Crisis In Christendom, No. 5 of 17 No. 5 of 17

O Allah, may Allah, may He be by His command. O Allah, may He be by His command. The national broadcasting company in cooperation with the National Council of Catholic men presents the Catholic oven. The Catholic hour opens with Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky's beautiful composition, a legend sung by the Polish choristers. The national broadcasting company in cooperation with the Polish choristers. The national broadcasting company in cooperation with the Polish choristers. The national broadcasting company in cooperation with the Polish choristers. The national broadcasting company in cooperation with the Polish choristers. The right Reverend Monsignor, Fulton J. Sheen of the Catholic University of America, will now deliver the fifth in his series of 17 addresses on the crisis in Christendom. His discourse today is entitled, The Christian Order, I present Monsignor Sheen. Friends, today we come to a more pleasant task. The constructive part of our series. In order to reach it, it was necessary to point out the evils and defects of those systems which either deny or forget Almighty God and the moral law. It was only after John the Baptist laid the axe to the roots of evil trees that our Lord sowed the seed of the tree of life. Christianity features its good news only after one has heard the bad news. Today we begin the good news of the Christian Order. The Christian World View differs from the totalitarian view and from the materialist culture view of the Western world in one basic fact. It believes that he is man who makes society, and not society which makes man. That is why our first broadcast on the Christian Order must begin with man. After all, what is the use of a revolution or in your economic order or in your international society unless we know the type of person for whom it is intended? If an architect were asked to design a building, he would want to know who was going to live in it. If the sick were to live in it, he would build a hospital. If the criminals were to live in it, he would build a penitentiary. Like manner before we draw up a plan for a new social order, we should ask the question, who is going to live in it? This is very important because for the last century there have been many distorted views of human nature. There were fashions in man as there were fashions in clothes. Some fashions concentrating on one particular aspect to the neglect of all others. Very much like the blind men who felt an elephant, he is describing it differently accordingly as he touched the trunk, the tail, the ear or the legs. For example, some blind men in the days of Darwin felt man. And since he felt like an animal, they said he must be an animal, and therefore it could be treated as one. Such was the Darwinian man. And then there came a new fashion. Blind men felt man again, and they found that he was made up of nerves and reflexes and responses and ganglia. And so we had the Freudian or psychological man, who consulted green books after each pitful sleep to learn what Freud had to say about his sex life. And then there came a blind philosopher who made the great discovery that man spent a great deal of his time earning a living. Universalizing this particular aspect, he gave us the economic man, or the Marxian man, for whom religion and law and culture and the arts were byproducts of economic methods of production. Now we are at the beginning of a new fashion in man. Blind men discovered that man lived in a state, that he was dependent on it for his eye veers. And thus was born the political man whom the new lawyers tell us, as no rights except those which have been given to him by the state. Now these partial views of man, of Marx, of Spencer, of Darwin, and of Freud, never free man as he really is. They are incidental activities erected into absolutes. The thinking of these men is very much of the same metal caliber as one who thinks, for example, a manicurist who might think that a man was all hands or a dentist who might think that a man was all teeth. The Christian view of man admits that man has ganglia, that he dreams, that he experiences lividos, that he works, and that he talks politics. But it insists that man is none of these things exclusively. He's not even all of these things added together. Any more than a baby is the sum of chemicals in the laboratory. The Christian begins by asking this question, what is it that makes a man different from anything else in all the world? And it answers, and intellect and the will. An intellect by which man can know truth, and the will by which he can choose goodness. The next Christianity says, since man is different from an animal because of an intellect in the will, he must have a different purpose than an animal. Just as a monkey range must have an entirely different purpose than a monkey. Now this purpose will obviously be in keeping with what is highest in his life, namely as intellect and as will. Man therefore will never be completely satisfied until he attains three things. First he wants life, not life for two more months, for two more years, with a vital eternal life. And second he wants truth for his intellect, not the truth of geography to the exclusion of science, nor of history to the exclusion of anything else, but all truth without any and mixture of error. And certainly he wants love, not love for any definite period of time, but an eternal ecstasy of love without shadow of hate or satiety. Now this eternal life and truth and love which man seeks is God. God therefore is his final and his ultimate end, hence politics, governments, economics, social security, are not the ends of human life. There only the means to the final end which is God and they therefore derive their morality from that final end. This is the Christian view of man. Now Christianity also explains the inner conflicts of man. There is not a single one of us who does not feel as if we were two. There's something good in us and there is something bad in us. We have higher ideals than we realize. We think to lower depths than we wish. Our souls are like radios tuned into two different stations. The one heaven and the other hell know that we seem to get his static and just in meaningless jungle. As Saint Paul tells us the good which we will to do that we do not, and the evil which we will not, that we do. How often we say what a fool I have been and yet how wise we have to be to know that we are fools. Why is it we are this way? If it be not because something has happened to us, something to destroy our original unity, namely sin. Man has contradicted himself in contradicting God. Thus our primitive freedom which was meant to be free for God and in God has become preferred to mean and modern man freedom from God. We are godless now but we would never be godless without God. That is why we are the way we are because of sin. But Christianity does not leave man in his sin because the image of God was defaced, the divine original came to this earth to remake that image. That was our divine Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Being man he could act as man and for a man. Being God his redemption would be of infinite value. He allowed all of our sins to come to a head and to do their worst against him, namely to put him to death. But in a temple to kill God which is the nature of sin, sin wrote its own condemnation. For by rising from the dead by the power of God he made the disaster of sin the beginning of a new and regenerated humanity under his leadership which is the Kingdom of God. There is absolutely, however, no compulsion above his appeal. He does not force his single one of us who are fallen and disordered to live according to his level. Any one of us may continue to live on this subhuman level that we are. He is left as free. Thee that appears with nails cannot run down an unwilling prey. His very flag is the flag of freedom, a king on a cross. For how can he enslave or dictate who has no arms to fight except love and a broken heart? Just think how different our political and economic system would be if we were based on this Christian concept of man. Incidentally, we will begin to explain next Sunday the repercussions of this Christian doctrine of man on the economic and social order. But presently we are concerned with this problem. What chance is there today in this world of restoring the Christian concept of man? When one thinks on the one hand of how few there are who really acknowledge God, how few practical Christians there are for whom Christ is the way and the truth and the life, and on the other hand when we think of the terrific power of evil to mold the minds of men and their touchiness about worldly alliance, along with our callousness for the preservation of the moral law, I say when we think of these things that task seems hopeless. And hopeless it would be if the strength of our cause came from power or numbers or influence and not from the Spirit of God. Even this Spirit, the Christian will never lose courage. For although a pagan will have courage as long as there is a chance for victory, the Christian must have courage when there is absolutely no chance. For His victory comes not from His fight, but from His faith. This is the victory that overcometh the world, your faith. Will this broadcast help to restore that Christian concept of man? Not of being. I have no illusions about it. That is why in each broadcast I ask the Jews and the Protestants to set aside a holy hour a day for prayer and meditation. That is why I ask every Catholic to include in this holy hour daily mass and communion. Many one who desires a prayer book entitled The Shield of Faith to assist in this hour, they will gladly send it free. I am not giving these broadcasts you know in order that you might listen to me. I am using these broadcasts as an excuse for prayer and for the holy hour. Holy hour is not incidental to the broadcast. It is the broadcasts that are incidental to the holy hour. And if one of the reasons you have no time to spend an hour a day in communion with God during this war is because you are listening to this program of mine then for heaven's sake shut it off. You can get down on your knees, you will do more good for your soul and your mind and America in the world than you will by listening to this broadcast. Granted now your prayers. What objection is there to this suggestion of ours that we build a new order based on the Christian concept of man. There is only one objection. We hear it on all sides. Christianity does not suit the modern man. Certainly it does not. We never contend that it did. And the reason it does not is because the modern man is not man. He is a part man, a disfected man. But Christianity does suit man. It is entirely... Is the creature composed of body and soul? Up until now it has been said. Christianity does not suit the modern man. Therefore let us scrap Christianity. Do you not think that it is about time for us to turn it around? And to put it this way, Christianity does not suit the modern man. Therefore let us scrap the modern man. There is a possibility worth considering. Maybe there is nothing wrong with Christianity after all. May we dare suggest it? Maybe there is something wrong with us. Maybe there is something wrong with the flippancy of George Bernard Shaw. And nothing wrong with the theology of St. John. Maybe there is something astute with HG Wells. And nothing wrong with St. Vincent de Paul. Maybe there is something wrong with progressive education. And maybe there is nothing wrong with the life of the world. After all, how can we have peace and justice unless we love one another? Take this key sentence which certainly conditions peace. Therefore let us love one another. Put here at the end of the Darwinian man. Man is descended from a monkey. Therefore let us love one another. We dig you this, isn't it? Put it at the end of the Marxian man. Man is a tool making animal. Therefore let us love one another. Bullish. Put it at the end of the Freudian man. Man is a cosmic ganglion. Therefore let us love one another. That is more foolish still. Now put it at the end of the Christian man. Man is a creature made to the image and likeness of the God of love. Therefore let us love one another. That makes sense, doesn't it? And that is where we will have to begin in rebuilding a new world. And all of our plans, regardless of how profound it is, will end nowhere except in socialism unless we return to this Christian concept of man. We have given the Marxist very chance. We have given the Darwinians theirs. We have given the Freudians theirs. And we have given the liberal bears. Now let us give men a chance. O Lord Jesus Christ, who in dimer sea heareth the prayers of sinners. For forth we besieged the oil, grace and blessing upon our country and its citizens. We pray in particular for the president, for our Congress, for all our soldiers, for all who defend us in ships, whether on the seas or in the skies, for all who are suffering the hardships of war. We pray for all who are in peril or in danger. Bring us all after the troubles of this light into the haven of peace, and reunite us all together forever, O dear Lord, in thy glorious heavenly kingdom. The address you have just heard was entitled, the Christian Order, and was delivered by the right reverend Monsignor Fulton J. Sheen of the Catholic University of America. This was the fifth in Monsignor Sheen series of seventeen addresses on the crisis in Christendom. A copy of today's talk, as well as of the booklet referred to by Monsignor Sheen, the Shield of Faith, may be obtained by writing to the National Council of Catholic Men, Washington DC, or to the station to which you are now listening. The Catholic Hour closes with the traditional hymn, Jesus, Savior of my soul. Jesus, they are all my friends home. Let me do my very best by my own name, my own name, my own name, my own name. My own name, my own name, my own name. My own name, my own name, my own name. Jesus, my own name, my own name. Jesus, they are all my friends home. Jesus, they are all my friends home. Jesus, they are all my friends home. Let me do my very best by my own name, my own name, my own name. Jesus, they are all my friends home. Jesus, they are all my friends home. Jesus, they are all my friends home. Before You'll remember Me I mayfulnessツ be Your light And OurИ Staying through our world on the seep but but for This time, Monsignor Sching will deliver another address in this series entitled, The Christian Social Order. Your announcer is John Patrick Costello. The Catholic Hour has been presented by the National Broadcasting Company and the independent radio stations associated with the NBC Network in cooperation with the National Council of Catholic Men and came to you from New York. This is the National Broadcasting Company.