Question:
Answer:
There is no substantive evidence that Archbishop Fulton Sheen rejected the Church’s teaching on contraception. To the contrary, he defended the Church’s teaching both before and after Pope St. Paul VI issued in July 1968 Humanae Vitae, his encyclical which reaffirmed the Church’s definitive doctrine on this moral issue. If Archbishop Sheen had ever taken a truly dissenting view on Humanae Vitae, he would have been the poster boy for those—including, sadly, many theologians—who publicly undermined the Church’s teaching after Paul VI promulgated his encyclical. He was not.
Perhaps your friend is referring to Sheen’s 1969 interview with David Frost, including as excerpted in Thomas C. Reeves’s biography America’s Bishop: The Life and Times of Fulton J. Sheen. Reeves argues that Sheen waffled on the Church’s teaching amidst multiple follow-up questions from Frost after the archbishop defended the Church’s teaching and noted that some fall short in keeping it and should seek God’s mercy (scroll down slightly after linking to the related newspaper article). In addition, as Reeves himself elaborates further in his biography, the archbishop reaffirmed his solidarity with Paul VI as his interview with Frost drew to a close:
“This is the law. Not all of us keep the law.” In “anguish” cases, he said, “I sympathize with all these people with all of my heart. And so does the Church. And that was also the way the Holy Father concluded and he begged them over and over to trust in the mercy of God, and to abide in prayer” (Reeves, America’s Bishop, p. 338).
Further proof of Sheen’s fidelity to Church teaching on contraception is shown in excerpts from two of his books:
What most human love forgets is that love implies responsibility; one may not fool with the levers of the heart in the vein hope of escaping duties, fidelity, and sacrifice for the beloved. So-called birth control, which assists in neither birth nor control, is based on the philosophy that love is without obligations (Sheen, The World’s First Love, Ignatius Press, 2018, p. 122).
Planned unparenthood is the deliberate and willful decision on the part of a husband and wife to exclude from God the opportunity to create another to his image and likeness. It is the human will freely frustrating divine will, as certain agricultural policies deliberately control the productivity of the earth for the sake of a higher economic price. The non serviam of Lucifer has had its catastrophic effect throughout creation, and particularly in those who say: “I refuse to accept from God that which is his holy will, the increase and multiplication of life.” The refusing to be a co-operator with God is to spoil and maim oneself, for of the unused talents, our Lord said: “Take the talent away” (Sheen, Three to Get Married, Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1951, p. 148).
Finally, in his tenure as the Bishop of Rochester, New York (1966-1969), Sheen wrote a number of essays for his diocesan newspaper (the Courier-Journal), in which he defended the Church’s teaching on human sexuality following the publication of Humanae Vitae in 1968, resources which are preserved in the diocesan archives. (The Courier-Journal was renamed the Catholic Courier in 1989 on the newspaper’s 100th anniversary.)