Archbishop Fulton Sheen Makes a Superman and Christmas Connection

“What is Superman got to do with Christmas?” is a question Bishop Fulton Sheen asked at the start of a 1960s TV broadcast.

(photo: Life is Worth Living/EWTN)

What did Bishop Sheen mean? How does it link to Christmas? Let’s imagine asking him. This is a slightly abbreviated form. You’ll have to imaging the inimitable way Bishop Sheen would speak to us.

 

Bishop Sheen, how did you come up with this comparison/contrast for Christmas?

You know what Superman does; Batman, and then these men we have from other planets. He goes into a telephone booth, or a closet, just as an ordinary mortal, and he puts on the form and the habit of Superman. Then once he's broken through with this great power of his, he begins to do wonders. He relieves us in our afflictions, helps damsels in distress, defends those who have been persecuted…lover of the poor and the socially disinherited. And this intensely pleases the American people.

 

Why might be an important reason it does so?

I think there's a subconscious reason, almost an unconscious one. First of all, we know that the help that we need is not just among us ordinary mortals in the affairs of daily life. If we are to have the inner strength that we need, it has to come from outside. We've never expressed this perhaps in so many words, but we know the need of it.

Superman, Batman and men from other worlds satisfy our needs — at least from the point of view of imagination…the amusements that we like are the unconscious expressions of hidden desires. Superman is the desire for Christmas.

 

What’s the specific connection between Superman and Christmas?

Superman comes from outside. There's a kind of a breakthrough. First, there's a breakthrough, and then, because he helps others, there is a kind of a renovation. a strengthening, an aiding.

Now Christmas is just this. First, there is a breakthrough. Instead of someone going into a closet and taking on the form and the substance of a Superman, the breakthrough this time is a God — God coming down to earth. Breaking through time! Splitting it! Splitting it so much so, that from that time on to this, it's BC and AD.

 

So what is different about the comparison?

But there's this difference with Superman. And this is very important.

Superman goes from weakness to power. The breakthrough of Christmas is from power to weakness. (At the beginning of the show) We saw the crib…Here is infinity and littleness. This isn't a man getting strong... This is a God becoming weak. You made the world, the world even rejected by it.

The tiny little hands that are not quite long enough to reach the huge heads of the cattle are the hands that hold the reins that steer the Sun and Moon and stars in their courses… wrapped in swaddling bands, divinity enclosed, wrapped, confined, cabin-cribbed, helpless as a babe!

What a difference between Superman and this breakthrough! Not a manifestation of power to please the pride of man, but with humility to humble man's pride. This idea of a God becoming a man that you saw there in the crib is something very hard for us to realize.

 

You used a striking analogy to help us realize the humility of the Lord. Please tell us?

Suppose you love dogs. And you were sorrowful for the way dogs were treated by some masters. Or neglected. You had the power to dispossess yourself of your body. But you could do with your soul what you wanted. And you took that soul of yours and you put it into the body of a dog, and when you did that you would resolve rarely to exceed limitations of that dog organism. What a humiliation that would be. You know that you had a mind that could write poetry, and that could study science. And absorb literature. And understand Dante and Aquinas. Yet here you were and the body of a dog.

And then there would be another humiliation…you would have to associate with other dogs knowing all the while that you were better, that you were a man. You think it humbling… to become a dog just simply to give dogs examples of good conduct?

Well, what do you think it is for this breakthrough — not going into a closet, but going into a stable and a crib. Being bound with swaddling bands. That's the difference in the Superman —  weakness instead of power.

 

Are there any other differences with the Superman contrast?

The Superman, when he comes to this earth of ours to do his wonders, only touches the environment. He touches what is outside of man. In other words, all the Superman does is to change circumstances on the outside. But he does not touch man on the inside. That's the difference.

When God becomes man, when we have Christmas, he leaves circumstances very much the way they are. He leaves Roman soldiers parading through the street. The same problems.  Pain, suffering, and hunger, and so forth. But he begins reforming the hearts of men. And once they are reformed. then if they live according to his way, they will do away with these boring things of indigence and suffering. So the God-Man works in the heart of a man.

 

Another analogy to help us understand?

This internal operation of God when he comes to this earth may be likened to a plague. suppose that there was or something in the world today like the Black Death during the Middle Ages remember that wiped out one-third of the population of Europe.

Suppose a great scientist found a remedy for that plague, and he made the remedy available to the whole human race. There would be some would come to be relieved. Others might not. Now that's just exactly what happened when God came to this earth.

We're all willing to have our circumstances changed. We’d like to have more money…maybe live in a different house. Do we want our thinking changed? We want our loves changed?

The God-Man came to this earth for the remedy for moral and spiritual plagues. Came to make us happy on the inside. Not everyone wants it. “He came unto his own, and his own received him not.” Now this is Christmas in terms of the Superman.

 

Have you had an experience during some Christmas in the past to illustrate this breakthrough Jesus came to bring?

Let me reduce it to a concrete case. The breakthrough operates through what we call is grace. That means an illumination of the intellect, the strengthening of character.

I did a great deal of work in my life in Soho Square district of London, which is the international area of London. And in one church there, because I was an American, I had to get up early and read the first Mass. The English sleep late.

Well, this was Christmas morning… Christmas. That night there had been a heavy London Fog. When I opened the door, a limp figure fell in. A young woman — she'd been asleep against the door, almost frozen. And I said, “How did you happen to be here?”

She said, “I don't know Father…Oh Father…I used to be a Catholic, but not anymore.

I said, “How did you happen to be here.”

She said, “I don't know. I was a bit drunk.”

“Well,” I said, “men often drink because they like the stuff, and women drink because they don't like something else. What didn't you like?”

“Well,” she said, “I didn't like the three men that I was going with, and they were beginning to find out I was playing false to them. So I got drunk.”

“What is your name?” She told me her name pointing to a billboard on the Cross and Blackwell Jam office building across the way.

I said, “Is that your picture there?”

“Yes,” she says. “I'm the leading lady in that musical comedy now.”

I went in and made her a cup of coffee. And I said, “Come back now this afternoon.”

She said, “I will come back on one condition — that you don't ask me to go to confession.”

I said, “All right.”

She said, “I want you to promise me faithfully that you will not ask me to go to confession.”

I said, “I promise you faithfully not to ask you to go to confession.” So she came back that afternoon before matinee. And I said, “We have a Rembrandt and a Van Dyck in this church. Would you like to see them?”

She said, “Yes.”

So as we walked down the side aisle, we passed the confessional box. I…pushed her in. I didn't ask her to go…I always keep my promises.

Well, she went Communion. She was there month after month. And then she became a nun in London.

Now, here you see the breakthrough. Not the breakthrough into a crib, but the breakthrough into a stable — a heart that's a stable. Then when the breakthrough happened, there was a change, a renovation of heart and character. She was no longer what she was before. It was not the outside that was changed, it was the inside.

That's what Christmas is. Christmas is not just something that has happened. It's

something that is happening. And some of us were afraid of it.

It's very much like people going through life not knowing they have cancer. They’re unhappy. They're a bit miserable but they don't know why. If a doctor tells them that they have cancer, then their whole attitude toward life changes. They may be even able eventually to find a remedy...

 

This perfectly illustrates why people should want to come to Christ at Christmas. Why do you see many stay away from the manger?

People stay away from this Babe of Christmas. They stay away from Christ. They're a bit afraid. Unbelief is dread of the truth about ourselves. That's unbelief. Faith is our willingness to face the truth about ourselves. When we do, once that original dread is overcome and we admit the breakthrough, then we're changed. And then our mind is illumined. Our will strengthened. We have a great joy and happiness. So therefore it's hard for some people to accept Christmas.

 

Any final suggestions for us?

I'm going to give you a tip because I'm talking to everybody. I always do on television. If you do not want to start there, in that stable, with the full recognition of that breakthrough, I will tell you where to start.

Start loving your fellow man. Start loving your neighbor. And begin to love him, not just because of what he could do for you. Because of any pleasure anyone gives you. But just love him as a fellow man. And then eventually you begin to see that he's a creature of God.

The only unhappy people in this world are the people who are selfish. And I have known in this world some people who just love humanity…Won't you begin to love really and truly? Please do that for me. And you will eventually come to know the true meaning of Christmas.

Then you'll have… a Merry Christmas.

 

Fulton Sheen speaks on Superman and Christmas on EWTN, Life is Worth Living — or watch anytime here.