen was never one to separate faith from the events of the day.

Television's Unlikely Star

On February 12, 1952, Sheen stepped in front of television cameras for the first time as the host of his own show. The DuMont Television Network—a now-forgotten fourth network that competed with NBC, CBS, and ABC—gave him a prime-time slot on Tuesday nights at eight o'clock.

The format was startlingly simple. Sheen walked onto a stage at the Adelphi Theatre in New York City, faced a live audience, and talked. No script. No teleprompter. No cue cards. Occasionally he would turn to a chalkboard to illustrate a point. That was it.

The show was called Life Is Worth Living—a title that doubled as Sheen's essential message. In postwar America, with the shadow of nuclear annihilation hanging over every conversation about the future, here was a man in bishop's robes calmly arguing that existence had meaning, that human life possessed dignity, that the universe was not indifferent.

He wasn't paid for the program. The sponsor, Admiral Corporation—a manufacturer of televisions and appliances—covered the production costs in exchange for brief commercials at the beginning and end of each episode. The number of stations carrying the show jumped from three to fifteen within two months. The studio received four times as many ticket requests as it could fulfill. Eight thousand five hundred letters arrived every week.

In 1952, Sheen won an Emmy Award for Most Outstanding Television Personality. When accepting the award, he said: "I feel it is time I pay tribute to my four writers—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John."

Milton Berle, with characteristic wit, observed: "We both work for 'Sky Chief'"—a pun on Texaco's gasoline brand and a nod to the higher power Berle acknowledged they both ultimately served.

The Stalin Episode

One broadcast stands out in the collective memory of those years. In February 1953, Sheen performed a dramatic reading of the burial scene from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. But he made substitutions. Where Shakespeare had written the names of ancient Romans—Julius Caesar, Cassius, Marc Antony, Brutus—Sheen substituted the names of Soviet leaders: Joseph Stalin, Lavrenty Beria (head of the secret police), Georgy Malenkov, and Andrey Vyshinsky (the prosecutor of Stalin's show trials).

The effect was electrifying. Here was Rome's tyranny mapped onto Moscow's. The conspirators, the dictator, the inevitable fall—all played out through Shakespeare's immortal lines.

Sheen concluded with words that would soon seem prophetic: "Stalin must one day meet his judgment."

Days later, Stalin suffered a stroke. Within the week, he was dead.

Sheen never claimed any supernatural foreknowledge. But the timing cemented his reputation as a figure who spoke with unusual moral authority about the great events of the age.

The Convert Maker

Beyond his broadcasting career, Sheen was known for bringing people into the Catholic Church. The conversion process, as he conducted it, typically involved about twenty-five hours of private instruction—not a quick decision, but a thorough education in Catholic faith and practice.

His students included an eclectic group: Heywood Broun, the journalist and newspaper columnist; Clare Boothe Luce, the playwright, congresswoman, and ambassador who was married to the founder of Time and Life magazines; Henry Ford II, grandson of the automobile pioneer; Louis Budenz, a former communist who became a fierce anti-communist witness; Bella Dodd, a union organizer who had also been a communist; Jo Mielziner, the theatrical designer responsible for the sets of Death of a Salesman and South Pacific; and Fritz Kreisler, the legendary violinist and composer.

According to Time magazine, more than ninety-five percent of Sheen's private students were eventually baptized. He had a gift for making the faith intellectually compelling to sophisticated, accomplished people who had every reason to remain skeptical.

The Society for the Propagation of the Faith

In 1950, Sheen was appointed national director of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, a Catholic organization that raises money for missionary work around the world. He would hold this position for sixteen years, raising millions of dollars and donating an additional ten million from his own television earnings.

The role also brought him into conflict with one of the most powerful figures in American Catholicism: Cardinal Francis Spellman of New York.

The details emerged later. The federal government had donated millions of dollars' worth of powdered milk to the Archdiocese of New York, which Cardinal Spellman then handed over to Sheen's Society to distribute to the poor worldwide. But at some point, Spellman demanded that Sheen pay the Archdiocese for the donated milk—millions of dollars for something that had been given free for charitable distribution.

Sheen refused. Despite Spellman's formidable influence, including close connections to Rome, Sheen would not redirect charitable donations to the cardinal's coffers.

It is widely believed that Spellman then used his influence to drive Sheen off television. Life Is Worth Living ended in 1957. Sheen would return to television in 1961 with a syndicated program, but his relationship with the New York Archdiocese never recovered.

Bishop of Rochester

In 1951, Pope Pius XII had appointed Sheen as an auxiliary bishop for New York—a position that placed him under Spellman's authority. For fifteen years, he served in that subordinate role.

Then, in 1966, Pope Paul VI named Sheen bishop of Rochester, New York—his own diocese to lead. He was seventy-one years old.

Rochester gave Sheen scope for his social conscience. He created the Sheen Ecumenical Housing Foundation to address housing discrimination. In late July 1967, he publicly denounced American involvement in the Vietnam War—a position that put him at odds with many American Catholics who supported the conflict.

On Ash Wednesday of that year, Sheen made a startling announcement: he was giving St. Bridget's Parish building to the federal government's Housing and Urban Development program for use by the Black community. He had not consulted anyone. The parish priest objected publicly, saying "There is enough empty property around without taking down the church and the school." The deal fell through amid protest.

This was Sheen's style—bold, sometimes impulsive, always willing to provoke if he believed the cause was just. It did not always work.

He resigned in 1969, just before his seventy-fifth birthday. Pope Paul VI named him archbishop of the titular see of Newport, Wales—an honorary title, since Newport's Catholic diocese had been absorbed into another see centuries earlier. It was a graceful way to retire.

The Ecumenist

Throughout his career, Sheen sought common ground with Christians outside the Catholic Church. This might seem unremarkable today, but in the mid-twentieth century, relations between Catholics and Protestants—and between Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Christians—were often marked by mutual suspicion and outright hostility.

Sheen took a different approach. He occasionally celebrated the Byzantine Divine Liturgy, having received special permission that allowed him to celebrate in both the Latin and Eastern rites. He praised Protestant devotion to Bible study:

"The first subject of all to be studied is Scripture, and this demands not only the reading of it but the study of commentaries. Protestant commentaries, I discovered, were also particularly interesting because Protestants have spent more time on Scripture than most of us."

In his autobiography, Treasure in Clay, Sheen wrote:

"The combination of travel, the study of world religions and personal encounter with different nationalities and peoples made me see that the fullness of truth is like a complete circle of 360 degrees. Every religion in the world has a segment of that truth."

This was not relativism—Sheen remained a thoroughly orthodox Catholic—but it was a recognition that truth could be found in unexpected places, and that dialogue was more productive than denunciation.

The Preacher's Edge

That said, Sheen could be sharp. In a televised sermon called "False Compassion," he thundered against what he saw as misplaced sympathy for wrongdoers at the expense of their victims:

"There are sob sisters; there are the social slobberers who insist on compassion being shown to the muggers, to the dope fiends, to the throat slashers, to the beatniks, to the prostitutes, to the homosexuals, to the punks, so that today the decent man is practically off the reservation."

Then he added: "Hate the sin and love the sinner."

This language sounds jarring to modern ears, and indeed it was jarring in its own time. Sheen was a man of the early-to-mid twentieth century, and his rhetoric reflected that era's assumptions. But the juxtaposition is telling: fierce denunciation followed immediately by the traditional Christian call to love. He meant both parts.

The Cause for Sainthood

Fulton Sheen died on December 9, 1979. He was eighty-four years old.

In 2002, the Catholic Church officially opened his "cause for canonization"—the formal process by which a deceased person is investigated to determine whether they lived a life of heroic virtue and should be declared a saint. In June 2012, Pope Benedict XVI recognized a decree stating that Sheen had indeed lived such a life. He was given the title "Venerable," one step below "Blessed" on the path to sainthood.

In July 2019, Pope Francis approved a reputed miracle attributed to Sheen's intercession—specifically, the case of a stillborn baby in Peoria who showed no signs of life for sixty-one minutes before suddenly reviving. Medical professionals could not explain the recovery. The Diocese of Peoria, where Sheen had been ordained a century earlier, attributed it to his prayers from beyond the grave.

Sheen was scheduled to be beatified in Peoria on December 21, 2019. Then the ceremony was postponed.

The reason was troubling. Bishop Salvatore Matano of Rochester expressed concern that Sheen might have assigned a priest who had been the subject of a 1963 sexual misconduct case—and that this might be cited unfavorably in a forthcoming report from the New York Attorney General investigating clergy abuse in Catholic dioceses.

The Diocese of Peoria countered that the priest in question had actually been assigned by Sheen's successor, not by Sheen himself, and that Sheen had been "exonerated" after thorough examination. According to Peoria, Sheen had "never put children in harm's way."

As of early 2025, the beatification remains in limbo. In May 2025, Bishop Louis Tylka of Peoria said he would urge the newly elected Pope Leo XIV—who, like Sheen, was born in Illinois—to complete the process.

The First Televangelist

Time magazine called Sheen "the first televangelist." The label is both accurate and misleading.

It's accurate because Sheen pioneered the use of television for religious communication. Before him, there were radio preachers, but television was different—visual, intimate, capable of creating the illusion that the person on screen was speaking directly to you in your living room. Sheen understood this instinctively. His shows were not broadcasts of church services or religious ceremonies. They were a man talking, thinking out loud, occasionally sketching on a chalkboard. The medium was personal, and so was his approach.

The label is misleading because "televangelist" now conjures images of prosperity gospel preachers, scandals, and manipulation. Sheen was none of those things. He wasn't paid for his programs. He gave away millions to charity. He taught philosophy, not get-rich-quick theology. His message was that life has meaning—not that God wants you to have a bigger house.

Today, his old broadcasts are still being aired on EWTN, the Catholic cable network founded by Mother Angelica, and on the Church Channel of the Trinity Broadcasting Network. New audiences discover a man in black robes and a cape, standing before a chalkboard, speaking with complete confidence about things that matter.

Thirty million people once watched him on Tuesday nights instead of Milton Berle. In an age of infinite content, that kind of attention seems almost miraculous.

Maybe that's the real miracle they should investigate.