Fulton Sheen wrote that when the Antichrist comes he will look a lot like Christ. He will do miracles. He will do good things. But he will not suffer for you, and that is how you will know him.
Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen is beatified this Thursday, September 24, in St. Louis. Fr. Dave Tomaszycki of the Archdiocese of Detroit spent four and a half years in Sheen’s archives assembling the book Sheen announced in 1974 and never finished: On the Demonic. In this conversation from A Catholic Take he walks through Sheen’s portrait of the counterfeit christ, why a Christ-like figure who promises everything Christ promises “but no cross” will be believed, why the devil’s shortcut for Catholics is always a church without a cross, and what Sheen called the most misunderstood thing about the demonic: hatred for the cross.
Joe puts his own cards on the table along the way: the temptation to build a private utopia untouched by the scandals, and Sheen’s third temptation of Christ, the political one, applied to Catholic media.
CHAPTERS (timed from the opening line; if the 20-second run-up is kept, add 0:20)
0:00 “He’ll look a lot like Christ, but he won’t suffer for you”
0:33 Joe: I just want my little utopia
2:12 “We’re so soft”: what happened to fasting
3:04 A church with no cross is the devil’s temptation
3:17 “The devil is tempting you right now”
3:55 Why was Sheen’s beatification delayed?
5:02 Sheen’s third temptation: politics, and why viral homilies go political
6:49 The most misunderstood thing about the demonic
7:37 Fr. Tomaszycki’s blessing
