The Cross and the Crisis

By Fulton J. Sheen

The distress of modernity, contends Fulton J. Sheen in The Cross and the Crisis, is fundamentally moral and religious in nature. Men, as G. K. Chesterton’s famously remarked, “invent new ideals because they dare not attempt old ideals. They look forward with enthusiasm, because they are afraid to look back.” The distress of modernity, argues Sheen, is the result of a fear-ridden flight from the cross of Jesus Christ, a reckless reluctance to look back to the salvific sacrifice on Calvary. The consequences of that choice envelop every area of human life. By use of the Parable of the Prodigal Son, Sheen points to the one cure for the modern distress: the grace flowing from the side of the crucified Christ.

We save the world by loving the cross; we lose it by fleeing even from its shadows. (Fulton J. Sheen)

First published in 1938, The Cross and the Crisis is a strong, stirring challenge to the creeping tendency of the human heart to flee from God and into the crisis of nothingness. 

Fulton J. Sheen (1895–1979), one of the most renowned Catholic priests of the twentieth century, was an eminent scholar, prolific author, and natural entertainer. His cause for canonization was opened in 2002, and in 2012 Pope Benedict XVI declared him “Venerable.”

Paperback: 216pp.

ISBN: 978-1950970513