Okay, so he pioneered the Catholic superstar thing, which led eventually to the Black Dawg phenomenon. At least he preached Whole Catholicism, and at least he evidently was genuinely devout. And also a “biritual” priest, one who could celebrate both the Latin and Byzantine rites.
Many thanks to Fr Gregory, ACCA, who brought this to my intention:
I did not know that he was bi-ritual. Great picture of him in Byzantine Rite episcopal vestments.
I had no idea he was performing in both rites, but it shouldn’t surprise me. He was an extraordinary figure who really did do a lot to enshrine American Catholicism.
In his book, Communism and the Conscience of the West, Fulton Sheen wrote, “If by capitalism is meant, not diffused ownership of property, but monopolistic capitalism in which capital bids for labor on a market, and concentrates wealth in the hands of the few, then from an economic point of view alone, the Church is just as much opposed to capitalism as it is to communism. Communism emphasizes social use to the exclusion of personal rights, and capitalism emphasizes personal rights to the exclusion of social use. The Church says both are wrong. It therefore refuses to maintain capitalism as an alternative to the economic side of communism…. The Church agrees with communism in its protest against the injustice of the economic order…. In fact, there is a better critique of the existing economic order based on the primacy of profit in two Encyclicals of Leo XIII and Pius XI than there is in all the writings of Marx…. Capitalistic economy is godless; communism makes economics God….” (pages 79-81)
Don’t forget Fr. Charles Coughlin, who was perhaps the first media-star preacher, beginning I believe in the 1920s. At the height of his influence I think he was better-known than Fr. Corapi ever even hoped to be. Fr. Coughlin was also critical of capitalism. Unfortunately he became something of an anti-Semite and pro-Nazi. But when he was silenced in the early 40s he shut up and continued quietly as a parish priest until his death in the 1980s.