Fulton Sheen and the Conscience of the West

T he soon-to-be Blessed Archbishop Fulton Sheen is moving closer to becoming the first American native-born bishop to become a Catholic saint. This September, the Catholic Church will beatify Sheen in St. Louis, Mo., marking the second-to-last stage in the Catholic canonization process. This historic event has renewed interest in Sheen’s life and legacy — especially in his Emmy-winning show, Life Is Worth Living, and the more than 60 books that Sheen authored.

Those who have been exploring Sheen’s remarkable public career — particularly those who are far too young to have seen his television presentations at the time — will encounter repeated instances of Sheen’s warnings about what was then the daily front-page threat of communism. In the mid-20th century, Sheen prophetically cautioned that the West’s abandonment of Christian values would continue pushing nations and people toward dangerous ideologies that undermine human dignity.

Today, his insights remind Americans to be wary of ideologies that contradict the truth about God and human dignity. Widespread religious renewal and commitment to Catholic social teaching can help achieve far greater human freedom and national harmony than any political system or ideology.

In 1935, Pope Pius XI asked then-Monsignor Sheen to educate his massive global audience on the dangers of communism and similar ideologies. At the time, many saw communism as simply a political system that might address economic or social disparities. Yet both Pope Pius XI and Sheen recognized communism’s threat as far more insidious: It was a pseudo-religion and philosophy incompatible with truth and faith.

Communism promised adherents “fairness” and prosperity within the collective. Yet this “prosperity” required total adherence to state control — often at the expense of human dignity.

In a 1936 essay for America magazine, Sheen wrote that communism “is a philosophy of life which sets itself up as a counter-church.” This counter-church, he wrote, was uncompromising in its belief that the economic was the highest end of man, just “as the Church is uncompromising about the spiritual as the highest end of man.”

Sheen recognized that communism’s focus on economic structures and the collective undermined human dignity and freedom. “Like a religion, it claims to be the sole authority,” he wrote. “It claims absolute validity in all spheres, even demanding unqualified allegiance of both the body and soul.”

Sheen explicitly warned that communism’s intolerance often led to attacks on independent institutions like the family, religious communities, private property, and anything else that siphoned power away from the state. He had seen firsthand how communism’s intolerance of opposing worldviews led to widespread persecution — especially of Catholics.

Communists’ deceptive emphasis on the collective “good” created a system that was leading many to die in Soviet gulags and suffer extreme persecution around the world. “To the Soviets,” Bishop Sheen famously wrote in his book, The Church, Communism, and Democracy, “a person is very much like a grape who continues to exist only on condition that his individual, personal value is squeezed out of him so that he exists only in the wine of the state.”

Yet Sheen didn’t focus solely on communism. In fact, his 1948 book, Communism and the Conscience of the West, diagnosed how Western moral decay — in part a by-product of unrestrained capitalism — had facilitated the global embrace of communism. “Communism then is coming back upon the Western world because something died in the Western world,” he wrote, “namely the strong faith of men in the God that made them.”

Sheen insisted that the rise of communism exposed deeper spiritual failures within the West. A culture increasingly consumed by materialism, moral relativism, and excessive individualism had left many people searching for meaning in political ideologies rather than in God. Sheen believed that communism was “on the conscience of the West” because Western societies had neglected justice, weakened the family, and forgotten the dignity of the human person.

This spiritual hunger was especially evident among young people. “The youths of our country are interested in Communism,” Sheen wrote, “ . . . because they are seeking religion.” According to Sheen, communism promised purpose, identity, and a cause worth sacrificing for — things that Sheen knew could only be authentically fulfilled through Christ and His Church.

Though Sheen firmly defended private property and economic freedom, he repeatedly warned against an unrestrained capitalism that reduced human beings to producers and consumers. “Capitalism is indifferent to religion,” he wrote. “It wants no church, no Bible, no moral law telling a man what he ought to do with his wealth.” In The World’s First Love, he warned that monopolistic capitalism, communism, and socialism alike could contribute to the “destruction of the image of man” whenever economic systems were elevated above the dignity of the person.

In line with Catholic social teaching, Sheen recognized that society should be ordered toward the human person, who is created in the image of God, rather than toward economic systems that dehumanized people as mere instruments of production. Genuine freedom, he argued, consisted of more than secular rights — it required the spiritual freedom to seek truth, cultivate virtue, and worship God without coercion.

Sheen believed that no political movement could satisfy humanity’s deepest longings. That conviction helped make him one of the 20th century’s most persuasive evangelists, winning converts from every walk of life — including former communist organizer Bella Dodd.

Those who are only now discovering Archbishop Sheen’s enduring wisdom will, we hope, recognize his central message: The surest safeguard against any system that diminishes the human person is a steadfast commitment to the truths of the Gospel and the enduring principles of Catholic social teaching.