Ohio Dominican Professor Publishes Book
May 12, 2004
Kathleen L. Riley, Ph.D., Associate Professor of History at Ohio Dominican
University, recently published a book titled Fulton J. Sheen: An American
Catholic Response to the Twentieth Century (Alba House).
Dr. Riley, who came to ODU in 1995, received her bachelor's degree in History
from Nazareth College of Rochester and her master's and doctoral degrees, also in
History, from the University of Notre Dame. She teaches a variety of courses in both
History and Humanities at Ohio Dominican, including a course on American Religious
History, which focuses on Bishop Sheen as a major figure in the post World War II
Religious Revival in the United States.
The book, published in January of this year, is based upon Riley's dissertation
and the research she completed while serving as an Assistant Archivist for the Fulton
Sheen collection in the Diocese of Rochester, New York, where Sheen served as Bishop
from 1966 to 1969. The book presents Riley's view that Archbishop Sheen's life embodied
"an American Catholic response to the challenge of the times," and that Sheen deserves
to be taken "seriously, above and beyond his status as a television star, too easily
dismissed as a nostalgic figure from the past".
The process for Sheen's canonization currently is underway in the Diocese of
Peoria, Illinois , where Sheen was born in 1895. Bishop Daniel R. Jenky, CSC, has
been reading Riley's book as part of that effort, based upon Fulton Sheen's personal
sanctity and his popularity, longevity and versatility as one of American Catholicism's
most famous sons.
Professor Riley was interviewed by Father Ron Lengwin during his radio show on
station KDKA in Pittsburgh - the same station where a young Father Sheen first delivered
one of his pioneering radio sermons. In a review written by Father William Graf
for the Catholic Courier (Diocesan paper in Rochester, New York), the book
was praised as a "well-researched study" and a "first rate biography of one of
America's most popular and eloquent Roman Catholic bishops".
To view a synopsis of Fulton J. Sheen: An American Catholic Response to
the Twentieth Century, visit the website of the publisher, Alba House, at
www.albahouse.org.
