Diocese of Peoria announces postponement of Fulton Sheen's beatification

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I like listening to the many recordings of Fulton Sheen posted here. They are certainly thought provoking.

Perhaps in most cases this process of beatification and canonization should in fact take time. For example, it took Peter Faber SJ centuries to become a saint.

If it is truly meant to be in the case of Bishop Sheen, his supporters can wait a few years. Today we should be erring on the side of caution.
 
Pat_Payne said:
Sheen’s stated desire to be buried in New York
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If that is indisputable, then that is where he should be buried.

Unless there is a definitive guideline to the contrary in regards to Sainthood.
 
jack63 said:
If it is truly meant to be in the case of Bishop Sheen, his supporters can wait a few years.
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Please keep in mind that they already have “waited a few years” having a lengthy court fight between two dioceses over his body, when the Holy See was ready to proceed with beatification.

Assuming that the attorneys don’t find anything untoward on him, this is unlikely to take “a few years” to resolve; for one thing, the legal process will probably result in the investigative report on Rochester being done within a few months, not “a few years”.

Also, as others have mentioned, Sheen’s close living relative (niece Joan) who has been assisting with his process and representing his family in the court battle on the side of Peoria is in her 90s and I’m sure there is some interest in getting him beatified before she dies, so she can see her uncle honored.
 
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CradleRC58 said:
If that is indisputable, then that is where he should be buried.
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It’s not indisputable, as the argument was already made in the court case that Sheen was not expecting to be beatified when he was making his plans to be buried in New York, and the court sided with Peoria.
 
Tis_Bearself said:
he was making his plans to be buried in New York, and the court sided with Peoria.
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And his original will stated that he wanted to be buried in Calvary Cemetary, not St. Patrick’s Cathedral, which is where he ended up.
 
I didn’t say he was suspect. I simply said a great preacher doesn’t equal a saint. There have been great preachers who were charlatans.

Is sainthood now the default? We have to come up with reasons not to declare someone a saint?

Presumably there are many people in heaven, and most of them aren’t declared saints of the church. So it stands to reason that sainthood isn’t the default but is reserved for those who are particularly extraordinary.

Fulton Sheen may be extraordinary and it may be justified declaring him a saint. I don’t know: that is why I asked for an explanation. I know him as a tv personality and a preacher.
 
Babaganoush said:
Fulton Sheen may be extraordinary and it may be justified declaring him a saint. I don’t know: that is why I asked for an explanation. I know him as a tv personality and a preacher.
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The reason it takes years for a person to be beatified is that it is a very rigorous and thorough process.

It’s not just the case where a person says, 'Oh, hey, that priest was a pretty popular and affable fellow. Let’s write a three paragraph letter to the pope requesting his beatification."

Sheen—as is the case with anyone whose cause for beatification/canonization has been opened—has already had his life put under a microscope. Priests and theologians have spent years pouring over everything Sheen ever said or wrote. They conduct interviews of people who knew him. They investigate every aspect of his life that they possibly can.

Ultimately, all this info gets collated into a book that makes the phone book look like an informational pamphlet. And that book gets sent to Rome where the Congregation for the Causes of Saints again reviews everything exhaustively.

In addition to all this, there is the requisite miracle, which is analyzed and investigated by secular medical professionals as well as theologians.

So, no, Sheen’s beatification is not just about him being a popular television personality from the 1950s. Many trained clergy and theologians have put many, many hours into reviewing his life and they all came to the conclusion that he was a holy man who practiced virtue heroically.
 
Yeah, some friend of his apparently offered St Patrick’s so he said okay.

I was annoyed the whole time he was there because there is no access to the tombs of the people buried there, so no touching things to the tomb, no touching the tomb, etc. Which is just annoying given that you can touch tombs of saints and holy people in many other cathedrals.
 
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CTBcin said:
some who just lived very ordinary lives of holiness.
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I have been told that there was opposition to making St. John Neumann the first male US citizen saint, on the grounds that he was too ordinary and didn’t do anything spectacular. He was just a very holy bishop and educator.

Even today a lot of people always confuse him with St. Cardinal John Henry Newman from UK, who has a much higher profile.

I was chuckling at the TV news video I posted in Catholic News about Rhoda Wise, when it got to the point where it was saying “The US has very few saints” and it showed a bunch of photos flying by of “US saints”. Several of them were only Servants of God but they looked exciting in their pictures (one was Servant of God Fr. Emil Kapaun saying Mass on the hood of the Jeep), while poor ol’ St. John Neumann wasn’t pictured at all. Edited to add, I think this was because they were focusing on saints who were native-born in the USA…of which we currently have exactly 2, maybe 3 if we count St. Kateri Tekawitha who was born before the US existed, which wouldn’t have made a very exciting video.
 
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Babaganoush said:
I didn’t say he was suspect. I simply said a great preacher doesn’t equal a saint. There have been great preachers who were charlatans.
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I think this is where your confusion lies. His cause for canonization isn’t because he was a great preacher, it’s because he was a holy man. THAT is the reason.

Anyone who is in Heaven is a saint. Anyone. “Raising them to the alter” (ie official canonization) doesn’t mean that there are others who are not saints who are in Heaven. Raising one to the alter is a more public declaration.
 
Babaganoush said:
Presumably there are many people in heaven, and most of them aren’t declared saints of the church.
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Anyone who is in Heaven is by default a saint, and their feast day is November 1st~~All Saints day. The difference is they have not been “Raised to the alter” for veneration. But they are most assuredly saints.
 
I’m a big fan of Bishop Sheen but there’s really no rush.

It’s best to dot every i and cross every t.

I will say that if Bishop Sheen did have evidence of priestly sexual abuse I would imagine he would have acted the same as all of the Bishops of that time- meaning keep it “quiet” and move the priest to another parish. I think, unfortunately, that this practice was pretty universal in efforts to avoid “scandal”.
 
Many times it wasn’t to avoid scandal, it was what the learned people of the day were saying.
Many Bishops were told that these priests were “treatable”. They went off for 6 months of therapy and prayer and then eased back into priestly duties in another place, for a “fresh start”.
In many cases it was not a nefarious, let’s avoid scandal at all costs attitude, the Bishops thought they were doing the right thing for all involved.
 
CilladeRoma said:
Many times it wasn’t to avoid scandal, it was what the learned people of the day were saying.
Many Bishops were told that these priests were “treatable”. They went off for 6 months of therapy and prayer and then eased back into priestly duties in another place, for a “fresh start”.
In many cases it was not a nefarious, let’s avoid scandal at all costs attitude, the Bishops thought they were doing the right thing for all involved.
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Good point. Many of us forget that, that at the time back in those days, the experts in the field of psychology believed and explained that sexual abuse and pedophilia were treatable and that abusers could be reformed and cured. Sadly, that was not true. The experts were wrong
 
Feanor2 said:
I’m a big fan of Bishop Sheen but there’s really no rush.

It’s best to dot every i and cross every t.
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That’s the thing, though. From Peoria’s perspective, they already have been very patient. They have been waiting for years. They have dotted every i and crossed every t. Then they went back and double checked it. And then triple checked it. And then checked it a few more times for good measure.

Though the time frame between the final announcement of a date and the date itself was definitely very short, that was possible only because everything has already been ready and waiting.

One of my friends quipped that when Sheen finally gets beatified, that will be the second miracle needed for his canonization. 😆 That made me chuckle.
 
He was only there from 1966 to 1969, and there weren’t tons of reports made in those days. The main offender from that era had already been sent to West Virginia diocese years before Sheen got to Rochester. Apparently while Sheen was bishop, the priest asked Sheen if he could be assigned back to Rochester and Sheen said No. The bishop after Sheen let him return.
 
Is it true that the process of sainthood has never been stopped at this phase until now?
 
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