#With anti-Catholicism raging, Trump should honor a great American Catholic

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Bishop Fulton Sheen, one of 20th-century America’s most-celebrated Catholics.
Bettmann Archive

Roman Catholic churches and monuments are under assault across the United States. In recent weeks, woke radicals and other anti-Catholic extremists have set fire to a statue of the Virgin Mary in Boston; plowed a vehicle into and attempted to burn down a church in Ocala, Fla., with parishioners inside; vandalized Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in New York; spray-painted the Denver cathedral; torn down a California statue of Junípero Serra, the Golden State’s patron saint; and defaced and called for the removal of a statue of King Saint Louis IX in the city that bears his name, St. Louis, Mo.

Team Trump can fight back, not only by having federal law enforcement go after lawbreakers — but by honoring a great American Catholic in a new park commemorating “historically significant Americans.” President Trump proposed the park in his recent Mount Rushmore speech. It’s expected to include the nation’s Founders, as well as great abolitionists, inventors, explorers and evangelists.

Though many names are listed for commemoration, one absent figure is most worthy of a place in this America pantheon: Venerable Fulton Sheen, one of 20th-century America’s most-celebrated Catholics.

Born around the turn of the last century in Illinois, Sheen rose from humble origins to become a Catholic bishop, living a life of such holiness that the Catholic Church is considering naming him a saint. But on his merits as an American alone, few can claim to be his equal.

Sheen took to the airwaves early as one of the first televangelists, becoming the host of a weekly radio broadcast called “The Catholic Hour” on NBC. This, at a time when old-school anti-Catholic sentiment was a major force in American culture. Later, he hosted the groundbreaking religious program “Life Is Worth Living.” Throughout his media career, Sheen showcased the merciful and joyous nature of his faith, challenging common misconceptions of Catholicism as a gloomy, despotic religion. Sheen also urged American Catholics to be civically active and unafraid of practicing their faith in public life.

During World War II, he used his platform to decry the evils of Nazi Germany, comparing Hitler and his racialist ideology with the Anti-Christ. He framed the war as a spiritual conflict between light and darkness. He spoke so profusely against Nazism that the FBI noted that his broadcasts made “many Nazi supporters in this country boil in rage.”

During the Cold War, Sheen preached against Communism. In his books and broadcasts, he frequently railed against Communist ideology’s rejection of traditional faith and of American principles. His booklet “The Tactics of Communism” presciently exposed strategies similar to those used by the far left today. He was a crucial if underappreciated ally in the American struggle against world Communism.

President Trump’s executive order on the park states explicitly that religious leaders, missionaries, intellectuals, anti-Communists and proponents of civil rights are worthy of recognition in the National Garden of American Heroes. Sheen fits into each one of those categories. There is no better answer to the violent anti-Catholic bigotry of today’s woke left than to commemorate Sheen, a great Catholic and a great American.

Leo Thuman is an undergraduate at Case Western Reserve University. Twitter: @Leo_Thuman