Welcome, Brother Knights of Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen!

As the canonization cause of your brother knight progresses, we would like to share with you some of the correspondence that we've received from various Knights of Columbus Councils and Assemblies who have supported and continue to support the
Wartime Prayer Book Campaign.

Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen was a member of the Knights of Columbus Rochester Council No. 178 and of the Bishop James E. Kearney Assembly, both based in
Rochester, New York

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The Saint Dominic's Thornwood Council of the Knights of Columbus has overwhelmingly approved a donation of $370.00 for the Wartime Prayer Book initiative. This money was raised differently than how we typically raise money. We decided to announce that we intended to donate and read some of your letters from the soldiers. Every man in the room during our regular meeting took money out of their pockets and contibuted to the cause. We support your efforts. We will continue to pray for the soldiers overseas.

We at St. Dominic's are grateful for the opportunity to assist the soldiers with their spiritual journey. We hope the books we send provide a level of comfort in a difficult time in their lives.

-James Collins
Deputy Grand Knight
St. Dominic Council No. 4399
Thornwood, New York

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Please find enclosed a check for $647.50 to purchase 185 "Fulton Sheen Wartime Prayer Books" for United States Armed Forces personnel.

This money was raised through two projects by members of the Mother of God Council 1421, Knights of Columbus, at Martins Ferry, Ohio.

Thank you for providing this prayer book to our troops.

Bruce Tratar, Grand Knight
Mother of God Council No. 1421
Martins Ferry, Ohio

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World War II Veteran Ray Jaegers (right) displays a prayer book that he received while in the service. He is standing next to Joe Reichart (left) who is holding up a new copy of Fulton Sheen's Wartime Prayer Book. Both are Fourth Degree members from different assemblies of the Knights of Columbus and members of St. George Parish in Linn, MO.

Mr. Reichart's son is a U.S. Army Officer serving in Iraq. He and his wife Sandy continue to raise money in their hometown to help send more Wartime Prayer Books to men and women in the U.S. Armed Forces. Mr. Jaegers said that the prayers in his book helped him get through the war.

Mr. Reichart's fundraising efforts have helped to send more than 1,000 Wartime Prayer Books to our troops to date, and his efforts continue.

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The Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen Foundation sent our St. Christopher's Knights of Columbus Council 9836 your literature requesting donations to purchase prayer books for our G.I.s.

I volunteered immediately to head the drive to help our G.I.s. This past Tuesday, I met with our local Fourth Degree members, Bishop Gallego's Assembly #2336, and explained your needs and request. I am a Korean War vet and know the urgent need.

At that meeting I collected $105 for the prayer books. A second motion was made to donate $500. This motion was immediately seconded and approved by all of the members. I was impressed by their generosity.

I will be talking to our Third Degree members at our next meeting for a donation. Hopefully, I will have another check to send to you after this meeting.

Thank you. May God bless our boys and girls in uniform. God bless all your good works. I hope Archbishop Sheen is watching over all of us. What a wonderful priest he was.

Sir Knight Nicholas J. Neuberger
St. Christopher Council No. 9836
Galt, CA

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Enclosed, please find our check for $350 to cover the cost of supplying 100 soldiers with the Wartime Prayer Book. Also enclosed is my personal check for $35 for 10 copies to be sent to our council for former members of the military.

Our Council would like to continue this donation on a yearly basis and we would appreciate an invoice each January for 100 prayer books.

Thank you for the work you are doing on behalf of the military of the United States.

Michael C. Fallon
Financial Secretary
Marlborough Council No. 81
Marlborough, MA

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Pictured above is a member of the Knights of Columbus handing out a Wartime Prayer Book to one of the returning soldiers at the DFW Airport. Council No. 759 based in Keller, TX, contributed $1,050.00 to distribute over 300 copies of the prayer book to our troops returning home for R&R and they plan to do this on a regular basis

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At the Knights of Columbus meeting of Holy Ghost Council on May 4th, I mentioned the Wartime Prayer Book Campaign...

I mentioned the total sacrifices our troops are making and their need for the Wartime Prayer Book. So our Grand Knight started the ball rolling with the loose bills in his pocket and the other men of the Holy Ghost Council contributed the rest.

Since I'm currently secretary for the Metro Chapter for the Councils, it will be mentioned at the next K of C Metro Chapter Meeting.

Thanks again for what you are doing for our troops.

Charles J. Merkel
Holy Ghost Council No. 4648 Brookfield, WI

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We would like to purchase 30 copies of the Wartime Prayer Book for our two parishes that represent our council. We have put a blurb in our respective bulletins letting the parishioners know that they can have a Wartime Prayer Book to send to their loved ones who are stationed overseas.

Chuck Johnson
Deputy Grand Knight
JFK Council No. 5482
Accokeek, MD

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Pictured above is Chaplain John T. Hannigan with a group of soldiers giving their thumbs up to the Wartime Prayer Book. He is just one of the many chaplains who is a regular recipient of the prayer books. He is a member of the Knights of Columbus Harry G. Johansing Council No. 4482 in Twenty Nine Palms, CA. _________________________

Archbishop Sheen with Supreme Knight John W. McDevitt at the 1970 Supreme Council meeting.

The “signs of the times” derive from the words of our Blessed Lord. One day the Pharisees and the Saducees came to him to ensnare him in his speech. The Pharisees were the “fundamentalists” and the Saducees were the “modernists.” But they dissolved their animosities as they found a greater hate. They asked for a sign. Our Lord said: “When you see the sky red at night, you say tomorrow will be a fine day; and when you see it red in the morning, you say the weather will be stormy. How is it that you are able to read the weather and are not able to read the signs of the times?”

God speaks to us not so much in words as in events. What is important is not what happens but how we react to what happens. One of the signs of our times is that we are in an era of revolutionary change. Every 500 years the Church undergoes a change, a radical one. The Church must change because culture changes.

The first of the 500-year cycles was the fall of Rome. The Roman civilization had stood for 800 years; then it became Christian, and fell. St. Augustine was so disturbed about it and preached so much about the fall of Rome that people pleaded: “If only he would shut up about Rome.” But out of the decline of Rome came the conversion of Europe.

Then the second great cycle of 500 years was the rise of the Muslims as they came within 120 miles of Paris and later swept a crescent from there all the way up to Vienna. But at that time — the time of the Crusades — there came Aquinas and Dante, as the stones cried out in Gothic cathedrals.

The next 500-year period was the religious revolution of the 16th century. Here was a time when reformation was needed. Two things could be reformed: the way men thought and the way men lived. The thought of the Church was all right; it was only her morals that were bad. The reformers reformed truth, which did not need change. Then there came the breakup of Christian unity. The Church later reformed its morals at the Council of Trent.

The Church and the World Today
Now we are in the fourth of these 500-year periods. The crisis today is that the Church is making contact with the world. The Church went into the world and the world came to the Church. First the Church went into the world. This is symbolized by the place where the various pontiffs received their crowns when they were chosen. Benedict XV was crowned at the far end of St. Peter’s at the altar of Our Lady; Pius XI under the dome; Pius XII walked through the walls and out in the portico; John XXIII walked out in the portico and reached out his great fleshy arms and bade the world to come with him. Paul VI walked through the front door and was crowned in the world.

Second, the world came into the Church. At the council 1870 there was not one single bishop from Asia or Africa. In our last council, 60 percent of the bishops were from Asia, Africa and the Americas. The culture of the Church is no longer Mediterranean; it is cosmic. What we are feeling today is the impact of the world which produces two extremes: the psychotics who insist that the Church shall not be related to the world, and the neurotics who contend that we should be so related to the world as to forget the Church.

It is hard for us who are striving to keep a balance to remind them that our Blessed Lord wants both. The first word of our Lord’s public life was “Come.” “Come to me; learn of me. I am the truth, I am the way, I am the life.” The last word of our Lord’s public life was “Go.” “Go into the world.” Our trouble today is we have too many “go, gos” and too few “come, comes.” And even some of the religious communities which some 20 years ago were saying, “I am holier than thou,” are the ones that are proclaiming today, “I am worldlier than thou.” Both are wrong.

The Role of the Knights
How do these “signs of the times” affect you, Knights of Columbus? The same way they affect all social and fraternal organizations. There is not a great increase today in the membership of any fraternal organization. Why is this? First, because almost all organizations have private aims, while the world is looking for public service.

Second, television has made private persons public persons. I appear on television. I am a person; I have a right to my privacy. But once I appear on television, I am a public person. What television has done to certain personalities, the modern spirit is doing to social organizations. It is making those that are private more and more public, or telling them that they must become more and more related to the world and its problems.

These are the changes. The world we lived in up until now was a world that was given: We found the universe about us supplying all of our needs. God was pretty much on the fringe of it. We almost could touch him. But, today, nature is not given. The world today is planned. It is guided by technology, science and a new scientific revolution. We have to project and manipulate the future. We cannot sit in the past or in our clubrooms.

Therefore, one of the signs of the times is that we must reexamine our goals. Plans must be laid for a new world. Our mission has to be reexamined. We are in a new world. And the sooner we meet this challenge, the sooner we shall be strong again. This is the first general sign of the times. Readapt. What the Second Vatican Council did, that the Knights must do — readapt ourselves to the times.

But how do we adjust to the world? I make three general recommendations:

First, become a new kind of laity. Up to this time we have had two types: type C and type W. Type C is the Church type. He is associated with the church, serving on the boards, working on pastoral commissions, taking up collections and giving discounts to the clergy when they are in Roman collars. Believe me, when they want to get a car at a discount they always put on the collar.

Type W is the World type. This Catholic may be in business, a scientist or a ditch digger. But at any rate, he is in the world.

About the only type of layman that Catholics recognize as the Catholic laity is the type C. Not much recognition is given to type W. But recognition must be given to another type of layman: type K. K stands for kingdom. Type K may not be a churchgoer, though he may be either a Catholic or a non-Catholic. Laity in this group are rebuilding God’s creation in some way. By upholding justice, service to the poor and similar tasks they are serving the kingdom of God. The faithful laity are serving the King more directly.

To understand type K read chapter 13, verse 6 of St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans. He tells the Christians to pay their taxes. But to whom does St. Paul say the taxes are to be paid? To Nero, the emperor who later would kill him. For the support of what? For the support of the Roman empire. What did Paul call the tax collectors and the other representatives of pagan Rome? He called them “Leitourgoi Theou,” “officers of God.” They were working for the kingdom even though they did not know it. The first suggestion then is that while you work for the King and the kingdom, realize that others are working for the King.

This brings me to my second suggestion: Unite with type K whenever you can for the betterment of the world, for the benefit of unchurched youth. Teach them patriotism, honesty and reverence for parents. We cannot save America alone. Nor can we do it if we start from the assumption that only Catholic organizations work for the kingdom of God. Our country is full of public-minded men. Our new mission is to rebuild a morally united nation.

Third suggestion: Become theologians. I do not mean you must begin studying abbreviated courses of our seminary theology. The purpose of theology of the laity is totally different from the theology of the clergy. Our theology is directed to the magisterium of the Church or is the continuation of the positive truth handed down by Christ and the Apostles.

See Christ in Everyone
Your theology is the theology of action. It is related to the world, to social problems, to economic problems, to the 250,000 who sleep in the streets of Calcutta, to the increasing poverty of Latin America, to our slums. The bases of your theology also must be charity, but not the charity that is private, or personal, or of the neighborhood or the I-thou type. Lay theology of charity is related to the world — not just to the membership but to the same problems that concern our politicians and economists. But you will do it with a different motivation. Because you have the faith, your inspiration will be the realization that Christ is in agony in men until the end of the world. Christ is on the cross not in the nature he took from Mary, but in his mystical body and in humanity. As one sees in India people starving in the streets, starving mothers with famished children strapped to their backs, one is looking at Christ who said, “I was hungry; I was thirsty; I was naked.” Such is the motivation of your theology — the seeing of Christ in everyone.

How many ask the questions: “Does God know what I suffer? Was he ever a refugee? Was he ever driven out of an inn or an apartment and have to live with animals in the stable? Did he ever live under a totalitarian regime? Were his lips blistered with a kiss? Did he ever go without food for three days? Was he ever followed by spies? Was he ever the victim of political injustice? Was he ever called dirty names? Did he ever have a migraine headache, as if he were crowned with thorns? Was he ever wounded like some of the people we bring into our hospitals?

The theology of the laity dwells not on a Christ in the abstract, but in the concrete, who is in this world needing and wanting our help. In conclusion, two specific kinds of service are recommended. The first concerns the blacks. The second is youth. The blacks, sociologists say, are a “problem.” When do people become a problem? They become a problem when they disturb some other group that does not want to be disturbed. All politicians, economists and sociologists talk about the blacks as a problem. Our Christian duty is to see them as persons. They are not problems. A woman came to Simon’s house but she did not do what you and I would do — that is, pour out the perfume drop by drop, as if to indicate by the slowness of giving the generosity of the gift. She broke the vessel and gave everything. Simon all the while was saying to himself, “She is a woman of the streets.” How did he know? Our Lord asked: “Simon, do you see that woman? No, you see a label, a tag, a problem. You do not see a person.”

The Christian vision is to see everyone as a child of God. Maybe the blacks are to be seen under the figure of Our Lord on the way to Calvary. The long arm of the Roman army reached out and said to Simon: “Carry that cross.” He did not want to do it. He did not want to be a slave, but he carried it anyway. Where was he from? Cyrene. Where is Cyrene? Africa. Was he black? Maybe. We do know that in the early Church one of the famous members was Simon the Black. If this be true, the African would have been the first to halve and share the cross of Christ.

As the poet put it: I slept; I dreamed. I seemed to climb a hard ascending peak. And just behind me labored one whose face was black. I pitied him, but hour by hour, he gains upon my path. He stood beside; stood upright and then I turned in wrath, “Go back,” I said, “What right have you to stand beside me here?” I paused, struck dumb with fear, for lo, the black man was not there, but Christ stood in his place. And Oh, the pain, the pain, the pain that looked from that dear face.

Demands of Youth
Now a word about youth. The protests of youth are generally right. But they have no program, no flag, no reform. It is your business to give them these fulfillments.

Youth is telling us that it wants nothing to do with the past, whether it be the Church or the government. But youths must not be so ready to denounce the past. When they undress at night I suggest that each look to see if he has a navel. If they have a belly button, let them stop talking about a generation gap. They are tied up with the past.

And it is all right too for youths to protest against affluence though it makes some of them appear as the new anchorites, so disgusted with the world that they leave it. It is well for them to plead for the poor, but what sacrifices are they making for the poor for whom they plead? Are there not tens of thousands of youths in this country who could give up a little but of “pot” for the poor of Latin America? There is no rainbow at the end of a pot. A great example would be given if they would dig into their pockets to give something to the afflicted for whom they plead.

Youth is angry. They have a right to be angry about many defects in our civilization. To justify their anger they appeal to Christ and extract the biblical instance of him driving the buyers and the sellers out of the temple. But what is the difference between the anger of the young and that of Christ? Christ died for those with whom he was angry. He was angry against you and me and he died for us. This is the right kind of anger, not the anger which projects a guilty conscience on others.

Some of the youth contend that the only way they can achieve their ends is by violence. Our Blessed Lord said, “The kingdom of heaven is won by violence; and only the violent shall conquer it.” He said, “I came not to bring peace, but the sword.” Now there are two kinds of swords. There is the sword that swings outward like the sword of Peter that hacked off the ear of the servant of the high priest. Then there is the sword that cuts inward to cut out pride, covetousness, lust, anger, gluttony, envy and sloth. There are two kinds of violence. There is the violence against neighbor and there is the violence against self, sin and selfishness.

Discover the World
What our Blessed Lord brought to us was this inner kind of violence which is penance and discipline. We in the Church have dropped discipline in our seminaries, our families, and generally in the Church. And as we drop certain practices, the world picks them up. When we gave up our rosary beads, the hippies put them around their necks. When the nuns gave up their long habits, the minis began attiring themselves in maxis. As we gave up violence and self-discipline, the world picked it up. But it is directed toward others and not to one’s egotism.

Discipline must be restored for the sake of the nation. As Lincoln said, “I do not fear that America will ever be destroyed from without, but I fear that it will be destroyed from within.” About the only schools in which there is any discipline left is West Point, Annapolis and the Air Force — and the professional football fields.

Almost all dirty words are four-letter words. I know one mother who said to her little daughter: “Don’t go out. Daddy is changing a tire and you might learn a dirty four-letter word.” She said: “I learned it already: ‘Ouch.’” But the new dirty five-letter word today is c-r-o-s-s.

If there is any image that has been central to our blessed faith, it is that of Christ on the cross. But we are living in the days of the great divorce. We have separated and divorced the two. We put aside Christ at one side and we put the cross at the other side.

Who picks up Christ without the cross? Our Western Christian civilization — the Christ who never says any harsh things of hell or of God. He never would drive anyone out of the temple — not this gentle, effeminate Christ. Who picks up the cross? China and Russia. They have discipline, order, law, submission to the common good, the absolute in authority.

A Christ without a cross is weak and never will be able to redeem. The cross without Christ is totalitarianism — Dachau, Auschwitz and the destruction of human liberties.

Our new mission to the world must put the two together again. We do not know whether Christ will find his cross before the cross will find Christ. My guess is that the cross will find Christ before we in our affluent Western civilization with our weak Christ find the cross.

These are “the signs of the times.” It is a new world. It is a new ball game. We are playing in a new park. New goals, new purposes, new energies, new zeals, new types of leadership, new kinds of ecumenism are demanded by the times.

My dear Knights of Columbus, the nights are over. Walk in daylight. Columbus discovered America; now you must discover the world.