The real miracle of Bishop Fulton Sheen on his road to Sainthood -- Overcoming New York’s Cardinal Spellman was a true miracle

 Bishop Fulton Sheen

Two years ago, an Illinois woman named Bonnie Engstrom gave birth to a stillborn baby. Throughout the pregnancy, Engstrom had prayed for a healthy child.

Specifically, she invoked the name of the popular 1950s television priest, Fulton Sheen.  In a development that surely would have made the media-savvy Sheen proud, Engstrom even watched videos of the former Irish American bishop on YouTube.

Nevertheless, tragedy for Engstrom’s newborn seemed imminent. That is, until the baby’s heart finally did start beating. The two year-old child is now happy and healthy.

Was this a miracle?  Did Sheen, in death, intercede on behalf of this mother to save the child’s life?
If the Vatican believes so, Bishop Fulton J. Sheen may very well become the first male American-born saint.

Last week, the Vatican officially recognized Archbishop Sheen’s “heroic virtues” and gave him the title “venerable.”  The next step towards sainthood is to establish whether or not Sheen is indeed responsible for miracles on earth.

There are fewer and fewer people around these days who remember Sheen, even if millions watched his TV show in the 1950s.  (Sheen even won and Emmy.) 

Those who do remember him recall a firm yet comforting figure, and one who represented arguably the high point of American Catholic power.

However, it’s important to remember that while Sheen may have seemed a stabilizing presence, he rose to prominence at a time of great tension, just two years after a controversial anti-Catholic book became a best seller.

Meanwhile, once Sheen became a household name, he privately battled an even more powerful Irish American force in the church who was known as the “American Pope.”

In other words, you might say Sheen already pulled off a miracle or two, in doing battle with the likes of author Paul Blanshard and Francis Cardinal Spellman.

Sheen’s television show Life Is Worth Living hit the airwaves in 1951.  Just two years earlier, American Freedom and Catholic Power was riding high on the bestseller lists.

Written by Nation magazine editor Paul Blanshard, the book argued – as anti-Catholics had for over a century in American – that Catholics simply could not be Democracy-loving Americans because of their allegiance to Rome.

The book clearly struck a chord with many readers, given its popularity.  In 1954, Blanshard published another book, this time bashing the Irish.  The book was simply called The Irish and Catholic Power.

Given this lingering suspicion of Catholic power, one would think Sheen would tone down his act on TV.  But Sheen always wore his full clerical garb.

At the same time, he reminded viewers that Catholics were deeply committed to fighting Communism, which seemed to go a long way towards establishing their ability to be full-blooded Americans.

One viewer who embraced Sheen is currently leading the New York church -- Timothy Cardinal Dolan.

“(Fulton Sheen) showed the broad American public that the truths of our faith were consonant with the highest values of the society -- patriotism, God, family and the struggle against Communism,” Dolan said back in 2009.

Perhaps an even more formidable foe than anti-Catholicism was Dolan’s predecessor and America’s most powerful Catholic in the 1950s, New York Archbishop Francis Cardinal Spellman.

Tension between these two Irish American powerhouses rose in the 1950s.  In his role as leader of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, Sheen butted heads with Spellman over money and programs designed to feed the world’s poor.

It has been said that even Pope Pius XII and President Eisenhower were forced to intercede in the war of words between Sheen and Spellman.  In the end, Spellman had the final word: he reassigned Sheen, forcing him to leave New York to head up the much smaller Diocese of Rochester.

Despite all this, Sheen persisted and remained a cultural force until his death in 1979.

Surviving the anti-Catholic rants of Paul Blanshard and the massive ego of Cardinal Spellman?  Seems to me the saintly Sheen has already accomplished several miracles.

(Contact “Sidewalks” at tomdeignan@earthlink.net or facebook.com/tomdeignan)

New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan - much power but little glory

Archbishop Timothy Dolan (AP Photo/Louis Lanzano)

“Could Cardinal Dolan Become Pope?”

The question jumped out at me from the CBS News website and made me chuckle for several reasons.

First of all, New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan will not even get his red hat until February 18.  Yet here they are speculating that the guy might become Pope.

And then there’s the prospect of an Irish American pope in Rome.  That made me chuckle even more mightily.

Still, it was quite a week for Irish American power. First, there were reports that First Lady Michelle Obama once griped about the power wielded by just three Irish Catholic clans in Chicago -- the Daley, Madigan and Hynes families.

Then there was the elevation of Dolan, as well as Bronx native and fellow Irish American Edwin O’Brien, to cardinal.

That means for over 170 years now an Irish American has ruled the biggest, most visible diocese in North America.  And all but one, in that time, has made it to Rome as a cardinal.

This got me thinking about what Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote in his book Beyond the Melting Pot back in the 1960s.

“The Irish didn’t know what to do with power once they got it. …[T]he very parochialism and bureaucracy that enabled them to succeed in local politics prevented them from doing much else.
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“In all these 60 or 70 years in which they could have done almost anything they wanted in politics, they did very little. Of all those candidates and all those campaigns, what remains?”

What remains, of course, is power. Still.  To this day.  In 2012.

Moynihan’s point seems to be that after the Irish scrapped and battled their way from the bottom of the social heap to the corridors of power in Boston, New York, Philly and Chicago, they seemed content simply to be powerful and influential.

And one is tempted to ask who can blame them?

It’s particularly interesting to read Moynihan’s lines in the first month of 2012, decades after the Irish finally had to begin sharing power with other ethnic groups, as they moved out to the suburbs and began inter-marrying in great numbers.

Oh sure, it’s hard to find a Hibernian trace of Tammany Hall these days, even if two of the most likely candidates for New York City mayor in 2013 are named Kelly and Quinn.

And the rank-and-file of the unions are nearly as diverse as the city, though the cops and teachers and firefighters have union leaders named Lynch and  Cassidy and Mulgrew.

Yes, the historically Irish Transit Workers union leader is named John Samuelson.  But even he has a son named Jack Duggan Samuelson, thanks to the old Irish ballad.

Moynihan and many others have suggested the Irish could have done more with the power they accumulated.  Others still suggest that had the Irish shared their power they might have made a more just society.

In an important new book to be published in March, entitled The Irish Way, Professor James R. Barrett writes about the Irish in America: “Their most common impulse was to exclude: to bar more recent immigrants, women and people of color from jobs and unions, to discriminate against women and minorities, and to fight more radical groups in the labor movement.”

If this is not excusable, is it at least understandable?  Given what the Irish went through?

There are, of course, plenty of harsh things to say about the Irish influence on the American Catholic Church.

But imagine if you had told “Dagger” John Hughes that the Irish would rule Catholic New York for nearly 200 years?  It would have sent his head spinning.

Yes, they should face the reality of the changing times and the changing faces in the pews.

Yes, the church was a force social mobility, but at a high price when it came to conformity and sexuality.

But maybe for this week, just this week, we should acknowledge this amazing fete.  That the Irish in
America obtained and maintain influence, not for its own sake, or in the name of making the world a
better place.

The amazing thing is that it happened in the first place.

Could they have done more?  Of course.

Let’s not forget the biggest miracle -- that they did it at all.

(Contact “Sidewalks” at tomdeignan@earthlink.net or facebook.com/tomdeignan)

Rebelling against the Catholic Church - the nuns versus the Cardinals

Cardinal James Francis McIntyre

It is a time of great tension in the Catholic Church.  People are asking questions that people never used to ask.  

 
It seems as if the men in charge cannot keep up with the pace of change, and a widely-read national magazine puts the crisis on the front cover.  

 
The story inside explores “The Catholic Exodus,” and explores the difficulties American parishes are having staffing schools and churches with priests and nuns.

 
You can be forgiven if you think this is a story from 2011.  But it is, in fact, from 40 years earlier.  

 
It was way back in 1970 that Time magazine wrote about the Catholic “exodus,” and tried to explain “why priests and nuns are quitting.”

 
Indeed, it is easy to believe the crisis in the Catholic Church in the U.S. is a fairly recent thing.  

 
But in some ways, the debate that is going on now is an extension of debates that have their roots in the 1960s.

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This came to mind last week when I read about the death of a 95 year-old nun named Anita Caspary.  Her name is no longer a household one, but it was her’s on the cover of Time when the magazine explored the Catholic crisis decades ago.

 
Caspary came to be seen as a “rebel nun” who had a conflict with one of the most powerful Irish American Catholics, Cardinal James Francis McIntyre, who rose through the ranks of the church under Cardinal Francis Spellman, dubbed by one biographer as the “American Pope.”

 
In the end, some 300 nuns initiated a series of changes in day-to-day life that they thought were in the spirit of the times.  

 
Cardinal McIntyre, whose mother was born in Kiltormer, Co. Galway, disagreed.  When all was said and done, the nuns parted ways with the church. Some see it as one of the largest breakaways in Catholic American history.  

 
The trouble between the cardinals and the nun has its roots in the changes wrought by the reforms which came out of the Second Vatican Council.  Spellman had attended the meetings in Rome and feared liberal forces had hijacked the proceedings.

 
Spellman, whose Irish grandparents had settled in Massachusetts, was named sixth archbishop on New York in early 1939.  Later, he would also be named Apostolic Vicar for the U.S. Armed Forces, a key position with World War II looming on the horizon.

 
Since Spellman had to serve New York and the military, he relied heavily on an auxiliary bishop – James Francis McIntyre.

 
Both were seen as traditionalists, at a time when many Irish Americans were still familiar with the sting of anti-Catholicism. (In fact, Spellman accused Eleanor Roosevelt of being anti-Catholic.  When, however, a Catholic ran for president, Spellman supported Richard Nixon, an early indication of the Irish drift away from the Democratic Party.)

 
In the late 1940s, McIntyre went west to become the second Archbishop of Los Angeles.  The area’s population boom made McIntyre an influential figure.

 
When the impact of Vatican II became clear, McIntyre and Spellman were seen as opponents. 

 
The Los Angeles-based Sisters of the Immaculate Heart, however, believed that the time was right to propose a series of changes -- nuns would no longer need to wear habits, or follow traditional Vatican guidelines when it came to prayer and even reading material.

 
The sisters believed they were doing what a good Catholic does -- following the rules that were coming out of the Vatican.  

But McIntyre did not accept the nuns’ proposals. If they moved ahead with their changes they would not be allowed to teach in Catholic schools.

 
“All these changes were taking place without incident in the majority of dioceses around the country. Cardinal McIntyre simply was saying, ‘Not in my diocese,’” Sandra M. Schneiders, a professor emeritus at the Jesuit School of Theology, told The New York Times this week.

 
The 300 nuns eventually formed a communal Christian organization that served the poor and elderly and still has over 150 members.

 
So, while the times are rough these days for American Catholics, maybe they’ve been that way for a long time.

(Contact “Sidewalks” at tomdeignan@earthlink.net or facebook.com/tomdeignan)

Was Catholicism worse than Communism?

John Banville

If you are looking for a good anti-Catholic rant, you can listen to certain Evangelical Protestants or rigid atheists.

But why bother? Many Catholics these days are as reliably anti-Catholic as the Vatican’s oldest enemies.

This is understandable, given the revelations of the last decade or so.

Living as a devout Catholic requires a tremendous amount of dedication and sacrifice. That was especially true in a largely Protestant nation such as America, where Irish Catholics were a distinct minority for the century or so following the Famine.

But these days, it seems as if Catholics are the ones who want to throw stones at the stained glass windows.

This was made crystal clear by two recent developments in the ongoing tension between the Irish and Rome.

First came the announcement that members of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) have filed a complaint with the International Criminal Court in The Hague, outlining how Vatican officials tolerated and enabled “the systematic and widespread concealing of rape and child sex crimes,” as Irish American SNAP leader David Clohessy has written.

Clohessy added, “After many years of effort in the United States and around the world, the (abuse) problem became too big to ignore. … We finally began to feel heard. And now we want these crimes investigated and prosecuted.”

Clohessy knows this move may not be popular.

“Some may be shocked that we are accusing the world leader of a church, a man considered by many people of faith to be a holy leader. But one cannot be the head of an institution and escape accountability for that institution’s continuing criminal cover-ups,” he writes.

Clohessy then quoted Irish Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Enda Kenny, who said, “The rape and torture of children were downplayed, or ‘managed,’ to uphold instead the primacy of the institution — its power, its standing and its reputation.”

Most observers feel that SNAP’s ploy is not likely to be successful -- unless, of course, by successful they mean drawing more attention to an urgent problem.

Still, whatever the technical outcome, trying to haul the Vatican before a human rights tribunal means that at least some people want to equate priestly crimes with systematic atrocities committed under brutal dictatorships in places such as Haiti and China and Chile. Or, for that matter, old Communist regimes.

Which is why I was taken aback when I heard a recent interview with acclaimed Irish writer John Banville, a widely admired writer who has won the Booker Prize (for his novel The Sea) and is now gaining a larger following for his mystery novels, written under the pen name Benjamin Black.

Banville told the editor of The New York Times Book Review that Ireland in the fifties “was a time of great secrecy. We were in the clutch of the Catholic Church. The church for us was what the Communist party was for Eastern Europe.

“We only discovered this when we got older, how unfree we were. And everything was hidden, as we have discovered, to our horror, in the past five or 10 years.”

Are SNAP and Banville right? Do the church’s transgressions rise to the level of the 20th century’s worst dictatorial regimes?

We probably do need to make distinctions between Ireland and America, though Catholicism did pervade big-city parishes in the U.S. nearly as thoroughly as it did elsewhere.

Indeed, Banville’s comparison is particularly jolting for Irish Americans. They often flaunted their anti-Communism to prove to native WASPs just how patriotic they could be.

And now it is being said they themselves were no better off than the victims of Communism?

I’d say SNAP may be on to something, but I will respectfully disagree with Banville.

Moreso in Ireland, but also in America, parish institutions pervaded every aspect of life. To say they were as negatively pervasive as Communism’s rigged elections and secret police is simply too strong a case to make.

The saddest thing, of course, is that the case can actually be made at all.

(Contact tomdeignan@earthlink.net or facebook.com/tomdeignan)