Living The Worthy Life: Prophecy?

“Thinking … is a difficult task; it is the hardest work a man can do—that is perhaps why so few indulge in it. Thought-saving devices have been invented that rival labor-saving devices in their ingenuity. Fine-sounding phrases like ‘Life is bigger than logic,’ or ‘Progress is the spirit of the age,’ go rattling by us like express trains, carrying the burden of those who are too lazy to think for themselves.”

Who said these words?  When were they said? Do they sound familiar?

The answers may shock some readers but it shouldn’t shock readers of this column?

Why?  The answer is simple, these words are from Bishop Fulton J. Sheen.  Many people liked him while he was live. Many people did not. Millions of people read his books or watched him on Tuesday nights on Television.  He was a TV minister of an extraordinary caliber and type. He did not do it for money, he did it for a much more pure reason- the love of Christ. 

asking.  Look at these statements in the face of the general election of 2020.  In this election, the left will attempt to take over the government.  They will promise many good things- like Social Justice etc.

“We are at the end of Christendom.” Archbishop Fulton Sheen said during a talk in 1947. Making clear he didn’t mean Christianity or the Church, he said, “Christendom is economic, political, social life as inspired by Christian principles. That is ending — we’ve seen it die. Look at the symptoms: the breakup of the family, divorce, abortion, immorality, general dishonesty.”

Then almost 30 years later he told another TV audience. “First of all, we are at the end of Christendom,” Bishop Fulton Sheen solemnly said during a television show in 1974. “Now not Christianity, not the Church. Remember what I am saying.”

Then he defined what he meant. “Christendom is economic, political, social life as inspired by Christian principles. That is ending — we’ve seen it die. Look at the symptoms: the breakup of the family, divorce, abortion, immorality, general dishonesty.”

That was 1974. Today we know it’s even worse with the definition of marriage and gender drawn into the picture. And the crisis within the Church.

He reminded that of 22 civilizations that have decayed since the beginning of the world, 19 rotted and perished from within.

Rotted from within, was he speaking to us both then and now?  Was he truly a seer of the future, a prophet, or really lucky?  Why is this important for us today to study?

These are questions that are really worth

However, beware- their social justice comes with a price.  That price is very high. They God with GOVERNMENT. One G for a large GOVERNMENT that is all-knowing and all in your business. If freedom is out the window can Religious Freedom be fair behind?

Bishop Sheen told us, “It is a characteristic of any decaying civilization 

that the great masses of the people are unconscious of the tragedy. Humanity in a crisis is generally insensitive to the gravity of the times in which it lives. Men do not want to believe

their own times are wicked, partly because it involves too much self-accusation and principally because they have no standards outside of themselves by which to measure their times. The world is rapidly being divided into two camps, the comradeship of anti-Christ and the brotherhood of Christ. The lines between these two are being drawn. How long the battle will be we know not whether swords will have to be unsheathed we know not whether blood will have to be shed we know not whether it will be an armed conflict we know not. But in a conflict between truth and darkness, the truth cannot lose. Communism is the final logic of the dehumanization of man.”

Was Bishop Sheen a prophet?  Did he see what was about to happen?

Bishop Sheen said in his radio address, the Catholic Hour, Jan. 26, 1947, said about Satan:

• He will come disguised as the Great Humanitarian; he will talk peace, prosperity, and plenty, not as means to lead us to God, but as ends in themselves. 
• He will write books on the new idea of God to suit the way people live.
• [He will] induce faith in astrology so as to make not the will but the stars responsible for our sins.
• He will explain guilt away psychologically as repressed sex, make men shrink in shame if their fellowmen say they are not broadminded and liberal.
• He will identify tolerance with indifference to right and wrong.
• He will foster more divorces under the disguise that another partner is “vital.”
• He will increase love for love and decrease love for persons.
• He will invoke religion to destroy religion.
• He will even speak of Christ and say that he was the greatest man who ever lived.
• His mission, he will say, will be to liberate men from the servitudes of superstition and Fascism, which he will never define.
• In the midst of all his seeming love for humanity and his glib talk of freedom He will not believe in God and equality, he will have one great secret which he will tell to no one;. And because his religion will be brotherhood without the fatherhood of God, he will deceive even the elect.
• He will set up a counter-Church, which will be the ape of the Church because, he the devil, is the ape of God. It will be the mystical body of the anti-Christ that will in all externals resemble the Church as the mystical body of Christ. In desperate need for God, he will induce modern man, in his loneliness and frustration, to hunger more and more for membership in his community that will give man enlargement of purpose, without any need of personal amendment and without the admission of personal guilt. These are the days in which the devil has been given a particularly long rope. 

Sheen states that he raises his concerns about the anti-Christ, not because he fears for the survival of the Catholic Church, but because of the devastation the anti-Christ will bring upon those who have no faith.