The late Bishop Fulton J...
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The late Bishop Fulton J. Sheen was so evidently born to be a teacher, that his career moved extremely fast. He was given many opportunities to teach, yet none of those early appointments seemed to go very smoothly. In his autobiography, (Treasure in Clay, Doubleday, NY, 1980), Sheen tells a story that took place in 1928, when the previous presidential election had raw overtones of anti-Catholic bigotry. He had been teaching in Europe, when the bishops of the Roman Catholic church decided that a School of Apologetics should be started at the American Catholic University. The rector of the University, Bishop Corrigan, approached Sheen and asked him to outline a course of study. He did so, and it apparently met with approval, for he was then asked to find professors to staff the new department. Assured that he had the authority to offer contracts, and armed with salary figures to offer, he went to various universities in Europe and obtained the ten professors needed. However, the rector of the University failed to draw up the necessary papers to finalize the plans. Sheen began to receive complaints from those men he had lined up for the department, and finally, since Bishop Corrigan had done nothing, and the date for starting school was upon him, the future bishop Sheen had to sit down and write letters to each of the men he had engaged, saying that he "had exceeded his authority, and begged their pardon." The next year, Sheen reports, the rector called him in again, and told him that he wanted Sheen to head up a Department of Apologetics at the Catholic University. Stung by the apparent oversight of the work he had put in, Sheen "begged to be excused." The matter was never taken up again, and the department was never established. -- Herrmann
