Fulton Sheen’s prophecy for America, part 2

A closer look at the enemy within

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.

Now that you have read his speech in full (wasn’t that mind-blowing?), let’s unpack what he wrote. I will follow the outlines of his speech, but keep in mind this: the battle he depicts, is that of our days. As such, a prophecy, for us to take heed.

I could expand on this (I actually have been working on this very same topic for months now, and the topic is running away from me: it is huge, to deal with it properly, and the enemy entrenched everywhere. It is the war of ideologies I have mentioned in my previous articles on The War for Our Minds.), but that would lead way too far. Instead, for now, follow this remarkable speech by Archbishop Fulton Sheen. Let this article serve as the introduction to a deeper look and identification of the ideology that is waging war, not just with us, but with the whole world.

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 First, Sheen provided a very sharp insight in the nature of the American project. This nation’s founding revolution was fought by people, so they could govern themselves. He quickly juxtaposes this to the nature of that other great foundational revolution, the French Revolution, with the young and idealistic Louis Antoine de Saint Just as poster child. That revolution was not about people’s desire to govern themselves, but to overthrow the existing order. Violence, for the sake of violence.

Sheen elaborates, and explores the foundation of the new governance the American Revolution seeks: Jefferson holds as self-evident that our rights are inalienable because they are granted by our creator. The government cannot take away our right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, because they cannot and did not grant that right. The Creator did.

This is a very solid basis to protect our rights. Compare the European Union with the US, for example: I am not even going to the typical scapegoat dictators. In the EU the right to free speech is not an absolute. Neither are individual rights.

As Bloomberg News wrote in a piece titled ‘Free Speech in Europe Isn't What Americans Think’:

“The underlying philosophical difference here is about the right of the individual to self-expression. Americans value that classic liberal right very highly -- so highly that we tolerate speech that might make others less equal.

Europeans value the democratic collective and the capacity of all citizens to participate fully in it -- so much that they are willing to limit individual rights.”

Some people try to see a difference that dates back to Greek times, between isegoria (the equal right of citizens to participate in public debate in the democratic assembly) and parrhesia (the license to say what one pleased, how and when one pleased, and to whom) (a good working definition, as found in an article by The Atlantic), but that does not properly explain what is going on. The main root of this different notion of freedom of speech is based in a very different worldview, or anthropology [one’s view on humans], as Fulton Sheen astutely pointed out.

Saint Just, he explained, would have a view of ‘the people’ as a group that can be told, can be taught, to ‘save themselves’, but only so by violence. The path to establish any government, Saint Just would hold, had to be paved over a pile of corpses. Not by the people, for the people, of the people, but OVER the people. It is a view that holds that people are malleable, and expendable, which is the antithesis of the view of Jefferson, who started from the dignity of man, and the inalienable nature of the rights bestowed on man. This is absolutely key to understand, as it has ramifications to this day. The whole ideological battle can be summed up by this exact same juxtaposition.

Sheen introduces the way to identify this new type of revolution through violence, by stating it is sweeping not just our country, but also our schools and our streets. Look around today. The violence on the streets is unmistakable, we all remember the antifa and BLM riots that tore through neighborhoods and destroyed statutes, parks, homes, stores, and everything else, even lives. The violence in schools is of more subtle nature, but even worse: it consists of poisoning minds, grooming young and innocent children towards this new ideology, and actual abuse and rape, as one of my recent posts explored.

So far, Sheen has captured the nature of the ideological battle we’re in with great clarity and simplicity, and as he pointed at several areas where we can see the violence from the enemy ideology, he masterfully gave us 2 different types of violence.

Next, he goes into more detail, and gives us 3 main characteristics of this new violence. He starts with ‘elitism’. Now, this is not by chance, as this is at the core of what we face. Sheen quickly clarifies how he is not talking about the virtuous elites of old, but a very specific sense of that word: a dominant minority that “makes a lot of noise and that uses violence to force its will upon others”. Again, in a few words, he gives us so much information. Who are we fighting against, today? Not against countries, not against parties, not against organizations, really, but against a certain elite, a cabal, that has infiltrated countries, parties, organizations, and even churches and other fields of thought. Sheen claims they have no program, no flag. They HAVE a program,  but not an open one by which we can identify them, same as the purpose a flag on a battlefield would serve. Both program and flag are used as identifying markers, and this is how he uses both terms here. The elites we’re up against, who foist this new violence upon us, fight from the shadows.

They attempt to impose their will upon us all, because they know what is good for us, better than we ourselves. They are, after all, the elite, and their thinking is, therefore, also of elite level, greatly elevated above us, the common men and women. What do we understand of the grand schemes and needs and goals, of the movement of time and the universe? We are malleable, remember? Which means that we can be shaped towards any end, by those who control both the means and the knowledge to achieve such shaping of the masses, and who possess an elevated goal that justifies such violence and force. And we’re also expendable, remember? Which means that our individual worth and value is thought to be subservient to the greater good of the collective.

Archbishop Sheen stated they do not know what they are for. I would nuance that. The elites know exactly what they are doing, and what end goal they are striving towards. The minions they send out, the gullible and useful idiots, they have no idea. They only know what they are against, and they destroy, tear down, in feral violence. Like the BLM protesters who besmirched and desecrated the Robert Gould Shaw and Massachusetts 54th Regiment Memorial in Boston, that commemorates one of the first African American regiments of the Civil War. (This regiment fought valiantly at the second battle for Fort Wagner, even if unsuccessfully as they did not take the fort: William Carney, an African-American sergeant of the 54th, was the first black soldier who received the Medal of Honor, and the heroic fighting by the regiment earned them, and the other Black soldiers in the Union army, a deep respect from all the other soldiers.) What did those protestors in Boston know? Nothing. Except destruction and violence.

Apart from the elites, Sheen observed, you have the loud man with the bullhorn, the leader, riling up the violent mobs, aided by his ‘hangmen’, willing to do anything to enforce their will, and lastly the ‘wastrels’, good-for-nothings, who are simply in it for the sake of violence and self-profit. We’ve all seen the looting: that is exactly what this last subgroup is. Sheen had very sharply analyzed the make-up of the violent groups, already over 50 years ago. And just a few summers ago, we saw it play out, exactly as he had said.

Sheen continued with his characteristics. The second one, he explained, was that of ‘mysticism’. He knows this term usually doesn’t belong to the field of politics, but he describes how it was transposed to that field. This version, however, is a godless mysticism, one where the will of God is replaced by the will of Man, however commanding and demanding a religious fervor and commitment, nonetheless. If you see or hear proponents of this elite, you will often hear very familiar religious elements, and the arguments they bring up for their different proposals and plans, will require ‘blind faith’, absent fact or logic. They are themselves, in effect, a caricature of the ‘religion’ that they so gleefully attack!

Theirs is a holy crusade, meant to wipe away any and all opposition of unworthy infidels, who are only blocking the way towards the promised land, paradise, the utopia that the elites want to construct. Sheen expressed that fervor, as he pointed out that they “would make in this mysticism a tabula rasa”: wipe the slate clean, destroying life and property. But since it was born out of mysticism, it was a ‘religious fervor’, so when they are done, they will turn around and demand amnesty and immunity, for their goals were lofty and praiseworthy, their methods misguided (but only insofar others would fault them for it).

In his third characteristic, Archbishop Sheen holds no punches. Satanism. In this last characteristic of the new violence he sees in America, he names this drive that aims to destabilize and destroy. Not just to destroy anything, but specifically the order this world is built upon. Sheen is correct: our world is built on order, precise natural laws and rules, as we can discover in science, but also in precise rules for our conduct, if we want to live in harmony.

By the words of Sheen himself:

“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.”

Again, with masterfully succinct words, he explains something very complex and far-reaching in so few words. The order we see, is under attack. And he gives a list:

The order of law is under attack. By DAs who pick and chose which laws to enforce, which to ignore, the whole rule of law is made a mockery. Or look at the reactions against the Supreme Court decisions a month ago: the howling that erupted, showing that for them, the rule of law, as upheld by this highest court, was irrelevant when it contradicted their schemes and plans. But such is not law, it is chaos.

The order of morality is under attack. Look around: the most deviant behavior is celebrated as stunning and brave, and mothers are encouraged to kill their own children IN THE WOMB, the place where until recently, a person was said to be the most secure and loved and protected! No longer, as morality is being turned upside down, and murder is called good, but any attempt to protect all life is called evil. Such is not morality, it is chaos.

The order of religion is under attack. On one hand, the infiltration and erosion of the visible churches, made a mockery by having (some of) them participate in heinous filthy acts, contrary to their own rules and tenets, by having them proclaim that ‘God is in each of us, so it doesn’t matter!’. On the other, they ruthlessly attack any religious expression, twisting the famous line by Jefferson about ‘erecting a wall between Church and State’ as to mean that the Church had to be removed from anything even remotely connected to the State, by force if necessary (or by preference, if you look at the glee of some of its proponents), instead of a rule to protect the Church FROM THE STATE! There is no religion, they claim, or God is dead! But at the same time, they use the same religious language and images to promote their own views. A religion no longer centered around God, but around Man. Such is not religion, it is chaos.

The order of ethics is under attack. A man can have babies, they claim (which is an attack on science, itself, something Sheen did not add to his list: even he could not foresee just how extreme this revolt would become!), but to protect such absurdity, ‘equality’ is called in to construct a faux ethics, that would label all critics as bigots and haters. Death penalty and war and guns are all bad, without exception, but abortion is good, the death of opponents is celebrated (just what they deserved),  and a downwards cycle where not just words are violence, but existence itself is violence, and people need to die in order to save the planet or democracy or whatever Idol has come in vogue. Such is not ethics, it is chaos.

As hinted at above, I would add the order of science that is under attack. What we see and know is no longer true. Man is woman, woman is man, a person is neither. A fetus is not a human. This disrespect for science and truth, ripples through all of science, and we see that in the minds of those who engage in gain-of-function research in pathogens with a 60% fatality rate, when we just came out of a pandemic with a pathogen with a 1% fatality rate… There is no respect or sense left. This is not science, it is chaos.

The order of politics is under attack, too. Look at elections, to point at the example that is most clearly visible. It is supposed to be the foundation of any democratic system, where the will of the people is made known, and the people, through their vote, assign authority to the winner of the election to carry out their will. Yet those who have been working so hard these last 4-5 years to remove Trump - as Dick Cheney in an astonishingly tone-deaf add for his daughter said, “In our nation’s 246 year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our Republic than Donald Trump” – in name of democracy, ALSO authored the most shameless and pervasive voter fraud in history! They have no right to speak about democracy! They themselves, in their misguided fight to preserve democracy, squandered and destroyed it completely! This is not politics, it is chaos!

Anything that you please. Do what thou wilt. Satanism. The horrible attack on all that is good, and true, and beautiful, the absolute chaos that is being pursued, is all around us. Even the question ‘what is a woman?’ stumps people, or ‘triggers’ them into immediate furious rage. Everything had to go, sacrificed for our pleasure. So we can do what we please, when we please, where we please. Without consequence. But that is magical thinking, devoid of any sense of reality. Actions HAVE consequences. Every action has a REaction! But that is swept under the rug, while unbridled hedonism is promoted. And interestingly, under this contradictory ploy: the collective is enforced as the source of rights and the benchmark to measure all else by, yet the people are pushed towards unfettered individualism, to the point of complete atomization, where each person is separated in full isolation from all other people. As such, completely at the mercy of the elites who command the ‘collective’, without any defense or support. Totalitarian collectivism, through atomized individualism. We see it all around us. This is Saint Just, the Archangel of Terror, in our day. This is the offspring of the French Revolution, still at work.

As Archbishop Sheen pointed out, “in the days of Noah there was violence on the earth”. Today, the violence in our society has reached a fever point.

Our nation is full of those who cry Down, Down!, he points out. Again, while offering a list that today seems prescient: Universities, we all know the absolute rot in those former halls of distinguished erudition; the schools, with the grooming and dumbing down and abuse that is going on; the churches, with infiltration and betrayal of God-given truths and responsibilities; of teachers, who became abusers of those young minds entrusted to them, and in too many cases also of the bodies of those innocents; of the government, both the tool to enable their malice, but also a hindrance that protects the people, when it does what it is supposed to do, and thus to be destroyed at the same time; and the police, we are know to love the blue (I still do), but in a world that grows beyond her borders, in cities away from the calm of the fields, filled with isolated lonely people, detached from all meaningful ties, an officer is no longer a friend, but a threat, as you, to him, are no longer the boy he knew growing up, but an unknown, and therefore a potential danger!

How are we going to get out of this? What choice are we going to make? Individually, and as a nation? Are we preserving the revolution of Jefferson and the Founding Fathers, based on the dignity of man and the inalienability of our God-given rights, or will we succumb to the glamor of the adversary, founded in the malleability and expendability of man, promising a Utopia, but one built on a pile of the corpses of those who dared oppose the ‘benevolent’ elites who know what is best for us all?

Putting it this way, the choice seems easy (it IS easy, once you see who the enemy is, and what the choice is before us!).

But life is messy, and we don’t always see the small ways in which we surrendered the grander vision of which Jefferson’s ideal was an extension of, and where we adopted ways of acting or thinking or speaking that are actually part of the worldview of a Saint Just! The danger lurks, as well, to become like a pharisee, thinking so much better of ourselves because we are awake, not woke, like that poor bastard over there… Yeah, I am talking to you. And you. (And, if I am honest, to myself, too). Don’t get comfortable, for the battle is not between nations, nor between armies, but between good and evil. And that means, the battle is within us. Each of us.

Archbishop Sheen knew that, and as a good pastor, did not leave us with such uncomfortable truth. Instead, he left us with a wonderful, and actually very encouraging, image. The small eaglet (and what a glorious nod to this great country he loved so much!), is pushed out of the nest, to force it to spread its own wings. Right before it crashes, the mother eagle would swoop in, and bring it back up, to try again, until the little eagle finds the wind under his wings, and flies on his own!

Moses saw that, and he wrote “as the Eagle stirs among the young, so does God stir among the nations”.

As Archbishop Sheen wrote: “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.”

Not to follow those who cry Down, Down!

Instead, UP, UP, UP!

To end with the words of the venerable Archbishop:

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!

All is well.