Fulton J. Sheen, Forgotten Standards

J.M.J.

Standards:

The Spiritual Inheritance We Are Squandering

Every crisis begins with a forgotten truth.

Freedom, Fulton Sheen reminds us, is not a grant from the State but a gift from God. If it came from Congress, Congress could repeal it. If it came from a court, a court could redefine it. If it came from a president, a president could suspend it. Only because freedom is rooted in the Creator does it become inalienable—beyond the reach of political fashion, majority whim, or ideological revolution.

Yet in our age of noise and novelty, we behave like heirs who have forgotten the will. We possess a spiritual inheritance richer than any treasury—moral law, conscience, covenant, responsibility—and yet we treat it as if it were a burden rather than a birthright. Sheen saw this drift in 1967; we see its full bloom today.

The Prodigal Nation

A nation becomes prodigal not when it loses its wealth, but when it loses its memory. And so Sheen warns that a people who forget the Source of their freedom soon forget the purpose of their freedom.

He names the two great amnesias of a declining people:

v  Forgetfulness of judgment—that every life is a stewardship and every stewardship will be examined.

v  Selfishness—the shrinking of the soul until it cares only for what touches its own skin. 

When a man forgets God, he forgets his duties. When he forgets his duties, he forgets his bonds. And when he forgets his bonds—to Church, to family, to country—he becomes an isolated ego drifting in a sea of appetites.

The tragedy is not merely personal. It is civilizational.

1. The Age of Atoms

Sheen’s warning is almost prophetic: when persons cease to see themselves as responsible to God or neighbor, they dissolve into atoms. Atoms have no loyalty, no memory, no mission. They exist only for themselves.

A society of atoms is ripe for two outcomes:

v Mental fission—the fragmentation of identity, meaning, and purpose.

v Collectivist fusion—the rise of a State that forcibly organizes the chaos created by millions of self-enclosed egos.

The irony is sharp: radical individualism prepares the way for radical collectivism. When men refuse to govern themselves, someone else will.

2. A Crisis Without a Standard

Exile God, and you exile the only standard by which crises can be judged. A watch without a clockmaker cannot keep time. A symphony without a score cannot distinguish harmony from noise.

So too a nation without moral law cannot distinguish justice from preference, liberty from license, or rights from demands. Everything becomes “my truth,” which is simply another way of saying no truth.

3. Science Without Meaning

Science, Sheen notes, becomes unmoored when it loses the world of values. The scientist can describe the atom but cannot tell us whether to split it. He can measure the brain but cannot explain the mind. He can map the genome but cannot define the human person.

He becomes a seeker of truth who has been told truth does not exist.

4. Education Without Destiny

Education, stripped of moral formation, produces half a man—brilliant perhaps, but aimless. He knows how to build machines but not how to master himself. He can recite facts but cannot articulate purpose. He is trained for employment but not for excellence.

A nation of half-formed men cannot sustain a fully human civilization.

5. Power as the Final Truth

When Divine Truth is denied, only one arbiter remains: power. Not persuasion, not conscience, not reason—power. Sheen saw this enslave a third of the world in his time. We see its subtler forms now: cultural coercion, ideological conformity, the quiet tyranny of those who control platforms, narratives, and institutions.

Where truth is denied, force fills the vacuum.

The Call to Recover Our Standards

Sheen’s diagnosis is not despairing; it is medicinal. He reminds us that the cure for national decay is not political technique but spiritual renewal. Standards must be restored—not invented, not negotiated, not modernized, but recovered.

Ø  Freedom must again be seen as a gift from God.

Ø  Responsibility must again be embraced as the price of that gift. 

Ø  Organic bonds—family, Church, community—must again be honored as the soil in which persons grow. 

Ø  Truth must again be acknowledged as something received, not manufactured.

The hour is late, but not lost. What we remember, we can restore. The inheritance is still ours—if we choose to claim it.

And so, we return to where Sheen began: freedom, and the Source from which it flows.

Sheen himself gives us the final word:

“If our freedom came from the government, the government could take it away. It is only because our freedom has a theological foundation that it is ‘inalienable.’ … Once God and the moral law and conscience are exiled, then there is no standard outside of the crisis itself by which the crisis can be judged; no standard of time by which to set our watches, no score of music by which to distinguish our harmonies and discords.” 

— Fulton J. Sheen, Guide to Contentment, 1967