Widely known by his Roman Catholic ecclesiastical title, Bishop Sheen established a very successful niche for religious programming in U.S. television's early days with his Life Is Worth Living program. Sheen's show originally aired on the Dumont Network on Tuesday evenings in 1951 and then moved to ABC where it remained until Sheen withdrew in 1957.

The shows--really half hour talks by Sheen--proved very popular and ultimately were carried on 123 ABC television stations and another 300 radio stations. Life Is Worth Living followed a simple format. Sheen would choose a topic and, with only a blackboard for a prop and his church robes for costuming, would discuss the topic for his allotted 27 minutes. He spoke in a popular style, without notes but with a sprinkling of stories and jokes, having spent up to 30 hours preparing his presentation.

Because the program was sponsored by the Admiral Corporation rather than the Catholic Church, Sheen avoided polemics and presented a kind of Christian humanism. In his autobiography he noted that the show was not "a direct presentation of Christian doctrine but rather a reasoned approach to it beginning with something that was common to the audience." He covered topics as diverse as art, science, aviation, humor, communism, and philosophy.

Like many others in its early days, Sheen had moved into television from radio. As a professor at the Catholic University of America, he began commuting from Washington, D.C. in 1928 to broadcast on WLWL in New York. Two years later he became the first regular speaker on The Catholic Hour, a sustaining time program on NBC radio, sponsored by the National Council of Catholic Men. In 1940 he made his television debut presiding at New York City's first televised religious service.

After several years off, Sheen attempted to come back to television a number of times, but without the success that had greeted Life Is Worth Living. He hosted a series on the life of Christ in the late 1950s; in 1964, he worked on Quo Vadis, America?; and he revived the format of Life is Worth Living, now called The Bishop Sheen Program.

Television had changed and his lecture style no longer commanded audience loyalty. He ended his long career in broadcasting with numerous guest appearances on television talk shows during the 1960s and 1970s.

Broadcasting was never Sheen's full-time occupation. He left The Catholic University of America in 1950 to become the national director of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, a fundraising office for missionaries, a position he held until Pope Paul VI named him Bishop of Rochester, New York in 1966.

Sheen's importance for television lies in two areas. First, he pioneered a non-sectarian style of religious programming and found commercial sponsors for his message. By doing this he both adapted to and helped to shape commercial broadcasting's attitudes toward religious shows. The need to develop audiences meant that only those programs with the widest possible appeal would find a place in mainstream or network programming.

Second, Sheen provided a role model (if not an ideal) for the next generation of ministers interested in television--the televangelists. Many of the later stars of cable religious television acknowledge that the widespread acceptance of Sheen's Life Is Worth Living inspired their own forays into television. They too hoped to escape the "Sunday morning ghetto" of religious programming for a place in the mainstream.

-Paul A. Soukup, Encyclopedia of Television