The following speech by Fulton Sheen was delivered in 1976 in Ireland and printed in The Christian Voice
We reproduce it here courtesy of the Legion of Mary, the world’s largest lay apostolate, on the even of Sheen’s beatification in Saint Louis.
"In you I meet the organisation which is closest to my heart, my favourite group, the Legion of Mary.
You are the only organisation in the world that ever anticipated the Vatican Council. The only one! You just go through your works and see how far ahead you are of the Council and with the Church.
First, you are a lay organisation devoted to the apostolate, though the apostolate was reserved for the clergy. So you swept back 20 centuries. Read over the list at the close of the Epistle to the Romans and you will see that you have brought up to date the apostolate of the early Church. Also, in the Acts of the Apostles, it is in the third Act whereby the Church becomes established in a certain house; first a catechist works among the group finally the Church itself. That is the way you anticipated the Vatican Councils.
The second and more important still is that you belong to the out ministry. We priests belong to the in ministry. That's not what God in-tended but that's what happened. We wait for people to come to us and we build bigger and bigger rectories. We are failing because we are an in ministry, waiting. You were from the beginning an out ministry, commissioned to do the same sort of thing as Our Blessed Lord did — walking up and down alleys. How else would he have met the woman taken in sin; up and down alleys, marketplaces, along gutters, watching children at play, visiting wakes and funerals, seeing people wounded along highways, going into houses, and finding a mother-in-law sick. Is that the reason Peter denied Our Lord. because he cured his mother-in-law? Peter never got mad at Our Lord for having done that. She got up and served everyone!
so you have been going out into the world. We have priests anxious to go out into the world. They have the spirit of Christ. We are not prepared to do that until we have that spirit. In this, you again have anticipated the Council.
Third, you anticipated it even in relation to the Blessed Mother. This may seem strange but it's not. Your service is dedicated to building up the Church. It is not just merely the devotion to Our Lady, it is the devotion to Our Lady as the Mother of the Church. At the Council, we voted on the question of whether or not to give a new title to Our Lady. Our Lady has many as you know. It was decided not to give her another title. Two weeks later Pope Paul read his Encyclical letter on the Blessed Mother as the Mother of the Church. He gave her a new title. That's the mother you love and who is your patroness.
You are a small group — you have to be. Remember this: The Holy Spirit never works with majority, only with minorities. You are the only present effective apostolate we have in the world. I told our local group here about the role of the Legion of Mary in the missions: with which I am very familiar. I remember coming out of a big cathedral in Nairobi, Africa, like one in the inner city parish that seats 2,000 and has 100 on Sundays. About 80 women came out — women of the Legion of Mary. They had 40 praesidia in one parish. A leper came along the road wearing basketball knee pants. His legs were off at the knees. He is a member of the Legion of Mary and makes 40 converts a day, because of his suffering.
In China there is no organised Church. The underground Church exists solely through the Legion of Mary. So effective it is, there, that the Chinese will even interrogate some of your Legionaries and insist that they show them where Mary is hiding. 'You have a leader in Shanghai somewhere; where is she?' This is how real the spirit of Mary is.
My good Legionaries, that is what you are. From what I have told you, you know how much esteem and affection I have for you. I say you have anticipated the Vatican Council — the future apostolate of the Church, and you are only at the beginning, just the beginning. Pray often to the Holy Spirit that your zeal will spread and that others will have the courage to do it.
I consider it an honour, really an honour, to be in the midst of you. Just as sometimes oil gets outside of a bottle by osmosis, so too, by rubbing up against you, I hope to get some of your spirit."
Fulton Sheen at a Legion of Mary meeting in Dublin with Frank Duff, 1969
