From the Angel's Blackboard: The Best of Fulton J. Sheen, A Centennial Celebration.

From the Angel's Blackboard: The Best of Fulton J. Sheen: A Centennial Celebration, edited by Patricia A. Kossmann (Triumph Books, 246 pp., $21.95)

THE HIT television show of the Fifties did not feature a Manhattan apartment building brimming with thirtysomethings dispensing scatology. Rather, a blackboard before which stood a solitary Roman Catholic archbishop delivering a lecture. Even Uncle Milty placed in the ratings behind Archbishop Fulton Sheen. His gift was that of every great spiritual communicator: the ability to distill divine wisdom and apply it with wit to all levels of human experience, from the tangible trials of modern life (unruly adolescents, quarreling spouses) to the perpetual restlessness of the human soul. The gift is no less apparent in these collected readings, and the counsel is no less relevant today: "If there were anywhere on earth a resting place other than God, we may be very sure that the human soul in its long history would have found it before this." Today's television reveals a world in desperate need of a Fulton Sheen. Until his successor arrives, we can read this wise and timeless book.