War and Peace: A Sheen Anthology

by Fulton J. Sheen

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:

The spirit of the Antichrist, immoral leaders, education, and societies

How personal sin is sickening our culture — and the cure for this “pandemic”

The proper understanding of and instinctive human need for authentic freedom, justice, and love

The need to unite for personal rights, including freedom of conscience

Why it is crucial to be intolerant of evil and embrace a divine solution

How America must choose to repent in order to overcome our present crisis

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.

Genres: Catholic

401 pages, Paperback

Published June 1, 2022

About the author

Fulton John Sheen was an American bishop of the Catholic Church known for his preaching and especially his work on television and radio. Ordained a priest of the Diocese of Peoria in Illinois, in 1919, Sheen quickly became a renowned theologian, earning the Cardinal Mercier Prize for International Philosophy in 1923. He went on to teach theology and philosophy at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. and served as a parish priest before he was appointed auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of New York in 1951. He held this position until 1966 when he was made bishop of the Diocese of Rochester in New York. He resigned as bishop of Rochester in 1969 as his 75th birthday approached and was made archbishop of the titular see of Newport, Wales.
For 20 years as "Father Sheen", later monsignor, he hosted the night-time radio program The Catholic Hour on NBC (1930–1950) before he moved to television and presented Life Is Worth Living (1952–1957). Sheen's final presenting role was on the syndicated The Fulton Sheen Program (1961–1968) with a format that was very similar to that of the earlier Life Is Worth Living show. For that work, Sheen twice won an Emmy Award for Most Outstanding Television Personality, and was featured on the cover of Time magazine. Starting in 2009, his shows were being re-broadcast on the EWTN and the Trinity Broadcasting Network's Church Channel cable networks. His contribution to televised preaching resulted in Sheen often being called one of the first televangelists.
The cause for his canonization was officially opened in 2002. In June 2012, Pope Benedict XVI officially recognized a decree from the Congregation for the Causes of Saints stating that he lived a life of "heroic virtues," a major step towards beatification, and he is now referred to as venerable. On July 5, 2019, Pope Francis approved a reputed miracle that occurred through the intercession of Sheen, clearing the way for his beatification. Sheen was scheduled to be beatified in Peoria on December 21, 2019, but his beatification was postponed after Bishop Salvatore Matano of Rochester expressed concern that Sheen's handling of a 1963 sexual misconduct case against a priest might be cited unfavorably in a forthcoming report from the New York Attorney General. The Diocese of Peoria countered that Sheen's handling of the case had already been "thoroughly examined" and "exonerated" and that Sheen had "never put children in harm's way".

Reviews

[Paithan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I guess I should go and become a Catholic because I agreed with just about everything in this book. It's full of simple but effective arguments centered around Catholic social teaching, rather than theology or apologetics.

You can feel the influences of GK Chesterton. In a lot of ways, I felt I was reading Chesterton if he had been writing in the latter half of the 20th century, but I know the Archbishop enjoyed his writings so that shouldn't come as any surprise.

One of the things that was so effective about the book is that it is not one cohesive piece. It is an anthology, originally radio productions if I remember correctly, spanned out over the course of 4 years. Because of this some of the same fundamental arguments are brought up again and again. Rather than being tedious, I found they reinforced those fundamentals and added on top of them as I was reading, so by the end of it I came away with a fuller picture of Catholic social teaching.

There were a few typos. Especially in the second half of the text.