By Fulton J. Sheen

World War II visited a judgment upon Christendom. In January 1943, thirteen months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the United States’ entry into the global conflict, Fulton J. Sheen addressed the nation: “This war is a crisis.… Crisis is taken from a Greek word which means judgment; and that is just what this war is—a judgment of God.” In these seventeen addresses, broadcast on January 3 to April 25, 1943, Sheen explains this judgment and its implications for the peoples of the world, believers and non-believers alike. As the war rages on, three ideologies contend for mastery: anti-Christianity in the forms of Nazism, fascism, communism, and imperialism, and non-Christianity in the form of Western secular liberalism, pitted against the Christian order with its basic principle that man is a creature made in the image and likeness of God. 

Like its predecessor collection, War and Guilt, The Crisis in Christendom is an unflinching confrontation with the powers of darkness as well as a stern yet inspiring challenge to Christians to heed both the chastisement and the call of God: to put the sword back into its place and be not troubled.

You shall hear of wars and rumours of wars. See that ye be not troubled. 
For these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet… (The Gospel of Matthew)

Fulton J. Sheen (1895–1979), one of the most renowned Catholic priests of the twentieth century, was an eminent scholar, prolific author, and natural entertainer. His cause for canonization was opened in 2002, and in 2012 Pope Benedict XVI declared him “Venerable.” 

* * *

Paperback: 190pp.

ISBN: 978-1685954093