J.M.J.

The Cross We Dropped, and the Vacuum That Filled It

Inspired by Fulton J. Sheen, circa 1950

To understand the force of Fulton Sheen’s warning in 1955, we must step back into the world he was speaking to—a world that looks uncannily like our own.

America in the mid-1950s was triumphant yet uneasy. The Second World War was over, but the Cold War was tightening its grip. Consumerism was rising, suburbs were spreading, and a new culture of comfort was beginning to eclipse older habits of sacrifice. The Soviet Union was expanding its ideological reach, not only through military power but through a moral narrative: We suffer, we sacrifice, we serve a cause larger than ourselves.

Sheen saw something most Americans missed. He saw that the West was losing not to communism’s strength, but to Christianity’s forgetfulness. He saw that when a civilization abandons its spiritual center, something else—something harsher, something counterfeit—rushes in to fill the void.

And so, he wrote:

"Modern Christianity has dropped the cross, the symbol of self-abnegation, self-discipline and the condition of profound sense of otherness. In its place has come the philosophy of egotism, self-assertion and personal comfort. The philosophy of the cross was too sacred to be forgotten, too necessary for the pursuit of any goal to be abandoned; so, the communists picked up the cross as soon as Christianity dropped it. . . Our Western world has abandoned it in the home and in the school and in our multiple human relationships. By natural disposition, we are inclined to make ourselves the centers. Unless the comets that whirl about the heavens are bound to peaceful resolution around some central sun, they become revolutionists harming other worlds." ~ Fulton J. Sheen, Communist Has a Cause, But Hate Isn't Enough. 1955

Clarifying the Essence: What Sheen Saw Then—and What We See Now

Sheen’s insight is not about geopolitics. It is about anthropology. It is about what happens when a people forget who they are and what they are for.

“Modern Christianity has dropped the cross.”

Sheen is not accusing Christians of abandoning belief. He is accusing them of abandoning discipleship.

The cross is not merely a symbol of suffering—it is the structure of love.

To drop the cross is to drop:

·         self-discipline

·         self-gift

·         responsibility

·         the willingness to put others first

When these disappear, faith becomes sentiment, and society becomes soft.

“In its place has come the philosophy of egotism,

self-assertion and personal comfort.”

Sheen saw the rise of what we now call expressive individualism—the belief that the highest good is self-expression, self-preference, self-aggrandizement, and self-comfort.

But Christianity does not erase the self.

Christianity sanctifies the self.

It teaches that the self finds its fullness not in expression, but in donation.

Not in asserting the self, but in giving the self.

This is the difference between expressive individualism and Christian personalism:

·         Expressive individualism says: I am most myself when I assert my desires.

·         Christian personalism says: I am most myself when I give my life away in love.

“The communists picked up the cross

as soon as Christianity dropped it.”

This is Sheen at his most brilliant and paradoxical.

He does not mean communism embraced Christ. He means communism embraced:

·         sacrifice

·         discipline

·         mission

·         a cause larger than the self

But without God, these become instruments of coercion rather than liberation.

Communism imitated the form of Christian sacrifice while emptying it of love.

“Our Western world has abandoned it

in the home and in the school…”

Sheen saw the erosion of the two institutions that form the human person:

·         the home (where virtue is learned)

·         the school (where truth is taught)

When both lose the cross—lose discipline, duty, and other-centeredness—society loses its moral gravity.

“Unless the comets… are bound to some central sun…”

This is Sheen’s cosmic metaphor for the human condition.

The sun is God.

The comets are us.

Without a center, we drift.

Without a center, we collide.

Without a center, we destroy.

This is not just physics—it is sociology, economics, and spirituality.

Why This Matters in 2026

Because the very forces Sheen warned about— self-aggrandizement, comfort-culture, ideological substitutes for faith, and the loss of shared moral purpose—are now amplified by technology, economics, and politics.

Because the West once again faces movements that promise meaning without God, sacrifice without love, and unity without truth.

Because the cross—rightly understood—is not a burden but a compass.

And because Sheen’s message is not nostalgia. It is diagnosis. It is prophecy.

Reclaiming the Cross

If Sheen’s warning was prophetic, our response must be apostolic.

Reclaiming the cross means restoring the architecture of love:

·         In the home — through sacrificial parenting, shared prayer, and moral formation

·         In the school — through truth-telling, discipline, and the pursuit of wisdom

·         In the Church — through liturgy, confession, and the witness of saints

·         In public life — through policies that honor the dignity of the person and the sovereignty of the family

The cross is not a relic.

It is a revolution.

And it is the only revolution that begins with self-gift, not self-glory.

The Beam That Holds the World Together

Sheen’s message is not a lament for a bygone age.

It is a call to rebuild the moral architecture of a civilization that has forgotten its center.

The cross is not a burden.

It is the beam that holds the world together.

Drop it, and everything falls.

A Sheen Thoughtlet: Back to the Person

Fulton Sheen never ended with systems.

He always ended with the soul.

He reminded us that the renewal of a civilization does not begin in legislatures or universities, but in the hidden chambers of the human heart. A better world requires better people, and better people are formed not by comfort or ideology, but by love — first of God, and then of neighbor.

The good society is not engineered.

It is cultivated, one person at a time.

And the person is not transformed by self-assertion, but by self-surrender.

If the cross is the beam that holds the world together, then the person who takes up that cross becomes the seed of renewal for every home, every school, every parish, and every nation.

The world will be rebuilt when the person is rebuilt.

And the person is rebuilt when he returns to God.