While Embarrassing, Sheen Beatification Delay Could Turn Out Well
National Catholic Register, 05 December 2019
The latest development may finally give the Sheen beatification the treatment it deserves.
That postponement of the beatification of Venerable Fulton J. Sheen is just the latest baffling development in the cause that has brought no small measure of embarrassment to what should have been an occasion of edification.
But the latest fiasco may finally get the Sheen beatification the treatment it deserves, namely a proper celebration for the universal Church, not just a parochial event for the promoters of the cause.
The Sheen saga has had many twists and turns.
The Diocese of Peoria, Illinois, and Bishop Daniel Jenky have been the promoters of Archbishop Sheen’s cause for sainthood. They launched the process in 2002, did the work and raised the money. They got the cause through to the point where beatification was imminent.
Then Bishop Jenky announced that unless the body of Archbishop Sheen was transferred to Peoria from St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York, he would not permit the cause to go forward. The “no body, no beatification” policy led to several years of litigation with the Archdiocese of New York. Last June, the body was transferred to Peoria.
With the body in Peoria, Bishop Jenky immediately reactivated the cause and persuaded the Congregation for the Causes of Saints in Rome to publish the decree for the miracle within a week.
Pilgrims in Peoria when the body arrived in late June heard excited talk that the diocese planned the beatification for that September, to coincide with the 100th anniversary of Venerable Sheen’s priestly ordination, which took place in the Peoria cathedral.
It seemed rushed. A beatification of the significance of Archbishop Sheen would normally be planned nine months or a year in advance, in order to give the entire country and the wider Church time to organize pilgrimages, draft catechetical resources and prepare all the material and spiritual tasks necessary to make it a truly evangelical event.
In July, Bishop Salvatore Matano of Rochester, New York, where Venerable Sheen served as bishop from 1966 to 1969, expressed his view to the Vatican that rushing ahead would be imprudent. Why? Since the cause of Archbishop Sheen had been introduced, different standards have applied to how bishops handled cases of priestly sexual abuse.
After the Pennsylvania grand jury report in 2018, deceased bishops had their names removed from schools for not handling cases before 2002 — the year of the Dallas Charter — as they pledged to do so afterward. Could Archbishop Sheen be beatified if other bishops could not even have schools named after them?
Bishop Matano had two concerns. First was the actual record, which needed to be double- and triple-checked with the lenses of the now-prevailing standards. Second was the inquiry launched by the New York attorney general into all the Catholic dioceses in New York state. The Pennsylvania grand jury report was grossly — and sometimes deliberately — misleading. What if Venerable Sheen’s record was clear, but the New York attorney general slandered his reputation? How would that mar the purpose of the beatification?
Further complicating matters, all New York dioceses are facing an avalanche of new litigation as civil suits dating back decades have now been allowed, the statute of limitations being suspended. The Diocese of Rochester will file for bankruptcy, as a result. The volume of litigation will involve a lot of material coming to light, needing to be put into proper context.
In the late summer and fall, Archbishop Sheen’s record on abuse cases was re-examined. The case in question concerned Gerard Guli, an abuser priest who was given an assignment despite having been credibly accused of sexual abuse of adults, not minors. He did get another assignment in Rochester, but, it turns out, not from then-Bishop Sheen, but his successor, Bishop Joseph Hogan.
That having been established to the satisfaction of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, Bishop Jenky then requested a beatification date within the calendar year. He prevailed and, on Nov. 18, announced that Venerable Sheen would be beatified 33 days later.
There was shock across the body of U.S. bishops, who, despite having all been assembled just days earlier in Baltimore for their annual fall assembly, had not been consulted. Bishop Jenky had treated Archbishop Sheen’s beatification as a local parochial event rather than something belonging to the entire Church.
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