Works Every Time It Is Tried
- Donald R. McClarey
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 43 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
Usually this saying is falsely attributed to St Augustine, who never said it in any of his many volumes of sermons and commentaries. Augustinian scholars have searched in vain for these words.
Now it is being misattributed to the great Fulton Sheen, also without a citation of where or when he may have said it.
But the analogy of letting the lion out of its cage was popularized in thev1880s by the reknowned Baptist preacher, Charles Spurgeon. He specifically said that the Word of God is like a lion that can defend itself.
You can read more here:
Spurgeon’s “Let the lion out of the cage” quote – Elliot Ritzema https://share.google/8cI7TMIEoJeH0RgSQ
Well it certainly fooled me! It sounds just like a Sheenism: Short, pithy and makes you think. Attributing quotes to great men and women who never said it is a mortal sin against History.
I rarely use the terms, prophetic, or he/she is a prophet, but in Archbishop Fulton Sheen’s case I make an exception: he was a prophet for our times. For a long time I didn’t take Archbishop Sheen too seriously, in fact, I saw him as a semi-comic figure from an age long ago. The I started to read him, and my mind was completely changed; he was a holy man with intelligence and insight, who understood where this liberalism was coming from, and where it was leading us. A great man!
On a side note: No one can convince me that if the case of where Sheen’s body was to go went New York’s way, Archbishop Sheen would not be canonized by now.