Originally published at The Crux
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Archbishop Fulton Sheen, who was beatified on Thursday in St. Louis, is frequently described as the first televangelist, since he popularized a medium later overrun by evangelical Protestants.
Sheen certainly has a legitimate claim to the title, and his beatification last week in St. Louis moved him one significant step closer to becoming an official patron of Catholics in mass media.
In Sheen’s own day, the broad public considered the archbishop a “great enigma,” a puzzling figure who was impossible to fit into any of their ready-made categories.
The conservative Catholic journalist William F. Buckley Jr., for example, used those exact words – “great enigma” – to describe Sheen for his television audience on Jan. 6, 1970, introducing Sheen on an episode of Buckley’s long-running program, Firing Line.
It was a remarkable episode of television, featuring two highly educated and eloquent men – both Emmy-winners – on opposite sides of some (but not all) fundamental questions of politics and even basic morality, conversing with each other for an hour.
If it was remarkable in 1970, the episode is astounding today.
In any case, Buckley illustrated the enigmatic character of Sheen’s public persona by noting how the archbishop made
