Venerable Fulton Sheen. The President of the Legion of Mary has welcomed the beatification of Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, recalling an address in which the American broadcaster-bishop called the Dublin-founded movement “my favourite group”.
Sheen was declared Blessed at a Mass in St Louis on Thursday, September 24.
Declan Lawlor, President of the Legion of Mary said he welcomed the Beatification and that Fulton Sheen “was a friend of the Legion.”
Mr Lawlor recalled a talk Sheen gave to Legion officers in Rochester, New York, during his time as bishop there in the late 1960s. The text was carried by Christian Voice on April 23, 1976.
“In you I meet the organisation which is closest to my heart, my favourite group, the Legion of Mary,” Sheen told the legionaries. He argued that the Legion had anticipated the Second Vatican Council, in which he had taken part, because it was a lay apostolate at a time when the apostolate was reserved for the clergy.
In the most striking passage of the address, he contrasted the Legion with the clergy of his day. “We priests belong to the ‘in ministry’. That’s not what God intended but that’s what happened. We wait for people to come to us and we build bigger and bigger rectories. We are failing because we are an ‘in ministry’, waiting,” he said.
“You were from the beginning an ‘out ministry’, commissioned to do the same sort of thing as Our Blessed Lord did – walking up and down alleys.”
“Personal contact through home and street is key to the way the Legion and the Irish Church today – Fulton Sheen called it the ‘out’ ministry but home and street personal encounters work and lead to fraternity and friendship, that’s one of our charism” said Mr Lawlor.