It was a tradition in my childhood home, as in most Catholic households of the 1950s.
In our small living room in Greenpoint, the family huddled around the small black and white TV screen to watch Archbishop Fulton Sheen’s weekly show, “Life Is Worth Living.”
It was mandatory viewing at a time when most Catholics acted in unison. There was no other option. If Archbishop Sheen was on TV, Catholics watched and listened.
We kids probably didn’t fully understand the profound words he was preaching, but there was no doubt he made an impression on us.
The medium was the message, and we all knew who Archbishop Sheen was.
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When the show aired on Tuesday evenings, opposite Milton Berle, Archbishop Sheen more than held his own with 30 million viewers.
Uncle Miltie once joked that Archbishop Sheen had better people writing for him — Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
Off the screen, he was just as popular as a guest preacher. His live appearances filled churches and auditoriums. Every Good Friday, he attracted an overflow crowd to St. Agnes Church in Manhattan. My dad would tell us how he had heard Archbishop Sheen on the speakers set up outside for those who could not gain entry.
Archbishop Sheen captured our attention with his dramatic delivery, his cool stare into the camera’s lens, and his simple script on the studio blackboard. He joked that his “angel” erased the blackboard for him. We waited for the dramatic wave of his cape at the end of each show and his classic sign-off, “God love you!”
Even after his TV career, he remained a prominent figure among Catholics as national director of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith and as bishop of Rochester.
Archbishop Sheen was a media icon, no doubt about it!
Who can forget St. Pope John Paul II’s embrace of a feeble Archbishop Sheen when he entered the sanctuary of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan during the pope’s 1979 visit? It was an appropriate thank you to the TV evangelist for his many years of faithfully and energetically preaching the word. The tears in the archbishop’s eyes were all you needed to feel the appreciation.
I remember seeing Archbishop Sheen on his final visit to the Diocese of Brooklyn in 1978. He was struggling. He actually had to get himself out of a hospital bed to come to Our Lady of Angels Church in Bay Ridge to preach at the funeral Mass for Auxiliary Bishop John Boardman.
I was assigned, along with Tablet reporter Matt Monahan, to cover the event. I settled into the choir loft to watch the proceedings, while Monahan crouched down in front of the pulpit as Archbishop Sheen spoke. He snapped a dramatic shot of the prelate, which he later sent to him and received back with the bishop’s signature.
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It was inscribed, “To Matthew Monahan, God Love You, +Fulton J. Sheen.”
“It’s a treasured keepsake for sure!” Monahan said of the photo.
In 2011, The Tablet held a forum at the Immaculate Conception Center in Douglaston that discussed the life of Archbishop Sheen and the merits for his cause for sainthood.
The speaker for the evening was Father Andrew Apostoli, the original vice postulator of Archbishop Sheen’s cause for canonization.
There was little doubt as to where Father Apostoli and the almost 400 people in attendance stood on the matter.
In their eyes, Archbishop Sheen was already a saint.
