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When Sheed & Ward established a New York publishing branch, Frank used his circuit riding to recruit authors. In England, the "Pied Publishers" signed Monsignor Ronald Knox, Evelyn Waugh's favorite priest, and in America, the Rev. Fulton Sheen, for whom Wilfrid worked briefly and unenthusiastically after finishing his education at Oxford. Billing his proselytizing parents as "kings of the Catholic world from John o' Groats to Borneo," Sheed asserts they stirred up the forces that "would change the face of American Catholicism." But he never makes quite clear how; perhaps it was by sheer exuberance. In any case, the winds of change from Vatican II blew right past them, dislodging their son and most Catholics of his generation from the absolute haven the church had provided for Frank and Maisie.
Being religious became a complicated and self-conscious business. Sheed recalls himself as a "Dead End Kid masquerading as an altar boy," and he is still at it. The more reverent he feels, the more irreverent the throwaway lines: "Even the Christian God tactfully divides his roles into three, and Frank did his damnedest to divide himself into at least two, but he lacked the infinite capacity." It can all get a little like Woody Allen playing Humphrey Bogart playing St. Augustine.
Yet, in fact, this is what Frank and Maisie comes down to: side-of-the-mouth spiritual autobiography. In possibly his most solemn passage, Sheed writes, "Religion as such strikes me as a desperate attempt on the part of mankind to bore itself to death in expiation of some forgotten excitement." Pilgrims wandering to the rhythm of the old soft-shoe, Frank and Maisie dedicated themselves to fighting original boredom as passionately as original sin. Their son, in his own terms, is happily carrying on the family business. --By Melvin Maddocks