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As Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen is beatified today, Father Paul Moret reflects on the Catholic broadcaster and teacher who became part of his own faith journey long before the age of YouTube.
When Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen is declared Blessed today in St. Louis, the celebration may be taking place more than 2,500 kilometres from Spruce Grove. But for Holy Trinity’s Father Paul Moret, it is personal. Watch is live here at 1:00 P.M.
Long before Father Paul entered the seminary, became a priest or eventually came to Holy Trinity, Sheen was one of the Catholic voices helping him understand his faith.
“I heard of Bishop Sheen from a fairly young age because my parents were devotees of his,” Father Paul recalled.
Father Paul grew up before the internet made Sheen’s famous television appearances instantly available. Instead, he encountered him through books. He read Sheen’s Life of Christ, but particularly enjoyed the collections based on Life Is Worth Living, the television program that had made Sheen one of the most recognizable Catholic figures in North America.
“They weren’t very long. They didn’t require a lot of time to read any one of them,” Father Paul said. “But it was particularly attractive to see his insight into all sorts of different areas. Not just theology, but there are other areas of life, politics, psychology.”
That young reader could hardly have known where his own faith journey would eventually lead. Father Paul grew up in a large Catholic family with eight siblings. His father attended daily Mass, and Father Paul began going with him when he was about nine or 10 years old.“Going to church on Sunday was non-negotiable,” he said. “My dad was a daily Mass goer and I followed along pretty early on.” He continued altar serving into adulthood, right up until he entered seminary at age 22.
Father Paul is clear that his family, rather than any single writer or preacher, provided the foundation for his vocation. “The major influence in my life was my family,” he said. Still, Sheen became one of the voices that helped him along the way. “It certainly helped along that way.”
For Father Paul, what distinguished Sheen was not simply his ability to explain Catholic teaching. It was his combination of intellect and faith. Father Paul remembers being struck by Sheen’s insight into people and by the stories he told about bringing faith directly into their lives.
One involved a troubled actress whom Sheen encountered while serving at a church in London. According to the story Father Paul remembers from Sheen, the woman returned to the church after Sheen invited her to see some paintings, but only after making him promise that he would not ask her to go to confession. Sheen kept his promise in a characteristically mischievous way.
“He says, ‘I pushed her into the confessional. I didn’t ask her. I pushed her,’” Father Paul recalled. Years later, Sheen said, the woman became a Carmelite nun.
It is exactly the kind of story that stayed with Father Paul. “He had such an insight into people, into things of faith, and was able to reach people in such a marvelous way. And so that really inspired me,” he said.
What mattered was that Sheen seemed to live what he preached. “It was that faith dimension and a lived out faith,” Father Paul said. “Again, it was something that he lived out.”
For younger Catholics hearing his name for the first time this week, Sheen was something unusual: a Catholic bishop who became a major mainstream media personality.
Born in Illinois in 1895 and ordained a priest in 1919, he first reached millions through radio before moving into television. His program Life Is Worth Living, which began in the early 1950s, attracted an audience estimated at roughly 30 million viewers and earned him an Emmy Award.
There were no elaborate sets or video effects. Much of the program consisted simply of Sheen, a blackboard and his ability to explain faith, culture and human behaviour in a way millions of people wanted to hear. That ability is one reason Father Paul believes Sheen remains distinctive.
“There are a lot of people out there who are really great advocates of the Catholic faith,” he said. “I’m not sure that there are too many who combine the kind of intellect that Bishop Sheen had with that kind of faith.” Then Father Paul went even further. “Bishop Sheen had a particular gift that I think isn’t really duplicated in any one person today.”
There is an interesting twist to Sheen’s influence on Father Paul. As a young man, Father Paul knew Sheen largely through the written word because his television programs were not readily available to him.
Today, they are everywhere. “There’s far more access to his content than there was when I was growing up,” Father Paul said. “I only had a very limited access to his content, but he has been an inspiration for many people.”
Father Paul has already discovered that Sheen is not known only by older Catholics. “I talked to a couple of young girls after Mass on Sunday, and they knew who Bishop Sheen was,” he said. “They’ve taken in some of his content.”
For someone seriously exploring Catholicism today, Father Paul thinks there is a good chance Sheen will eventually appear on their screen. “I think that if anybody really wants to pursue a deeper understanding of their faith, they’ll probably run across Bishop Sheen at some point or another along their journey, especially if they’re going through YouTube.”
One of Sheen’s ideas has particularly caught Father Paul’s attention recently. Father Paul recalled listening to a talk in which Sheen reflected on great periods of crisis throughout Church history and suggested that lay Catholics would have a particularly important role in the Church’s future.
“He said that he believed that in this crisis that’s coming up, that it’s the lay people who are going to be the ones who saved the church,” Father Paul recalled. Father Paul sees parallels today, particularly as ordinary Catholics use YouTube, podcasts and social media to explain the faith and engage people who might never walk into a church.
In that sense, they are using the tools of their generation much as Sheen used radio and television in his. That connection was emphasized by Pope Leo XIV on Wednesday, the eve of Sheen’s beatification. The Pope specifically highlighted Sheen’s evangelization through the media and expressed hope that his example would inspire Catholics to discover new ways of spreading the Gospel.
Today, Sept. 24, Sheen will be beatified during a Mass in St. Louis, Missouri, presided over by Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle as Pope Leo XIV’s representative.
With beatification, the man Father Paul first encountered in books will formally become Blessed Fulton J. Sheen. For Father Paul, the occasion brings attention back to a Catholic voice that accompanied part of his own journey toward the priesthood.
He does not describe Sheen as the reason he became a priest. His family and the Catholic life he experienced at home came first.
But among the books, teachers and Catholic voices he encountered along the way was this remarkably gifted bishop who could speak about theology, psychology, culture and ordinary human life and connect all of it back to faith. And decades later, Father Paul still remembers what impressed him most. Not the television audience, the celebrity, not even the intellect. It was that Sheen lived what he taught. A “lived out faith.”
That may also explain why, on the day Fulton Sheen becomes Blessed, a new generation is discovering the same Catholic voice that a young Paul Moret once found in a book.
