The beatification attempt of Bishop Fulton Sheen is fast approaching, and with it, the promotion of his life and body of work.
On September 24, liberal Philippine Cardinal Luis Tagle will preside over a Novus Ordo Mass to mark the event at an 82,000 seat stadium in St. Louis. Tagle is serving as the official Papal Representative for the ceremony.
Almost certainly in anticipation of this, EWTN published a short video on its X account Monday of Sheen recalling the scandalous “Desert Prayer” of notorious evolutionist and neo-modernist Teilhard de Chardin.
The “Desert Prayer” was penned in 1923 by Teilhard in the Gobi desert at a time when he was unable to offer Mass. Just two years later, he would be censored by the Superior General of the Society of Jesus, Father Włodzimierz Ledóchowski, and ordered to leave his teaching position in France and sign a document of retraction for heterodox views on Original Sin.1
In the clip, which is taken from one of his television shows in the middle part of the 20th Century, Sheen confidently repeats the following Teihardian invocation: “I am going to spread my hands over the entire universe and take its immensity as the matter of my sacrifice.” Following Teilhard, Sheen then rhetorically asked “Is not the infinite circle of things the ultimate host that will be transformed?”
In light of Catholic sacramentology and cosmology, it is hard to see this “Desert Prayer” as anything but doctrinally unsafe, even deviant — a suspicion the Church herself would later confirm. In 1962, the Holy Office issued a formal monitum against Teilhard’s evolutionary framework of cosmogenesis, the “Omega Point” and the “noosphere,” warning against his doctrinal ambiguities. Among his most concerning claims was a noted tendency to blur the Creator-creature distinction in a quasi-pantheist or immanentist direction, which treats matter as moving toward divinization through cosmic processes.
Immediate criticism on social media
While many Traditional Catholics are fond of Bishop Sheen, this video should give them serious pause. Fortunately, prominent voices were swift to denounce it.
Thomas Mirus, who serves as the editor-in-chief of Catholic Culture, and is certainly no “Radical Traditionalist,” responded to EWTN‘s X post by stating: “You shouldn’t [have] been promoting this material” since “Teilhard was a heretic and a racist eugenicist.”
The Dispatch
Michael Hichborn of the Lepanto Institute weighed in as well. “Chardin was a heretic and [was] likely possessed … it is an absolute shame EWTN is pushing Chardin through Sheen,” he exclaimed.
X user Jeffery Wilson responded to the video by telling EWTN that he was canceling his monthly donation.
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Integrity Magazine has published multiple essays exposing the many problematic statements and actions Sheen took before and after the Second Vatican Council.
One article explained Sheen’s wholesale embrace of false ecumenism, philosemitism, and other revolutionary ideas gaining traction at the time. Another exposed how he implemented progressive reforms in the Diocese of Rochester, New York from 1966 until 1969.
Relatedly, in 1967, Sheen offered explicit praise of Teilhard de Chardin, claiming that he “will appear like John of the Cross and St. Teresa of Avila, as the spiritual genius of the twentieth century.”
Integrity will continue to serve as the advocatus diaboli — devil’s advocate — position for Bishop Sheen’s process in the future.
- Grumett, D. & Bentley, P., (2018) “Teilhard de Chardin, Original Sin, and the Six Propositions,” Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science 53(2), 303–330. doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/zygo.12398 ↩︎
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