Heretical miracles

1. I'm old enough to remember Fulton Sheen. As a kid I occasionally saw his TV show. Years ago I read his autobiography.

2. In his heyday he was the public face of American Catholicism. Undoubtedly the most influential Catholic propagandist. 

Sheen was a natural storyteller. And I'm impressed by how he could speak without notes. 

3. I think he was probably a sincere Catholic rather than a charlatan. However, he always struck me as rather vain. He spoke with a very artificial accent and loved to dress up in showy vestments. 

He was a social climber who cultivated the rich, famous, and powerful. He liked to move in those circles. He hogged the limelight. 

One of his biographers (Thomas Reeves) argues that Sheen was guilty of resume inflation by fabricated a second doctorate. If so, that's consistent with his ambitious streak. 

From humble origins as a farm boy, he parlayed his intellectual and theatrical talents to become a major religious celebrity. That made other ambitious, egotistical prelates like Cardinal Spellman jealous.  

4. An irony of Sheen's career is that the church he tirelessly promoted no longer exists. He was raised and educated in the shadow of Trent and the antimodernist papacy. But in practice, that's dead. It died in his lifetime. It's gone the way of the Shaker cult. Sheen's Catholicism is a museum piece. Indeed, as bishop, he was unable to make the transition to the new post-Vatican II world order. 

5. There's a YouTube presentation in which he plugs Our Lady of Lourdes. He mentions some personal anecdotes which, if he's to be believed, indicate supernatural intercession. That raises an interesting question about how to assess reported Catholic miracles. 

i) In one anecdote, he says a bunch of atheists on a trip to the Pyrenees all died when their bus plunged off a bridge. In principle, there ought to be newspaper accounts which verify or falsify that claim. 

ii) Some Catholic miracles present a bit of a theological conundrum in the sense that if they happen, they might indicate the agency of Mary in answering prayer–which validates Catholic dogma. But the conundrum is that many Protestants can also recount personal anecdotes of miracles, answered prayer, and special providence, so there's a sense in which all these claims culminate in a stalemate. 

iii) In the video I referenced, Sheen appeals to these providential incidents to bolster some appalling theology. Assuming he's telling the truth, it reminds me of Deut 13:1-5, where "heretical miracles" function as a test of fidelity. 

iv) But I also have nagging reservations about Sheen's credibility. To begin with, there's the temptation of a natural storyteller to spin tall tales. A good storyteller has the power to manipulate an audience. Have the audience eating out of his hand. If you're someone like Sheen, who seems to have an appetite for popular adulation, it's hard to resist the temptation to exploit that ability in order to foster a personality cult centered on yourself.

That's in addition to Sheen's M.O. as a status seeker and name-dropper, who went out of his way to cultivate celebrity converts and hobnob with cultural elites. So I'm not convinced that Sheen is trustworthy when he tells these self-aggrandizing stories.

That doesn't necessarily mean he was a pure con artist. People can be complex and pulled in different directions. But there's already a Hollywood quality to the swanky piety that Sheen was enamored with. At the end of the day I'm undecided about Sheen's ultimate motives.