Christians must go to the cross for the truth
By FRANCIS PHILLIPS on the ‘Catholic Herald’
Fulton Sheen: his writing of 1933 predicted the world today
Having recently blogged about the late Archbishop Fulton Sheen, I note an American blogger, Little Catholic Bubble, is reading his “Seven Last Words and the Seven Virtues” as a Lenten exercise. Reading one of the excerpts pulled me up short. The book was published as long ago as 1933 but it could be describing with uncanny accuracy the situation today. Sheen wrote, “We are at the end of a tradition and a civilization which believed we could preserve Christianity without Christ, religion without a creed, meditation without sacrifice, family life without moral responsibility, sex without purity and economics without ethics. We have completed our experiment of living without God…”
How prescient he was, though I am surprised that even in 1933, when Christian traditions and values in society and in family life still seemed to be stable and intact, he could see the writing on the wall. I think even Sheen would have been staggered at the speed at which his prophesy has been realised: changes in the definition and meaning of marriage; routine and widespread abortion; increasing pressure to legalise euthanasia – these are only some of the more obvious features of modern life taken for granted in the western world.
I have been sent a copy of the Meditations for Lent of Bishop Jaques-Benigne Bossuet. Reading him puts Sheen’s grim warnings into a divine perspective. Famous in 17th century France for his preaching and writings, Bossuet is about as far removed from modern “spirituality” writing as you can get. He is solely occupied with the state of the soul and its progress in the Christian life. This makes him a classic, like Thomas a Kempis, but it probably doesn’t put him high on the lists of popular books today, even for Lent (though I see that Jeff Mirus of Catholic Culture.org, who is also reading his Meditations, endorses him).
Just to give you a flavour of him: for Friday in week 4 of Lent his chapter (they are all very short) is entitled “Up to Jerusalem”. Bossuet tells us, “…in his suffering and in our obligation to follow him and to carry our cross after him is our salvation.” He goes on: “Consider how prone we are to self-deception, how we play deaf when we are told something that would injure our passions or sensibilities, and how, no matter how plainly we are spoken to, we stop our ears, pretending not o hear…” Bossuet concludes this chapter with the warning: “Understand, Christian, how hard it is to go up to the Cross with Jesus and how great is our need for his grace.”….
Christians who put their head above the parapet and stand up for what they believe will increasingly discover to their cost what it is like to live in the kind of world that Fulton Sheen foretold so prophetically.
Read the whole article here:
Catholicism Pure & Simple 
I find I’m quoting this outstanding soon-to-be-canonised Archbishop more and more. Everything he uttered is just so amazingly appropriate for our day and age. Here’s another one:
“God seems very far away from the modern man: this is due, to a great extent, to his own Godless behaviour. Goodness always appears as a reproach to those who are not living right, and this reproach on the part of the sinner expresses itself in hatred and persecution.”
I hope this will come as some consolation for the courageous Caroline Farrow, and all those who stand up for Catholic values in a hostile world.
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“We are at the end of a tradition and a civilization which believed we could preserve Christianity without Christ, religion without a creed, meditation without sacrifice, family life without moral responsibility, sex without purity and economics without ethics. We have completed our experiment of living without God…”
I don’t see any prescience here. Sheen is writing about his own time – the early 30’s, here: the rise of Communism, Fascism and Nazism, the great Depression, Institutionalised racism, anti-Semitism, etc, and he sees that as being at an end. “Experiment complete,” he says. No hint of “prophecy” that I can see.
Certainly there are similarities between those days and today. There are always similarities.
But, personally I’m far happier living today, than I would have been back then.
Have things got better since the 30’s? Matter of opinion. Mine is “yes.”
“Consider how prone we are to self-deception, how we play deaf when we are told something that would injure our passions or sensibilities, and how, no matter how plainly we are spoken to, we stop our ears, pretending not to hear…”
…No disputing that, surely?
And each of us thinks it only applies to other people, never to ourselves.
I know that’s what I do, at least.
(Pompous, hectoring old Toad.)
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Better to go back to sermons of St Vincent Ferrer sic St Dominc. Written in the 14th Century but reaches back to the Fathers of the Church gives very fruitful mediation for the 16th through to the 21st century!
http://www.svfsermons.org/
http://www.svfsermons.org/C301_OnStDominic.html
Amongst the insights will be a better understanding of The Church, St Malachy’s list and St Francis great spiritual child in Our Day St padre Pio.
Toad we are each providentially placed in Our own time! Thats always true BUT the Faith is Ageless and Timeless.
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“Toad we are each providentially placed in Our own time!”
Can only agree, Roger. At least, I’m incredibly providentially placed in mine.
No doubt you are in yours, too.
And I can only thank “providence,” that my place and time was not that of a Christian serf in 13th Century England, for one example. (Or a Polish Jew in 1940, for another.)
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But it Toad you should also add a Christian in the first century! How about a Carmelite under the Reign Of Terror? A Catholic priest in Elizabethan England? How about Rwanda? But this Age is lukewarm and vacillating even to banning the Cross so as not to offend other Faths. Its called Apostacy.
What is forgotten is that Our Lord’s Kingdom is Not yet of this world! the Our Father prayers for this Kingdom to come. This Age actually has the greatest Hatred and Opposition to the Kingdom because of Laws that oppose those of the Christ.
We are providentially born in this age and time to give witness to the Faith of Adam, Henoch, Noah, Abraham, Issac, Jacob, Moses, Our Lord, the Apostles their Faith is that of Our Fathers.
The 20th Century was a blood bath unparalleled in recorded history. The wars, the genocide, the Spainish Flu, Weapons of Mass Destruction whose stocks still remain.
You may yet come to consider other times as more preferable!
Fulton Sheen had a massive insight into the Atom Bomb! The Sun of Fatima mirrors this Bomb dropped on Catholic Nagasaki. That second War fortold by Heaven and the clear Russia will spread its evils throughout the world. Poland has asked NATO to strengthen its borders!
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“You may yet come to consider other times as more preferable!”
Indeed I might, Roger. Right now, I’m ‘agnostic’ about that. As you point out, providentiality depends on both geography and history.
Lot of unhappy people around today… Quite a few happy ones, as well.
All depends, really. Crap shoot.
“Fulton Sheen had a massive insight into the Atom Bomb! “
When? Where?
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