Book Review I: Victory over Vice

St Fulton Sheen's Victory over Vice is a serious of simple yet powerful textual analyses of modern life and the vices that surround our world today. I have always enjoyed watching St Sheen's talks and lecture videos, with his comedic openings, well-paced manners and eye-tearing stories of God's love and the Man that receives it.

I am often reminded by Sheen that humanity doesn't quite fit or belong to this world. In my own life, I have always felt the same way. In my own life, in school in particular, I always felt like I never belonged. I was always hated by the systems and social structures of the world that is too would be in the common habit of rejecting me. Sheen explains that Christ too experienced this, but He experienced in to a far greater degree than I could even imagine.

His own people hated Him, for they asked for His crucifixion; the law hated Him, for it forsook justice to condemn Justice; the Gentiles hated Him, for they consented to His death; the forests hated Him for one of its trees bore the burden of His weight; the flowers hated Him as they wove thorns for His brow; the bowels of the earth hated Him as it gave its steel as hammer and nails.

In my own line of work, it is rather difficult to undo the fortifications of studying, exams, tests, consolidations and the endless arrays of out-smarting the test and being the wisest. However, it was only until I entered another stage of academic life that I have become disillusioned and challenged by the very wisdom I hear from the most unthinkable places: from children.

heavenly Father is thanked for concealing His wisdom from the self-wise and the conscious intellectuals and for revealing it to the simple: “I confess to thee, O Father, Lord of Heaven and earth, because Thou hast hidden these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them to little ones.”

Coming to the Catholic faith, Sheen explains that ornaments, vases, statues does not constitute the faith, but rather does the opposite, drives God away from Earth and fills our souls with objects of the world, which is not of God.

Religion is hated because it is religion, and possessions are only the excuse and pretext for driving God from the earth.

I constantly hear the endless droning of "eat the rich", whereby the desire for fairness and equality is backed by the grievous accusation that wealth accrues greed. However, perhaps it is more covetous for a left-wing activist to demand money from someone wealthier than he just on the basis that he is slightly poorer.

Simply because a man has a great fortune, it does not follow that he is a covetous man. A child with a few pennies might possibly be more covetous.

the more ties we have to earth, the harder will it be for us to die; and we were never meant to be perfectly satisfied here below.

In every friendship, hearts grow and entwine themselves together, so that the two hearts seem to make only one heart with only a common thought. That is why separation is so painful. It is not so much two hearts separating, but one heart being torn asunder.

“If you want people to stay as they are,” Sheen said, “tell them what they want to hear. If you want to improve them, tell them what they should know.”

I thoroughly enjoyed St Sheen's writing. It was fun yet fair. Sheen lays his words gently into the soul. He sooths gentle words into the wounds we have suffered here on earth. Every vice of this world blocks a man's true desire to beckon himself towards heaven. Sheen realised that. He meets you where you are. If there are any vices inflicting your own life, just know that Christ too was inflicted by them in the worst possible ways. And by knowing Christ, you may know a way to God, and be victorious over vice.