Fulton Sheen's prophecy for America

An analysis and blueprint for our day!

About fifty years ago, archbishop Fulton Sheen made this presentation, one of the episodes on ABCs series “Life Is Worth Living”, which centered around Sheen discussing moral issues of his day.

This particular one is prophetic for our day, not just because of the year in which he sets his opening joke, and the context of that joke. That is not directly what the prophecy is about: it is about how uncanny what he described back then in the fifties is so completely at play today! We have a choice to make, as a nation, today and in 2024, so much more clearly now than back in the 1950s. We have to understand what and who we are up against, before we can make that choice in an informed manner. We will have to examine our own conscience. This is a matter of life and death, for us, and for our children, in the future of our nation.

Fulton Sheen’s lecture is so rich, I will present my transcript of his video in full here, first, and will give my commentary in a next article, tomorrow.

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Quo Vadis, America?

The subject of this telecast is Patriotism. I will give you the meaning of the title in a moment. This is a story about patriotism: in the year 2024, a woman was elected president of the United States. The reporters approached the husband and said: “how do you feel about the election?” He said “I regret that I have only one wife to give to my country!”

The title is “Quo Vadis, America?”

I am giving this title writing it down for the sake of only three of you in the entire audience in the United States. Only three, but the three of you who do not know Latin. Quo Vadis America. If you have ever been to Rome you may have visited a chapel just outside of Rome. It was erected over a spot where according to legend Peter was in flight from persecution in Rome, and on the road he saw a vision of the Lord approaching. And Peter said to him “Quo Vadis, Domine?” (Where are you going, Lord?) And the Lord said “I am going to Rome to be recrucified.” In other words, “Peter, that's where you should be!”

Well, we've chosen that title, instead of ‘Quo Vadis, domine’, ‘Quo Vadis, America?’ America, where are you going? Where are we going in this day and age? Do you know one of the most unused words that we have in our vocabulary, is the word patriotism? Hardly ever hear it anymore! Patriotism is a virtue that was allied to the old virtue of the Greeks and Latins, called pietas. Pietas meant love of God, love of neighbor, love of country, and when one goes out, all go out.

We no longer have love of God? We no longer have love of country!

We're going to investigate in a particular way today the problem of revolution. We started our country with a revolution. Revolution is in the air today. As a matter of fact, the revolutionists of our day are all arguing and contending that well, we started that way! Therefore we should continue it! So let us now investigate this question, namely we do live in America in a revolutionary tradition, Certainly, but the question is: what kind of a revolution should we have? What kind of a revolution? There are two kinds: one, the kind we started with, the other the kind we have today.

What was the kind we started with? Well, I can tell it in the story of an old soldier who had fought it, in Concord, and someone said to him in his old days: Why did you go to Concord on that April day? You suffered great oppression, didn't you?
- “No,” Colonel Preston said, “No, I wasn't conscious of any great oppression from the foreign power.”

Well then, it's because you were against the Stamp Act?
-“I never saw any of the stamps. I think the general, Bernard, kept some of them in Castle William, but I never saw them. I certainly didn't fight on account of the Stamp Act.”

Well, then you revolted on account of the Tea Tax?
-“I never drank a cup of tea in my life. I wasn't interested in the tax.”

Well, then you must have been reading Harrington, Sidney and Locke?
-“Never read them. All I ever read was the Bible, Watts’ hymns and the Catechism.”

Well then, why did you go to Concord?
-He said: “for one reason: in order that we might govern ourselves.”

That was the American Revolution. Govern ourselves.

Now what's the revolution of today? What's its nature?  Violence. Violence just for the sake of Violence. That is ours. I mean, not ours, please God, not any of ours, you and me, but I mean the new type of revolt which involves destruction of everything that is in the past. And these people who are actuating violence today, claim they're in the line of the American Revolution. They are not! Now let me go more into detail, these two types of revolution.

Each of these had a character at the head who symbolized the revolutions. The one who best expressed the principles of the American Revolution was Thomas Jefferson. Thomas Jefferson is the antecedent of all Americans today who believe in self-government.

Who's the progenitor of this other kind of revolution? Someone who was a contemporary of Thomas Jefferson, strange to say. Saint Just. 1793 revolution. Saint Just and all who were associated with him in that revolution.

([ArnGrimR:] Louis Antoine de Saint Just [1767-1794] was an impetuous young idealist, close friend to Maximilien Robespierre. He was involved in legislation and reform of the military, and had a leading role in the reign of terror, to the point he was nicknamed ‘Archangel of terror’. He called for and defended the use of violence against opponents of the government, arresting many, whose lives ended under the guillotine. He was the one who spearheaded the drive to have king Louis XVI beheaded, and was involved in the bloody genocide in the Vendée. Former friends and colleagues who did not toe the line, were not spared. This sparked a backlash that saw de Robespierre and Saint Just end up under the guillotine themselves, ending the reign of terror, but yet not the genocidal war in the Vendée, nor the errors of this fateful revolution.)

Now let me tell you the difference between the two. And here we'll have a review really on pietas and on patriotism, and I will first of all describe what Jefferson taught us, what we believe, what are the conditions of the preservation of our country. Then I will give you Saint Just, who holds exactly the same thing that the violent revolutionists of today hold in our country. They may not know that they are adopting his principles, but they are.

Thomas Jefferson probably knew Saint Just. they were in Paris together. But in order to do our American Constitution, Thomas Jefferson had to repudiate all of the principles of Saint Just, whether he knew Saint Just or not. Let's review the principles upon which our democracy was founded, then let's review Saint Just.

Thomas Jefferson founded our democracy upon two principles. One, the dignity of man. Secondly, I would just simplify it: all rights and liberties come to us from God. I will explain these and then we will go to Saint just. Thomas Jefferson. First he believed that the government must be founded upon the respect for the individual. So he investigated: what are the sources of our rights and liberties? Where do they come from? Where does my right of free speech come from? Or the right of assembly or any other right we have? From the will of the majority? The will of the majority could take away the will of the minority…

Jefferson intended that the majority would be the custodian of minority rights! The rights and liberties come from the federal government? Certainly not, if they came from the federal government, the federal government could take them away. They’re taking almost everything else away. Might just take away our rights and liberties! But he set it down in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence that it is a self-evident principle, self-evident, that the Creator, THE Creator, as endowed man with certain unalienable rights. Inalienable, it cannot be taken away, among which are the right to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness. that is our democracy. Those are the two principles. And isn’t it interesting that that particular government and those governments in the world that deny the existence of God, are those that deny the existence of human rights?

Now let's go to Saint Just. What is Saint just, along with him Royee? What was their principal? Their principal was that in order to make people pass through a certain door, there was only one way to do it. That was the way of Terror. Confiscation of property and the destruction of rights and liberties. Saint Just also said a people can be told, can be taught, to save themselves only by violence. And the path to the establishment of every government must be upon a pile of corpses. That was the thing that Jefferson had to fight against, when he wrote the Declaration of Independence. He knew it, wasn't anything new.

I'm bringing it up now to remind you that we're going through exactly that same crisis now that Jefferson faced. That our country today has to choose once more between Jefferson and Saint Just. Which are we going to choose? We're familiar enough for the principals of Jefferson, so I'm going to enumerate for you. It will be easy for you to identify the new type of violence that's sweeping our country, our schools, our streets. I'm going to describe three characteristics.

The first characteristic of the new violence of our day is what we will call elitism. Now this word I don't know whether it exists or not, but it's the only way that I can describe it. It's taken from the world word elite. There used to be a virtuous elite, a corps of heroes and saints that very much influenced any culture and democracy. The new elite practices what is called elitism, namely there is a dominant minority that makes a lot of noise and that uses violence to force its will upon others. They’re revolutionists without a program. They have no flag. They only know what they're against. They do not know what they're for.

And taking some words out of Toynbee, they're made up of two groups. Toynbee said the first group was conqueror. I would call one of the groups “the man with the bullhorn.” He's always the leader. You just watch in any violent group today that follows the principle of Saint Just. Watch the man with the bullhorn. He's the leader of that revolt. Secondly, there are the hangmen. The kind that will rifle desks, destroy property, burn homes, do anything to enforce their will. And then there are the wastrels, the group that just profits from violence. Confiscate property, to be in on the violence. That's the first group.

Second, mysticism. This is another new characteristic of the revolution. Mysticism is a term that belongs to religion, doesn't belong actually in the field of politics, but it has been transposed to politics. Now what was mysticism? Mysticism was a, well it could best be expressed in the mysticism of John of the Cross: todo y nada. In other words, God or nothing. Now do you give yourself to God completely, or else you’ll give nothing. This was spiritual mysticism. The political mysticism is -of course there is no God- it's my will or nothing. This is what the elite insists upon. No alternative, no compromise. so they would make in this mysticism a tabula rasa. They would wipe the slate clean of anything that opposes them. And then, after they destroyed life and property, they would ask for an amnesty and immunity.

Thirdly, this is not my term, you could very well accuse me of having invented it. I have often thought of giving a telecast on it, but the other day I went into the ten-volume history of Toynbee. Lo and behold, I found Toynbee saying that idea which has been in my mind, namely Satanism. Satanism is behind it too. This is the third characteristic of it. The world is built on order. There's a plan so scientists are able to discover the laws of the universe. And in discovering the laws of the universe, men find harmony. This harmony, an order, had to come from somewhere. It came from God. What is the essence of Satanism? The essence of Satanism is the destruction of that order: the order of law, the order of morality, order of religion, the order of ethics, anything that you please. This is Saint Just in our day.

Believe me, fellow Americans, I tell you that before the flood, the book of Genesis, we read: “and in the days of Noah there was violence on the earth”. All of the violence that happens in our country is a fever graph. Read it! And it points to a decay in our civilization.

How are you going to get out of it? The reason I'm hesitating here, is just because there's so many ideas, that I have to choose in a few minutes that are left, which one to give you. I tell you one thing, that we have to do. We have to realize, maybe, why the Eagle is our national symbol. The Eagle always built its nest high in the mountain crevices. When the young are hatched, the Eagle pushes its young over the nest. They fly down – to what to eaglet eyes must seem like sudden death. Just before the young eagle crashes, mother eagle swoops down from its nest, down to the abyss and catches the young and then flies up into the sky. Swoops from out it again, and repeats the process, until the bird has learned to fly.

Moses saw that, and he wrote “as the Eagle stirs among the young, so does God stir among the nations”. Maybe God is stirring us, bringing us to the brink of danger. In order that we might begin to examine ourselves and restore Jefferson: the dignity of man, and a belief in God. Our nation is too full of those that are crying ‘Down!’

Down with the universities!

Down with schools!

Down with the churches!

Down with teachers!

Down with government!

Down with the police!

Can you build anything down? you cannot! Certainly it’s time in our nation to change our words. Let's begin now to use the word ‘Up’!

Up from all of this filth!

Up from this violence or from this indifference of Courts!

Up, up to the battlements of eternity!

Up, up to God!


(God loves you! + Venerable Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen)