“The Cuban Communist regime is a state sponsor of terrorism that uses its military and intelligence apparatus to spy on the United States, provide material support to violent radicals and terrorist groups, and spread poisonous Marxist ideology within our borders and polity, all while serving as a staging ground for other U.S. adversaries such as Russia, China and Iran to conduct operations against the United States,” says a State Department report dated August 6, 2026. Unfortunately, communism appears alive and well. Fulton Sheen’s book, Communism and the Conscience of the West is relevant today because it explains the makeup of the Marxist philosophy and the disease which afflicts much of the West. The audience for the paperback is everyone because communism is unknown by many, and its pernicious ways seem lost to history.
Fulton Sheen was an engaging professor at Catholic University of America for over two decades. He has much to teach us still. He wrote 66 books. Also Sheen became a household name as he began to broadcast on radio and became a popular television teacher. The bishop won an Emmy award for most outstanding television personality. After a much anticipated wait, Sheen will be declared Blessed this week, on September 24, 2026, in St. Louis. Although his writing on communism was first published before 1950, it speaks to us like it was written yesterday.
Sheen was an expert in philosophy. He reveals in the book how communism is atheistic and determined to stamp out religion. Lenin wrote: “Our program rests in its entirety on a scientific philosophy and notably on a materialistic philosophy…Our propaganda therefore necessarily embraces atheism” (p.72). From the communists’ own documents, we have the answer to the question: Are they against religion? “One of the most important tasks of the cultural revolution affecting the wide masses is the task of systematically and unswervingly combating religion—the opium of the people” (p.119). Contrary to what some want to believe today about Marxism, Sheen shows us the actual belief system from their own writings.
In time, seeing the spiritual reality of how good can sometimes come out of evil, even from a totalitarian Marxist regime, Sheen writes: “When finally the yoke of slavery, terrorism and secret police has been lifted from the Russian people, there will be less need of educating them in the Way of the Cross than there will be of educating us” (p.82). We see the truth of his analysis. Ostensibly, when communism fell in Russia, eight hundred monasteries were built. Christianity began to flourish again. The faith of the Russian people was finally set free. But, unfortunately, this liberty does not include, at present, freedom from dictatorship.
The real violence of communism is well documented in our time. Denying God, communism rests its foundation on materialism. “Communism too states that man came from the beast, hence, they add, he ought to act like one, and thus they justify their philosophy of violence,” penned Sheen (p.51). Since Sheen’s 1948 publication of his book, history has proven time and again that communism is extremely brutal. Concentration camps, torture, forced labor, genocide, starvation, and executions are some of the ways people have died and still are dying needlessly at the hands of an ideology based on lies. It is estimated that over 100 million people have died in the last century alone from communist and socialist governments. Sheen is spot on with his analysis of the philosophy, and all one needs to do is look at the record of any country where it has been tried.
In the West many are blind to the societal decay happening within. “It is a characteristic of any decaying civilization that the great masses of the people are unconscious of the tragedy. Humanity in a crisis is generally insensitive to the gravity of the times in which it lives,” Sheen states. The West is in a crisis because it adheres to a materialistic philosophy too.
The problem is a failure to identify what is right and what is wrong, Sheen explains.
In the domain of morality, is it not an accepted principle of our Western bourgeois world that there is no absolute distinction between right and wrong rooted in the eternal order of God, but that they are relative and dependent entirely upon one’s point of view? Hence when the Western world wishes to decide what is right and wrong even in certain moral matters, it takes a poll—forgetful that the majority never makes a thing right, because right is right if nobody is right, and wrong is wrong if everybody is wrong. (p.50)
The author makes the same argument that Pope Benedict made years later when he spoke of the dictatorship of relativism. The good bishop makes a compelling point here: today many in the West have forgotten that divine revelation gives us the true compass to guide our path. Many get stuck in the morass of relativism and don’t know that divine truth is as close as the catechism.
Sheen is saying that both the West and the communists that maintain a materialistic mindset are part of the decay. Rather than being stewards of resources and living the Faith, the materialist believes all truth is relative and focuses solely on self. Egotism has a collectivist form in communism and an individualistic form in the West. The bishop makes a strong argument here on the crisis in the West, but he shows the way forward too. The materialist philosophy is empty and fake, but following Christ brings one to know more and more of divine revelation and the way to authentically help others along the pathway. Our Lord reminded us that He is the way forward: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me” (Jn. 14:6).
Additionally, the early communist views on the family as a thing of the past underscores the radicality of their ever evolving system. In The Communist Manifesto, the middle class family reposes on capital or individual gain and that “the family will, therefore, disappear with capital” (p.140). The Matrimonial Codes of 1918 and 1927 affirmed the law: “All children belong to the State” (p.143). The author brings out that: “The young were encouraged to spy on their parents and report them to the Communist authorities at the least sign of Fascism and anti-communism” (p.143), and “Abortion clinics were established by the state throughout the country, and every available means was used to weaken the family” (p.143).
But then the Soviet communists did an about-face when they saw the numbers. “Russia began counting heads, and those that should have been heads, and it was discovered that in Moscow alone only 57,000 children were born in 1934, while 154,000 abortions were performed. In the villages there were 242,979 births, but 324,194 abortions,” highlights Sheen (p.143). The author brings out that Stalin began having photo ops with children and even appeared with his own kids in a garden; at the time, many Soviet people in the USSR did not even know that he had children.
The fickle nature of the Soviet policy on abortion can be seen in their changed position. “Abortion clinics were abolished as abortion became legally identified with homicide; anyone counseling abortion was sentenced to two years imprisonment” (p. 146). The author underscores that the communists concocted a bad policy of abortion on demand because they ascertained that the family is evolving away.
Sheen brilliantly shows the misguided history of the materialist philosophy. To change one’s position on so fundamental a moral issue drives home the necessity of divine revelation. From the earliest catechism—the didache to the present catechism, divine revelation has consistently taught that each person—at the moment of conception—has a unique mission and destiny. Abortion must never be performed because it takes away an innocent life and the destiny it was meant to fulfill.
This is an important book because it addresses communism and the underlying materialist philosophy, which, unfortunately, are still with us today in the form of its empty promises. But it also points the way forward. And many young and older people, the world over, are recognizing that divine revelation was given to us as a great gift and map to the great city, the new Jerusalem. Also, the author points out that inner peace that all seek in this life is found in Christianity—not in incoherent philosophies and empty accumulation. In the short volume, Sheen shows us how the Gospel provides the real answer to a life that fulfills instead of myths that enslave.
Photo by Egor Myznik on Unsplash
