Archbishop Fulton Sheen's Meatloaf Recipe
A poll taken by the Internet Catholic Daily, with 23,455 people casting ballots, found that the four most popular Catholics of the century were Pope John Paul II, Mother Teresa, Blessed Padre Pio and Archibishop Fulton J. Sheen.
Millions, in the United States and around the world, listened to his Catholic Hour radio programs from 1930 to1952, and millions received printed copies of these talks. Journalist Gladys Baker observed that in 1949, Sheen was “the name priest in America,” adding that “By members of all faiths, Monsignor Sheen is conceded to be the most electric orator of our times.” In 1979, Sheen’s good friend Billy Graham called him “one of the greatest preachers of this century.” When Sheen went on television in February 1952, his Life Is Worth Living programs became extremely popular, competing effectively against shows starring “Mr. Television” Milton Berle and singer/actor Frank Sinatra. A television critic remarked, “Bishop Sheen can’t sing, can’t dance, and can’t act. All he is . . . is sensational.”
His television show non withstanding, no record can be made of the thousands of sermons, speeches, and retreats Sheen gave over the decades, often to huge audiences. Sheen was also one of the American Church’s most prolific writers. Over a period of 54 years he authored 66 books and published 62 booklets, pamphlets, and printed radio talks. The number of his readers can only be imagined.
Fulton sheen was one of the Church’s great missionaries. In 1979, the Jesuit magazine America called him “the greatest evangelizer in the history of the Catholic Church in the United States. As national director of the Society for thePropagation of the Faith from 1950 to 1966, Sheen raised more money for the poor than any other American Catholic, an effort that was augmented by the donation of more than $10 million of his personal earnings. Not long before his death, he declared, “My greatest love has always been the Missions of the Church.”
Bishop Sheen was decades ahead of others in his opposition to racism, Sheen raised funds and donated very large sums of personal income to help build a hospital and churches for blacks in Alabama. In the late 1920s, while Klansmen were riding through the streets of hundreds of American cities, Sheen was giving speeches stressing racial equality and brotherhood. Frequently outspoken, Sheen stirred controversy with forceful statements on such topics as communism, socialism, the Spanish Civil War, World War II diplomacy, psychiatry, secularism, education, and the Left in general. “It is man who has to be remade first,” he wrote in his best-selling book America’s Bishop Peace of Soul, “then society will be remade by the restored new man.” This same book presented photographs of Sheen’s most prominent converts: automobile magnate Henry Ford II, leftist writer Heywood Broun, author Clare Boothe Luce (wife of Time owner Henry Luce), former Communist editor Louis Budenz, and famed violinist Fritz Kreisler.
Archbishop Sheen went home to his eternal reward in 1979. At his funeral it was hypothesized that he must have heard his blessed Savior state “Bishop Sheen, I have heard my mother speak well of you often.”
