Heywood Broun was one of the most distinguished newspapermen in America. Often he had been described as "Looking like an unmade bed" or a "one man slum." One Sunday I was passing the Plaza Hotel in New York with Fulton Oursler. In the main dining room of the Plaza Hotel we could see Heywood Broun. Fulton Oursler said: "Did you ever try to make a convert of Heywood?" When I answered in the negative, he said: "Try it."

The next weekend when I came to New York from Washington, I phoned Mr. Broun: "I should like to see you." He said: "About what?" "Your soul." "When?" "Three o'clock Saturday at the Navarro Hotel on Fifty-ninth Street." Mr. Broun explained: "Yes, I am interested in the Church for the the following reasons: I am convinced that the only moral authority left in the world is the Holy Father; second, I made a visit to Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico and was deeply impressed by the devotion to the Mother of Christ. Finally, and most important, I do not want to die in my sins."

While I was instructing Mr. Broun he would often said: "Do not go into detail; I am not going to live long, just long enough to be absolved from my sins." Incidentally, he was the first person to receive Confirmation from Archbishop Spellman when he came to New York from Boston. About a month after I received him into the Church, I phoned him and said: "Heywood, you have run about a thousand miles; you had better come in and let me service you." He came in for Confession and a short time after that, he died. I preached his eulogy at Saint Patrick's Cathedral, and in the course of the sermon told the reasons he gave for wanting to become a Catholic. The next day the Communist Daily Worker carried the headline: "Monsignor Sheen reveals the secrets of the confessional." What were given, of course, were the reasons Mr. Broun gave me when I first met him.

Herbert Hoover and Al Smith were the principal candidates in the 1928 campaign for President. The Hoover campaign was directed by Horace Mann. Bigots during the campaign warned Americans that if Catholic were elected President, the Pope would sit in the White House. Al Smith answered the bigotry, when he attributed to Mann, in a famous speech delivered in Oklahoma City. In the meantime I was very friendly with Al Smith, and for years took dinner with him every Sunday night. Sometime after the election, I called on Horace Mann and proposed instructions. He said that he could not accept the authority of the Church, for his authority was the Holy Bible.

I told him the Holy Bible is not a book, but a collection of books. Someone had to gather them together and authenticate their authorship as inspiration. As the Supreme Court interprets the Constitution, so the Church safeguards the Holy Bible. Furthermore, the Church was established throughout the Roman Empire before any book of the New Testament was written. Later on, Horace Mann and Mrs. Mann were both received into the fullness of the Lord Jesus Christ, and Al Smith sent them both a telegram of congratulations on the day of their First Communion. Horace Mann told me that he was in no way responsible for the anti-Catholic side of the Hoover campaign.

Many letters were received in the course of one week asking me to visit friends and relatives in various hospitals in New York. I spent one afternoon and evening making the visitations. The last patient whom I saw this day was on the eleventh floor of Memorial Hospital. I was very happy that the evening was over, for I was hungry and tired. When I descended to the first floor, the elevator man said: "Oh, I forgot to tell you, there was a nurse on the eleventh floor who wanted to meet you." It was one of those moments when you wonder whether or not you should trouble yourself.

But I went back. the nurse said: "Oh, I saw you on television, and I just wanted to meet you." "Are you a Catholic?" I asked. "No." "Are you engaged?" "Yes." "Is he a Catholic?" "Yes." I said: "What does he do?" "He is a doctor studying a specialist." I said: "Very well, you and the doctor come to my home tomorrow night for dinner, and begin instructions." I finished instructions for the nurse and later went to Canada to witness their marriage, and in the course of the years, baptized their six sons: Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Peter, and Paul.

I was told about a leper in New York City. Being interested in that work, on account of visiting leper colonies and because of my association with the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, I spent about six months searching for him. He was put out of his home by his parents when they discovered the disease. His hands and feet were badly twisted and his face bore the marks of the disease. It took several months to drive hatred out of his soul, but then, under the inspiration of grace, he was received into the Church and it has been the happiness of my life to help support him ever since. I had him to my table very frequently and we became close friends.

One evening a well-dressed woman with a rather affected accent called on me. She explained: "I would like to become a Catholic, but I would not want any ordinary priest to instruct me, for I am an intellectual. Knowing your background, would you intellectualize your faith for me?" "Madam" I am willing to instruct anyone who comes to me. As a matter of fact, a young man with leprosy who just finished instructions sat in that very chair on which you are seated now." She literally flew out of the house and I never heard from her again.

I put in a telephone call one day to Congresswoman Clare Boothe Luce and invited her to dinner. After dinner, as we got into the subject of religion, I said: "Give me five minutes to talk to you about God, and then I will give an hour to state your own views." About the third minutes, when I mentioned the goodness of God, she immediately bounded out of the chair, stuck her finger under my nose and said: "If God is good, why did he take my daughter?" Her young daughter, a short time before, had been killed in an automobile accident. I answered: "In order through the sorrow, you might be here now starting instructions to know Christ and His Church."

Never in my life have I been privileged to instruct anyone who was an brilliant and who was so scintillating in conversation as Mrs. Luce. She had a mind like a rapier.

If I added up all the summers I spent in Saint Patrick's Church, Soho Square, in London, they would amount to six or seven years. Being an American, I opened the church in the morning, for the Americans rose earlier than the English did. This particular Epiphany morning in January, a limp figure fell in - that of a young woman about twenty-four or twenty-five years of age. "How do you happen to be here?" "Well, where am I, Father?" "Oh, 'Father'?" She said: "Yes, I used to be a Catholic, but not anymore." I said: "Were you drunk?" She admitted she was. I added: "Men drink because they like the stuff; women drink because they do not like something else. Who are you running from?" She said: "Three men - and they they are beginning to find out, so I got drunk."

 It was one of those typically cold January mornings in London; she had been exposed to the cold all night long; I made a cup of tea and asked her name. I pointed to a billboard across the street, asking: "Is that your picture over there on the billboard?" "Yes, I am the leading lady in that musical comedy." I invited her to come back that afternoon before the matinee. She agreed on one condition: "that you do not ask me to go to Confession." I said: "I promise not to ask you to go to Confession." She said: "I want you to promise me faithfully not to ask me to go to Confession." I said: "I promise you faithfully not to ask you to go to Confession." That afternoon before the matinee, she returned. I then told her that we had a Rembrandt and a Vick Dyck in the church: "Would you like to see them?" As we walked down the side aisle, we passed a confessional. I push her in. I did not ask her to go, for I had promised not to ask her to go. Two years later I gave her veil in a convent in London, where she is to this very hour.

Mr. Louis Budenz was the editor of the Communist Daily Worker in New York City. He had written a series of articles in the paper attacking me. Many of the articles asked rhetorical questions. I answered all of them in a booklet entitled "Communism answered the Questions of a Communist" - but not in my own words, only by quotations from Marx or Lenin. When Budenz would lecture in Union Square, New York, many would use my pamphlet to refute him. But a short time after the publication of the pamphlet, he asked to see me. I did not know until years later that the Central Committee of the Communists asked him to contact me in the hope that they could win me over to their cause.

The conversation at dinner opened by his saying: "I tell you what we have against you; you do not believe that Russia is a democracy." I answered: "How can you say that Russia is a democracy in light of Article 118 to 124 in the Soviet Constitution?" He retorted: "What are those articles?" I told him I was not interested in discussing communism; I wanted to talk about his soul. Six or seven years passed. Then he wrote and asked to see me again, and returned to the Faith. Only recently did I learn from Mrs. Budenz that he would not allow any radio in the house to be turned on to me while I spoke - so much did he detest me. Later she asked him why he chose to contact me since he bore such animosity. His answer was: "He told me that he was interested in my soul."

Instructions had to be conducted by stealth. I would drive at night to his home in Westchester and sit around the table with him and his wife. She was a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh and also was willing to take instructions. The instructions went on for several months and were held in the greatest secrecy. Then came the night of his reception into the Church and the eve of his Communion. About seven o'clock that night, I sent word to the Associated Press that Louis Budenz had been received into the Church. A short time afterward, one of the members of the Communist party called me and asked: "Is it true you have received Louis Budenz into the Catholic Church?"

I said: "Don't tell me that the Communist Daily Worker is at last interested in the truth?" His retort cannot be found in any manual of prayer. The following morning, Budenz and his wife and children were received into the Church at Saint Patrick's Cathedral. It might be added that the conversion of Louis Budenz took the Communist party so much by surprise that the masthead of their Daily Worker had his name as editor in chief the day of his coming to Christ.

Continuing other historical incidents of the spirit of God in souls, I recall a surprise visit made one day from a German who told me that he had been with his country's Army in World War I. During a heavy bombardment he said that he jumped from shell hole to shell hole to escape. Immediately after leaving one, a shell exploded in the hole he had left. Most of his companions in the shell hole were Catholics who recited the Rosary. He heard them recite the Rosary so often that he knew the prayers by heart. He promised God that he would become a Catholic if he were preserved safe from the war. That was the reason for his visit to me. Later on we gave him instructions, and he became a professor in one of our American universities.

When I was hearing confessions in a church on the eve of the first Friday each  month, a young woman entered and began: "I am not here to go to Confession; I am here to kill time." I asked: "How much time would you like to kill?" She said: About five minutes." Again I inquired about whom she was trying to fool besides God. "My mother" she said; "she thinks I am going to Confession. She is waiting outside for me." I asked her if she were afraid to go to Confession and she said that she was. I said: "Well, if I could see you, I could probably make your confession for you. Will you let me take down this veil between us and turn on the light?" She agreed. I said to her: "You are a streetwalker." "Yes" she answered. "Well, that is your confession, is it not?" "No" she said, "there is something else." I begged and pleaded with her for twenty minutes or more to tell me - but to no avail. I then asked her to kneel at the Communion rail for a few minutes before leaving church. She said that she would think it over.

On leaving the Church, I met her on the steps. I pleaded with her again for a half hour to tell me why she would not go to the Sacraments. "I will tell you" she said, "and then I will leave. Because I was arrested for street walking, I was put into the home of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd. I promised the devil that I would make nine sacrilegious Communions if he would get me out of the home. On the ninth day I escaped." With that she ran away. When I went back that evening for confessions, I asked every penitent to recite the Rosary for the conversion of a sinner. All agreed except one. I finished hearing confessions about nine o'clock, went to the Communion rail and knelt there from nine until twelve-thirty praying for her. At twelve-thirty the front door opened. I was almost afraid to look, thinking it might be a policeman worried about lights in the church after midnight. It was the girl, who walked immediately into the confessional, to make her peace with God.

While I was teaching at Catholic University, I used to receive letters almost every few weeks from a baroness in New York. The name was in big letters on the outside of the envelope. Each letter invited me to dinner. I had made it a rule practically never to accept social engagements. The more you become known in the world, the more you have to stay away from it. In any case, having despaired of the invitations that were not accepted, she wrote stating that she was interested in becoming Catholic.

Each weekend I would go up from Washington to instruct her. About the fifth visit, she inquired: "Are you always going to give me instructions?" I said: "Yes" "You know, I have no money." "I am not giving you instructions because of money; I am only interested in your soul." She pointed to a bracelet around her wrist: "This is not gold; it is made out of thorns that are gilded. You see this necklace about my neck; it is not gold, it is made out of seashells that are gilded." It was probably her intent to convince me that she had no money that prompted her to show me the trinkets. I finished the instructions and received her into the Church. That summer she invited me to visit her in Paris. Another priest friend and I went over to visit her. She was living in a chateau that once belonged to Louis XV, located about fifteen miles outside Paris. It was a tremendous edifice with a moat around it and white deer grazing in the park. She was quite elderly when I received her into the Church, and I had the pleasure of supporting her soul with sacraments and prayers at her death.

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Sunday, May 24, 2009

I have through years of reading, pondering, reflecting and contemplating, the 3 things that last; FAITH . HOPE . LOVE and I would like to made available my sharing from the many thinkers, authors, scholars and theologians whose ideas and thoughts I have borrowed. God be with them always. Amen!

I STILL HAVE MANY THINGS TO SAY TO YOU BUT THEY WOULD BE TOO MUCH FOR YOU NOW. BUT WHEN THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH COMES, HE WILL LEAD YOU TO THE COMPLETE TRUTH, SINCE HE WILL NOT BE SPEAKING AS FROM HIMSELF, BUT WILL SAY ONLY WHAT HE HAS LEARNT; AND HE WILL TELL YOU OF THE THINGS TO COME.

HE WILL GLORIFY ME, SINCE ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. EVERYTHING THE FATHER HAS IS MINE; THAT IS WHY I SAID: ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. - JOHN 16:12-15 -