Dr. Joseph F. Martin, is a professor of Communication and Rhetoric at Hampton University in Virginia. He is the former art director of re:generation quarterly and his artwork has been commissioned by numerous national clients. He has also written essays and reviews for Word, Books and Culture, and other publications. In 2012, Martin was awarded his doctorate from Regent University, receiving honors for his dissertation, “Lingua Franka: An Examination of the Frank Sheed's Rhetorical Achievement”, which examined closely the unique qualities Sheed employed as speaker, apologist, author, and communicator.
Although Frank Sheed (1897-1981) authored over twenty books—including Theology and Sanity, A Map of Life, Society and Sanity, Knowing God, and To Know Christ Jesus—and founded, with his wife Maisie Ward, the Sheed & Ward imprint, he is not nearly as well known as G.K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis. Many, however, think Sheed is the equal of Chesterton and Lewis as a Christian apologist, deserving of more attention as not only a defender of the Faith, but as an evangelist, catechist, and communicator.
Carl E. Olson, editor of CWR, recently interviewed Dr. Martin at length about Sheed. The first of this two-part interview focuses on how Sheed helped Martin (a former Evangelical) journey into the Catholic Church, Sheed's background, Sheed's skills as a communicator, and what distinguished Sheed as an apologist. The second part of this interview will examine Sheed's focus on “sanity”, will compare him to Chesterton and Lewis, and highlight his key books.
CWR: When you first discovered the writings of Frank Sheed, you were not yet Catholic. How did you come upon his work and what sort of impression did it make on you as an Evangelical Protestant?
Joseph Martin: People may be surprised to know Sheed grew up shaped by various non-Catholic influences. In fact, for a good while he was farmed out to the Methodists. Under their preaching he developed what his son later called a “rather Protestant crush on the personality of Jesus.” Sheed himself appreciatively admitted, “Few Catholic boys were getting as much Scripture as I got,” And though his Protestant relatives also fed him with a regular diet of anti-Catholic propaganda, he never bought it. He would intuitively embrace the sacramental faith of his mother.
When someone later told him that his Catholicism was the result of brainwashing, he said his accuser “hadn’t a notion of how many competing detergents my small brain had been scrubbed with.” So he knew all the arguments.
So there’s one reason his writing probably resonated with me. He could present the spectrum of Catholic belief along lines that were accessible to people who knew Scripture but also knew mostly caricatures of the Catholic Church. Some of these latter were off base, but some were all too close to the truth. I laughed out loud at his anecdote of attempting to deflect hecklers’ accusations that Catholics neglect the Bible. When he cockily told them Pius XI had in fact attached an indulgence to fifteen minutes of Scripture reading, they came right back at him: “‘Indulgences are not in Scripture!’ they said.”
I grew up Methodist myself — I’d experienced liturgy, a least sort of. I also crossed paths with the charismatic renewal of the 1970s and the “Born Again” phenomenon given high profile by Chuck Colson’s conversion. Young Life and InterVarsity Fellowship impacted my personal journey as well. Then there were the books of Peter Kreeft, where items I’d held to be Catholic superstitions suddenly started to sound almost plausible. It was all both simultaneously enticing and alarming to consider the Catholics might be right after all.
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CWR: You’ve written that Sheed was “a Christian communicator [who] could build bridges of understanding between separated churches and believing and disbelieving worlds.” What were some of the ways in which Sheed pursued ecumenical work and inter-religious dialogue? What lessons does his work in those areas provide us today?
Martin: Sheed was 100% Catholic. He explained, “…When I meet a Baptist, I want him to have all that my Faith has given me. And, if the Baptist is the man I hope he is, he feels the same way about me.” So his was no attempt at minimizing or watering down of doctrinal differences. But at a time when religious distrust was very real, what he did counsel was a sincere attempt at mutual understanding. For him, it obviously wasn’t bigotry to point out that those who disagreed with Catholics were wrong. “Of two contradictory views, one must be wrong. Bigotry means believing [your opponents] must be dishonest. I remember a questioner who said to me, ‘Either you’re paid to say these things or you’re mentally deficient’ – a moment later he went on, ‘I can’t imagine anybody paying you!’
But he did not return like fire. Of Protestants he was one of the first to say, “I rejoice in the union of hearts, pray for the union of minds, am glad these other Christian groups are taking Christ our Lord to men who, for whatever reason, will not accept Him from us.” So he was an early encourager of assuming the best of non-Catholics. Vatican II and the idea of “separated brethren” were still a ways off, so for his own era he was something of a maverick.
Maisie Ward approached Christian divisions from a similar attitude. Writing of the Mass she remarked, “That sacrifice, enough in itself to save a thousand worlds, has to be applied to the soul of each individual… On earth it is presented before God in every Mass. The good Protestant who ‘pleads Christ’s sacrifice’ in his private prayers does not realize that God has given him the perfect way of doing this. If we could explain it properly, we could convert thousands.” “Good Protestants.” I wonder how many people tripped over that phrase when she wrote it in 1945. In a book on the Rosary, no less! Sheed & Ward were not involved in overt ecumenical activity, either as Catholics or as publishers. There just wasn’t that much in their day. But they encouraged Catholics to check their attitudes, and laid the groundwork for a lot of the cooperation you see going forward today, like Evangelicals & Catholics Together. I can’t imagine that Sheed wouldn’t be impressed with that.
One other quick mention on Sheed’s ecumenical appeal: he’s consistently Christ-centered even as he is consciously Catholic. His books as he grew older – What Difference Does Jesus Makes?, Christ in Eclipse, Christ in the Classroom, The Lord’s Prayer – became more and more about Jesus. When he republished Theology and Sanity, he began with the line, “The test of every change is whether it brings Christ closer.” And let me quote some lines from Is It The Same Church?, written after Vatican II, which deflect accusations that Catholics are Pope-fixated:
Priests have been leaving because of the failure of the Institutional Church. In their apologias ... It is odd how seldom they mention Christ, odd how seldom we notice the omission… We do not belong to the Church because of pope or hierarchy: we may like them or dislike them, but they are not the point. If we think they are handling the Church outrageously, our first instinctive reaction should be grief for Christ whose work they are damaging… In that feeling we should make our protest, very much as St. John Fisher could say, “If the Pope does not reform the Curia, God Will,” yet [go on to] die on the headsman’s block for Papal Supremacy. The trouble is that Popes and Bishops are so spectacularly present, Jesus so quietly.
It would be hard to get more Christ-focused.
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