Xi Jinping at the White House — goofing off with our president about a predecessor’s autopen. Preps for a Nor’easter — which means cleaning out the Costcos of the Acela Corridor. Plenty of things occupied the news headlines two days into fall 2026, y’all. But the one that was the keeper was Blessed Sheen Day in America. One of our first television trailblazers, Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, was raised to the status of “blessed” in the Catholic Church — advancing him toward the possibility of eventually becoming a canonized saint. Catholics can do both fabulously and terrifyingly weird things, like venerate a relic of his jawbone and name a parish after him; the last, of course, being way less unusual — similar to naming the Nashville airport after Dolly Parton. And like Dolly, there are life-size cardboard cutouts, hoodies, and water bottles of the Illinois native (yes, like Pope Leo). Which raises a fairly significant and fundamental question about saints: Are they just famous people who pray? Is it just even better if he happens to be a bishop with a cape and other episcopal regalia to add dramatic flair?
I think the first thing to know — which I say with transparent bias — is that the man was a philosophy teacher at my alma mater, the Catholic University of America, for 23 years. He published 34 books before he ever entered American homes on the TV screen. He was a newspaper columnist — bringing a religious worldview to the op-ed pages, an unapologetically Catholic one, from 1949 to 1977.
Comments