QUOTATION: Hell

Saints never deny Hell; they fear it. Unrepentant sinners never fear it; they deny it.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

QUOTATION: God is the Source of Authority

The gravest danger to American democracy is not from the outside; it is from the inside – the hearts of citizens in whom the light of faith has gone out. Keep God as the origin of authority and you keep the ethical character of authority; reject Him and the authority becomes power subject to no law except its own.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, Whence Come Wars

QUOTATION: The Anti-Religious

Why are those who are notoriously undisciplined and unmoral also most contemptuous of religion and morality? They are trying to solace their own unhappy lives by pulling the happy down to their own abysmal depths.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

QUOTATION: Faith and Human Equality

In vain will the world seek for equality until it has seen men through the eyes of faith.  Faith teaches that all men, however poor, or ignorant, or crippled, however maimed, ugly, or degraded they may be, all bear within themselves the image of God, and have been bought by the precious blood of Jesus Christ. As this truth is forgotten, men are valued only because of what they can do, not because of what they are.

--Archbishop Fulton Sheen, Preface to Religion

QUOTATION: Three Kinds of God

There are three possible kinds of God: the god of one’s own ego, in which the atheist believes, and which is also the god of modern confusionism; the god of nature, of stone and gold and silver, which belonged to the old religions of idolatry; and the Supreme God, who made both man and nature, and redeemed them both upon the Cross. Those who tell us that they deny the existence of God are merely substituting one god for another.

--Archbishop Fulton Sheen, On Being Human

QUOTATION: Personal Encounter with Jesus

Neither theological knowledge nor social action alone is enough to keep us in love with Christ unless both are preceded by a personal encounter with Him. Theological insights are gained not only from between two covers of a book, but from two bent knees before an altar. The Holy Hour becomes like an oxygen tank to revive the breath of the Holy Spirit in the midst of the foul and fetid atmosphere of the world.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

QUOTATION: Atheism

Once God is denied as the Source of rights, the State sets itself up as an absolute.

--Archbishop Fulton Sheen, Address to the Plenary Session of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, November 10, 1979

QUOTATION: Atheism

If you do not worship God, you worship something, and nine times out of ten it will be yourself.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

QUOTATION: A Message of Hope

Be not cast down because the persecutors of religion, having laid the Church, like its Founder, in the tomb, utter the boast: ‘Behold the place where we laid it.’ The law of progress of the Church is the reverse of the law of progress of the world. We are most progressive when we are most hated. It is only because the fires of its Truth are blinding evil eyes and convicting them of sin and judgement, that the world vainly tried to put them out. And though the world is tearing up all the photographs and blueprints of a society and a family based on the moral law of God, be not disheartened. The Church has kept the negatives.

--Archbishop Fulton Sheen, Lenten & Easter Inspirations

QUOTATION: Loss of Faith

In many cases those who lost the faith never did so for a reason. They left it for a thing. Souls generally do not fall away from Christ because of the Creed; they first have difficulty with the Commandments. The Creed, later on, becomes the handy tool of their rationalization: ‘I no longer believe in confession.’

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

QUOTATION: Conscience

Before conversion, conscience seemed to be a restraining, coercive power; God was a hostile and exacting judge; the commandments were prohibitions; and the Church was an inhibition. Responsibilities were identified with obligations; duty was seen as opposed to desire; the morally right was identified with the physically unpleasant; and love was opposed to morality. But after conversion the conscience no longer accuses; it never seems to command, or order, or inhibit, because there are no longer two wills in opposition. The will of the convert is the will of God. There is no need for a conscience to tell him what ought to be done.” Conscience is swallowed up in love and there is no duty or “must” between lovers.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, Peace of Soul, 1949

QUOTATION: Faith

Philosophy gives a proof for the existence of God; the science of apologetics gives the motives for believing in Christ, the Son of God; but all the incontrovertible proofs they offer fall short of the certitude that actually comes to a convert through the gift of Faith. Imagine a young man whose father has been lost for years. A friend, returned from a trip, assures him that he has certain evidence that his father really exists on another continent. But the young man is not fully satisfied with the evidence, however convincing it is; until he is restored to his father’s actual presence, he will not have peace. So it is with conversion: before, one knows about God; afterward, one knows God. The first knowledge the mind has is notional and abstract; the second is real, concrete, and it becomes bound up with all one’s sentiments, emotions, passions, and habits.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, Peace of Soul, 1949

QUOTATION: Inner Peace

True peace is born of the tranquility of order, wherein the senses are subject to the reason, the reason to faith, and the whole personality to the Will of God. The true peace that follows conversion is deepened, not disturbed, by the crosses, checks, and disquietudes of the world, for they are welcomed as coming from the hands of the Loving Father. This true peace can never come from adjustment to the world, for if the world is wicked, adjustments to wickedness make us worse. IT comes only from identification of one’s own will with the Will of God.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, Peace of Soul, 1949

QUOTATION: Conscience

Before conversion, conscience seemed to be a restraining, coercive power; God was a hostile and exacting judge; the commandments were prohibitions: and the Church was an inhibition. Responsibilities were identified with obligation; duty was seen as opposed to desire; the morally right was identified with the physically unpleasant; and love was opposed to morality. But after conversion the conscience no longer accuses; it never seems to command, or order, or inhibit, because there are no longer two wills in opposition. The will of the convert is the will of God. There is no need for a conscience to tell him what “ought to be done.” Conscience is swallowed up in love, and there is no duty or “must” between lovers.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, Peace of Soul, 1949

QUOTATION: Spiritual Change

Most men are intuitively aware that no change except a spiritual change will be enough: the extreme sensitiveness and ready anger of those who urge revolutions against society and morality as their remedy are a proof of the insecurity of their position. The violence of their opposition to all criticism is a sure sign of the defenselessness of their own position; even they suspect that mankind stands less in need of revolution than redemption.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, Peace of Soul, 1949

QUOTATION: Human nature

Christianity puts a high value on human nature, but it does not trust its unaided powers too far. It says that man in his human nature is neither a saint nor a devil; he is neither intrinsically corrupt nor immaculately conceived.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, Peace of Soul, 1949

QUOTATION: God Does Not Force Us to Love Him

We cannot escape God’s justice by denying Him, but His friendship is easy to evade. He never forces our love. The surrender of the will to God is all important in conversion because of this: God will not destroy our human freedom. He will not even give proofs so absolutely overpowering as to destroy all choice, for He always leaves a margin for love. Therefore a necessary prelude to conversion is a spirit become docile, teachable, and humble. For if we think we know it all, not even God can teach us.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, Peace of Soul, 1949

QUOTATION: Conversion

Every conversion starts with a crisis: with a moment or a situation involving some kind of suffering, physical, moral, or spiritual; with a dialectic, a tension, a pull, a duality, or a conflict. This crisis is also accompanied, on the one hand, by a profound sense of one’s own helplessness and, on the other hand, by an equally certain conviction that God alone can supply what the individual lacks.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, Peace of Soul, 1949

QUOTATION: Death

Death is God’s necessary gift to a universe in which evil has been let loose.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, Peace of Soul, 1949

QUOTATION: God's Pardon

God has promised men pardon if they are penitent, but not if they procrastinate.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, Peace of Soul, 1949