80 Years Ago, Archbishop Fulton Sheen Predicted The West’s Current Godless Struggle

During the Second World War, Archbishop Fulton Sheen served as America’s voice for Catholicism. Sheen, an Irish-Catholic bishop who was tall and powerful, was a cultural commentator and academic through the advent radio, television and mass media. The new edited anthology includes his radio lectures, writings and speeches during World War II.War and PeaceSheen’s observations on America’s cultural and political crises and spiritual problems are very timely and can be read as commentaries on today’s struggles.

In the last decade, there has been a growing concern about the spread of relativism and cancel culture in American education. However, this is not a new concern. Both believers and nonbelievers have been captivated by laments about the spiritual decline in America. This is also not new. American politics are increasingly worried about the state of democracy and the possibility of dictatorship or despotism. This is also not new.

Fulton Sheen was aware of all the current crises during America’s struggle against communism and fascism in the 1930s, 1940s, when America faced educational and moral relativism, social upheavals, and concerns about the future.

Sheen, 1941. “secular college and university education teaches in one form or another that there is no such thing as evil or guilt, that there are no absolute standards of right and wrong, that right and wrong depend entirely upon one’s point of view.” This statement might sound harsh and indicting of today’s failing university system. However, Sheen’s insights on the crisis of moral education allows us to see the contradictions within the revolutionary spirit. Sheen continues, “On the other hand, the very products of this unmoral education are now, in the domain of politics, pointing fingers at Hitler and Mussolini — not at Stalin, of course — and saying: ‘They are wicked; they are wrong; they are evil.'”

The difference between relativist moral education versus the politics of moral outrage or rhetoric is due to the fact that political conflict affirms the existence of moral sentiments. In politics, we use the language of wrong and right alongside good and bad. But our education system and predominant philosophical beliefs support the opposite. We are now stuck in a state of chaos and confusion. Our intellect is indoctrinated to believe there is no evil. However, our hearts respond to political events with a sense for moral action.

The intelligentsia, their revolutionary followers, are responsible for the rise of relativist moral education. Sheen is a highly educated man who was also a recipient of a doctorate and a well-received scholar on Saint Thomas Aquinas. He seems oddly a defender of the common people while criticizing the elite. That was exactly what he was. In many ways.