Every once in a while, I truly covet my neighbor’s idea. That happened yesterday afternoon, when I learned that this piece by my friend Mike Aquilina was soon to be posted on the First Things website: He compares the faithful joy of Dolly Parton and Fulton Sheen.
Different styles. Same Source.
Mike writes:
Neither Dolly nor Sheen led with hostility. They seemed to assume that the person on the other side of the TV screen was capable of recognizing goodness, beauty, humor, and truth. They spoke to that capacity.
This didn’t require them to surrender their convictions. Dolly’s songs inhabited a moral universe in which promises mattered, betrayal wounded, poverty had dignity, sacrifice could redeem suffering, and death did not have the final word. She could welcome people whose lives and views differed sharply from her own without pretending that differences didn’t exist.
Sheen could be even more demanding. He spoke about judgment, repentance, sexual morality, and the totalitarian temptations of the modern age. He wore on his sleeve, as it were, the markings of the most dogmatically demanding religion. Yet few viewers felt that he despised them. His criticisms of modern life were delivered by a man visibly delighted to be alive—in his native country and in his own day and age.
That delight makes the difference. Christian truth appeared in Dolly and Sheen not as a burden reluctantly shouldered but as a source of creative energy. They were funny because they were free. They were generous because they believed gifts were God-given and meant to be shared. . . .
Still, it seems fitting that Dolly should leave the public stage just as Sheen returns to it. Together they remind us that Christian witness need not become vague in order to become attractive. It must become credible. Credibility comes not only from saying true things, but also from embodying the joy, generosity, courage, and freedom those truths should produce.
You can watch my conversation with Mike about Fulton Sheen, who is being beatified today during a Mass in America’s Dome in St. Louis, here:
Beatification brings Sheen closer to the possibility of canonization as an official saint in the Catholic Church. As Mike gets into, it means that today, it becomes legal to have Fulton Sheen prayer circles at your parish, and churches named after him. It’s a big deal for Americans. And although today’s festivities happen in the Midwest, I confess I think of him as a patron saint of the Acela Corridor — he was known to travel by train, and if memory serves, ran into Billy Graham going between New York and Washington. That’s a very Acela thing, even if he didn’t live to ride Amtrak’s pathetic excuse for a fast train!
Fulton Sheen was all about introducing people to Jesus Christ. And today is a good day to deepen your relationship. For Catholics, I would suggest it’s even a heightened duty today.
Mike talks specifically, too, about a Sheen reprint that has just been released, The Power of Love.
EWTN is the place to watch the Sheenfest today.
And, FYI, my memory served us well. Here’s Bishop Robert Barron repeating the Sheen-Graham story:
I love the story of Billy Graham’s first encounter with my evangelical hero, Fulton J. Sheen. These two titans of preaching were on the same train from Washington to New York. Sheen found out about Graham’s presence, and he knocked on the door of the Protestant’s berth and said, “Billy, I wonder whether we might have a chat and a prayer?” Though he was preparing for bed, Billy Graham acquiesced and the two of them spent several hours in spiritual conversation — the beginning of a friendship that endured until Sheen’s death. I’ve always taken great pleasure in that image of brotherhood across denominational lines.