Life is Worth Living

By Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

Catholic-ometer: 5 of 5

Enjoyability: 5 of 5

I wish I had more to say about this book, but it covers a completely different set of themes in each chapter, so there's just not much I can do to summarize it.  Still, here goes.

This is a book by Bishop Sheen, written by imperfectly transcribing a few dozen episodes of his classic show; Life is Worth Living.  I say "imperfectly," only because the transcriptions aren't strictly word-for-word.  It's really very well-done.

Now, that having been said, if you know anything about Bishop Sheen, you know what a clever wit and a powerful speaker he was, to say nothing of being one of the most honest and faithful Catholics in America.  Even his worst work is exceptionally-good, and this is some of his best; the strong, solid messages that kept millions and millions of Americans watching him week after week, even in a prime-time slot that competed with Frank Sinatra and Milton Berle.

The chapters of this book are well-divided into such topics as mothers, war, character-building, education, suffering, teenagers, prayer and tolerance (the last being one of my favorites, for debunking several myths about tolerance that we as a culture have been terminally suffering from since his death.)

I don't say this kind of thing often, but I really think that anyone who has any desire to see a truly balanced world view described (Catholic or otherwise) would benefit from reading this book.  It's Bishop Sheen at his finest and most faithful, and when you get down to it, you can't give a book a much bigger compliment than that.