SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to Catholic in America, a podcast in partnership with OSV News. I'm Jason Adkins. Archbishop Fulton Sheen, one of the great evangelizers and communicators in American Catholic history, perhaps world history, as he considered the world as his parish, will be beatified in St. Louis on September 24th. He was the author of 66 books, host of a prominent radio program for 20 years, and also host of the famous TV show Life is Worth Living from 1952 to 1957, which averaged 30 million viewers per week. He continues to live on as a tremendous influence on the faith of so many. Thousands have been converted by his witness. His books and writings continue to inspire and form many Catholics, and he remains a popular figure today. But many folks, especially younger generations, are just encountering him and his legacy for the first time and his beatification will certainly be a time to reflect further on his life and witness and give more people the opportunity to both encounter his books and his writings, but also to seek him as an intercessor in prayer. And as we'll learn in this podcast, prayer is the heart and the font of Bishop Sheen's legacy, particularly his daily holy hours in front of the Blessed Sacrament. We are blessed on this episode of Catholic in America to be joined by the promoter of his cause for canonization, Bishop Louis Tilke of Peoria, Illinois. Bishop Sheen was from a priest of the Diocese of Peoria, and Bishop Tilka is the promoter of his cause of canonization. He is also the active leader of the Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen Foundation. So who better to have on the program to talk about the life and legacy of Bishop Fulton Sheen than Bishop Lou Tilke? He was became the Bishop of Peoria in 2022 after 19 months as co-adjutor there. He is a priest of the Archdiocese of Chicago and was ordained by Cardinal Bernadon in 1996. We are so glad to have Bishop Lou Tilke on the program. Bishop Lou Tilke of Peoria, Illinois. Welcome to Catholic in America. It's a pleasure to have you on the show. It's great to be with you. Thanks for the invitation. I love talking about Bishop Fulton Sheen, but who was Bishop Fulton Sheen? Tell us a little bit about him.

SPEAKER_02 2:18

Fulton Sheen was originally a priest of the Diocese of Peoria. He would go on to uh be uh ultimately serve as an auxiliary bishop in New York and then uh also as the Bishop of Rochester in New York. He was the head of the Pontifical Mission Society. And what he is probably most known for was his ability to communicate the faith, which he used radio and the new technology of his day, the TV, to uh have a program Life is Worth Living. Uh so he's the first televangelist uh in the church, probably one of the greatest evangelists of the 20th century.

SPEAKER_01 2:56

Why is he such a significant figure in American Catholic history? You know, he was a famous TV program, radio program, all those things. But what makes him so uh important in the life of the church in the United States?

SPEAKER_02 3:08

Well, he used the gift and talent of communication to advance the gospel, but he also served the church as a priest and as a bishop uh and as the leader of the Mission Society. And uh he saw the world as his parish because of his experience of leading the Mission Society. Uh, and he was uh an individual that spoke our faith with clarity and charity, uh, who had a great wit and um uh uh personality and was just a great apologist. He had wealth of knowledge uh of the faith. And so all of that led into just this uh amazing heroic character that uh came into people's homes uh via radio and TV to invite them to have a relationship with Jesus.

SPEAKER_01 3:58

He had a very prominent radio program before the Second World War. He had a very prominent TV program after the second world war.

SPEAKER_02 4:05

Correct.

SPEAKER_01 4:06

What makes him relevant for today?

SPEAKER_02 4:09

Well, today I think he offers uh again that voice of clarity uh of the faith. Uh he was very bold in his witness to the faith and calling people to uh encounter the Lord and to change their lives so that they could have a relationship with Jesus. Uh and the fact that he was able to use new technology, which in the age of the new evangelization and in the ever-changing landscape of using media and technology, he shows us uh a way to uh incorporate that into our lives today, to evangelize the world through whatever means mess necessary and possible for us to bring people the faith.

SPEAKER_01 4:53

Bishop Sheen will be beatified in St. Louis on September 24th. Presumably there's a miracle attributed to him. I'm told a certain Mr. Engstrom. Yes. Um but what about his personal holiness or his character or his witness has elevated him to one step away from sainthood? I mean, there's a whole cottage industry of of Catholic communicators out there right now. There have been throughout history. There, there were, I mean, you can go but look at image double-day paperbacks from the 1950s, and there were tons of people who were great expositors of the faith at the same time that Bishop Sheen was on TV. What about him personally has elevated him to the altars?

SPEAKER_02 5:31

Well, I think the the personal side of him was that he was committed uh daily to a holy hour. Uh he was a man of faith first and foremost, and he wanted to deepen, as he would say, the friendship with Jesus. And in order to deepen that, he knew he had to spend time with Jesus, which he did every day during a holy hour, uh, that led him to the inspiration necessary for him to go out and uh do what he did, whether it was on the radio, on TV, whether it was in the classroom as a professor, uh, the work with the Mission Society, it all stemmed from that deep personal relationship that he shared with the Lord each and every day. And so I think what makes him different, you know, today somebody can just kind of put out on the internet on uh a podcast and say, I'm gonna talk about the Catholic faith uh and we don't even know their credentials. Uh with Fulton Sheen, we know his credentials. It started with the relationship with Jesus. It was formed through the his years of education and in the seminary uh and beyond because he would go on to receive advanced degrees. He was deeply uh rooted in the tradition of the faith, the church, and in studying our faith. Uh, so there's no question about, you know, just hanging out of shingles and say, hey, I'm Fulton Sheen. I want to talk to you about Jesus and the church. Uh, it all came from first that relationship with the Lord and then being formed in the teachings of the church as he would go through his life.

SPEAKER_01 7:07

Wonderful. Let's go into it a little bit more closely, his early life and priesthood. He was a priest of your diocese, the diocese of Peoria. Uh and tell us about a little bit about his early life. He wasn't born in Peoria. I know he, I think he was El Paso, Texas. Right. No. El Paso, Illinois. Why did he El Paso, Illinois? I'm sorry. That's yes. Thanks for that important correction. Right. So why did he choose? Tell us a little bit more about his early life and why he chose to become a priest.

SPEAKER_02 7:35

Sure. So he was born in El Paso, Illinois, which is about roughly uh 30 minutes east of uh Peoria, uh, a rural community. And uh St. Mary's Parish was the parish he was baptized in and grew up in. Um he uh his parents wanted him to have a Catholic education, and so they moved from El Paso to Peoria. Uh as a young boy, he was serving mass in the cathedral. Uh and the famous story is that he dropped the cruet and the cruet shattered. And afterwards, he was, of course, afraid of what the bishop was going to say to him. Uh, and simply the bishop said, uh, asked him where he was going to study as a young man. And uh, you know, uh Sheen was getting ready to go to high school, so he thought he was talking about high school, and he says, Oh, no, no, no. You're gonna you're gonna be formed as a priest, and you're gonna study uh, you know, in higher education in Louvain and that. So um his his roots in his family, they were certainly faithful people. Uh they they uh it's demonstrated by uh not only the love that he experienced in in his family home, but that desire for Catholic education to begin to put him on the way to uh the life of holiness that he was going to live uh as a priest and inspired, inspired uh him to be become a priest. Um so his humble roots uh were never lost on him, despite his fame and everything that uh would come throughout his life and his ministry. Uh, he always looked back to his family and to the roots that he had in north central Illinois.

SPEAKER_01 9:09

You mentioned his higher studies. How did his decision to pursue graduate studies and philosophy of all subjects shape his future as a great missionary communicator of the faith?

SPEAKER_02 9:20

Well, it was very clear that he was uh very bright um and uh he was valedictorian uh of his high school class, uh, of Spaulding uh high school. Um and uh as he studied for the priesthood, uh, even though it was quite clear that he had the aptitude and the skill to study uh advanced studies, when he was first ordained a priest, uh the bishop assigned him to be a parish priest, uh, in a sense, wanting to humble him, uh, ground him in the life of a priest uh as a parish priest. Uh but within a year uh he was able to say to him, I know you're on for for greater things. And so it was the encouragement of the bishop then to go off and uh get the advanced degrees.

SPEAKER_01 10:06

Bishop Sheen recounts a great story of how he approached G.K. Chesterton to write the foreword to his doctoral dissertation about Thomas Aquinas. What influence did those two great communicators of the faith have on Bishop Sheen, G.K. Chesterton and Thomas Aquinas? Can we say that each was a formative influence, perhaps?

SPEAKER_02 10:24

I would uh I think you could use the term that they were formative influences. Um I think they were formative in their own ways. Uh obviously, Sheen, as a uh a student of philosophy, as a student of theology, uh was very deeply rooted in the uh study of Thomas Aquinas uh and uh the writings and and teachings that he uh gave to the church so eloquently. Um I think just Chesterton uh as a contemporary was one who uh would encourage Sheen um to continue to wrestle with the big questions of theology and philosophy and and uh engage in in um apologetics and thinking about the the tradition of and the teachings of the church uh to communicate them. And one of the amazing things of Sheen's life was his ability to take the uh deep insights of theology and philosophy and to communicate them uh with uh uh others. You know, it to him it made no difference whether he was talking to uh another theologian or philosopher, or if he was talking to uh a high political official, or if he was talking to the man on the street, uh his ability to communicate um the faith in Jesus was what was so powerful.

SPEAKER_01 11:51

We here in St. Paul like to claim a little bit of Fulton Sheen's legacy as he attended St. Paul Seminary on the campus of the College of St. Thomas, Aquinas, that is, and so we're certainly proud of him and his legacy here as well. How did he from 1930 to 1950, he hosted the radio program uh on the Catholic hour, the Catholic Hour on NBC Radio? How was he discovered and how did he fill all those hours? What was his strategy for providing or identifying good content to present in that long-standing radio program?

SPEAKER_02 12:24

You know, uh one of the things that Sheen did, uh, I'm not sure actually how he was, uh I think it was from his teaching at the university that uh he was kind of drawn into uh the radio program. But uh I think what he did was he looked at life. Um so often he started his talks, his uh messages on the radio, on the TV. He started by looking at what were the questions of the day, what were the what were people experiencing um and and how that would impact them if they could look at it from the perspective of how that that somehow made a connection into the life that God intends us to have. And so he was very uh adept in being able to uh use analogies and um the expressions of everyday life to lead you into the deeper question or the deeper teaching of faith or the larger question of philosophy. So uh his ability to start that communication in a way that was, I guess, in some ways, maybe disarming. Um, you know, you you didn't have this guy come out to say, I know all the theology, and therefore I'm gonna tell you, you know, what you need to know. Uh, he related you as a person and he would lift up something that you could relate to or laugh at, and then all of a sudden you would find yourself captivated by uh him as he would then delve deeper into the subject that he wanted to uh convey.

SPEAKER_01 13:55

I want to dig deeper into that because his his book, for example, Peace of Soul, in my humble opinion, is an absolute masterpiece. He seemed to have unique and very keen insights into the neuroses, psychoses, spiritual struggles of modern men and women living in a mass consumer society such as ours. You said he asked, you know, figured out or tried to identify what the questions were were on people's minds. You could say, well, he was in the ivory tower of academia at Catholic University or wherever else he was. How how did how what was his secret to really peering into the soul of men and women of his age and and really understanding some of the challenges and the struggles? Because his book it comes out in his writings, in his radio program, and his television shows. He was not someone who was just a famous academic or someone in the media. He was really uh attuned to the struggles of society and modern life. What gave him that deep insight? Was it the hour in front of the Eucharist, or did he make time intentionally to be with people? What was that?

SPEAKER_02 14:59

Well, I he would say that everything stemmed from that hour. The most important hour of the day was was the holy hour. So uh he would he would credit everything back to that time that he spent in front of the Lord. Um, and even you know, as he talked about making a holy hour, uh, the the reasons why and the importance um of doing that, not just as a priest, uh, but for everyone. Uh in fact, uh in writing about the holy hour, he can give you 10 reasons why it was important to make a holy hour. His next thing was how the laity should make a holy hour. And then he would talk about how the priest makes the holy hour. So um I I think his recognition that we're all called to that intimate friendship with Jesus uh is what really grounded him in in everything that he said or do and did. The other thing I would say in regards to your question is I think, you know, he was uh a person that was present to others. So, you know, uh there's all kinds of stories uh that uh uh uh of his uh uh awareness of the people he was surrounded with or the people that he encountered. Um and he would take the time in the moment to respond to the person that was in front of him. You know, there's a great story of uh him going to visit somebody in the hospital, and he was on the way out uh the door of the hospital, and he's back down on the first floor getting ready to leave the hospital, and he was told that there was a nurse up on the 11th floor that wanted to meet him, um, you know, and and that uh she was not Catholic, but you know, had had you know been captivated by hearing him speak on the TV or the radio, and that he stopped, he went back to the 11th floor, he found that nurse, engaged her in a conversation, invited her for dinner, and then you know, ultimately she converted, you know. Uh so the the each person that he encountered, he valued and he was present to them in such a way that uh it it was engaging, it would draw them in to the relationship that he wanted to share with them, which is the relationship with Jesus.

SPEAKER_01 17:22

He took his uh teachings and catechesis to a broader uh audience in the 1950s with his program Life is Worth Living. I think the statistic statistic is an important one, had an average audience of 30 million viewers a week in a time when the U.S. population, I looked this up, 160 million, almost one in five people were watching Bishop Sheen every week in competition with Milton Burrell and some of these other figures. What made that program, how did he so successfully engage that emerging medium of television?

SPEAKER_02 17:57

Well, he had something to share that was meaningful and purposeful. Life is worth living if it's a life lived with the Lord. Uh, so he had compelling uh uh content to engage people with. When you stop to think about it, you know, the the competition that he had, Milton Burrow, Lucille Ball, and that the programs that they were on, they used sets, like, you know, pretty elaborate sets and everything to, you know, tell their stories and that. What did he use? You know, uh room with a chalkboard in it, right? You know, uh that that that was and and and because what he didn't want was things to get in the way of the message he was trying to convey. And um, you know, and he you could tell again because the way that he would enter the room for the TV show, his his initial uh kind of uh outreach to the audience was usually humor and disarming. And uh then he goes into the compelling story and the the deeper uh teaching of who we are called to be if life is worth living. And um, so you know, and again, uh he over and over and over again, he would always point back to that holy hour in the morning, right? When he won the uh Emmy, you know, what did he do? He attributed his writers, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the four evangelists, the gospel writers. That's where he got his material, right? You know, he he was amazing with his intellect and his ability to communicate.

SPEAKER_01 19:34

Thank you, Bishop Lou Tilka of Peoria, Illinois, for joining us on Catholic in America. Thank you for stewarding the great life and legacy of Bishop Fulton Sheen. And uh prayers for you as we head toward the beatification. Thanks for joining us again and for a great conversation introducing us to this important figure in American Catholic history. It's great to be with you. Thanks for the invitation. Uh following my college days as an econ and theology undergraduate, I got a job teaching high school and middle school religion, among other things. And there's no more daunting task than going into a room of skeptical uh eighth and ninth and tenth grade boys and talking about the faith. Now, I was just a 22-year-old kid that at that time myself and had encountered all kinds of interesting writings and teachers and readings in my theology classes, figures such as Romano Guardini, for example, but didn't really know the basics well enough that I felt confident in communicating him, communicating them effectively. Enter Bishop Fulton Sheen. I had not heard of Bishop Sheen uh prior to teaching uh catechetics and Catholic doctrine, and what a blessing Bishop Sheen was in his writings. The first thing I encountered was a whole cassette tape. Yes, we used those at that time, of uh basically a catechetical course that he put on the basics of the faith and how beautiful and helpful that was to me to communicate the teachings of the faith and Catholic doctrine and the catechism to those skeptical boys in my class. He was a great gift and then became a great uh teacher and witness to me personally, someone who strengthened and edified me in the faith at a young age and was so very important as I entered upon the sacrament and the vocation of Christian marriage as well at that time. And as you heard in this conversation with Bishop Atilka, some of those books, such as Three to Get Married and A Peace of Soul, were really instrumental. So it's exciting and it's a privilege uh to introduce Bishop Sheen in this conversation to perhaps a whole new generation of folks who've not yet encountered him and hopefully can benefit from his works and in some way become better evangelizers, better communicators of the faith, and better witnesses of the faith. But I think it goes back to that holy hour, our willingness to spend time in prayer as the font of our discipleship, the font of our ability to share Jesus with others. We must encounter Christ, uh, especially in his presence to us in the Eucharist, and then we can share his face and seek his face in the Eucharist and then be his face and his words to other people around us. So Bishop Sheen remains a great blessing. It's a great cause of joy that he'll be beatified on September 24th. And I hope this podcast and conversation has given us as disciples a better look into his life, his spirituality, his witness, and how we can learn and be formed by it as well. Thanks for joining me on this episode of Catholic in America for generously sharing your time to be better formed and to engage these important conversations. Please know my prayers for you and for all of our listeners. Take care. God bless you and your family.

unknown 22:31

Bye-bye.