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The last great controversy about the bishop occurred in 1954 when he used a United Autoworkers meeting to bombard Senator Joseph McCarthy's brand of antiCommunism. "You cannot effectively fight tyranny with tyranny," said Sheil. "We have been victims of a kind of shell game. We have been treated like country rubes to be taken in by a city slicker from Appleton." Sheil was attacked in turn by McCarthy supporters. "Judas Iscariot Sheil" became their favorite name for him.
Since that time, Sheil has been in the news only rarely. In 1959, Pope John, in a gracious salute to a fellow renegade, elevated Sheil to archbishop; it was a personal honor because Sheil did not head an archdiocese. In 1966, his newest superior, Archbishop John P. Cody, persuaded him to retire along with other septuagenarian pastors. After 31 years as pastor of St. Andrew's Church, Sheil went unhappily off to Tucson to spend his last years in unaccustomed inactivity under the hot Arizona sun. His body was returned to St. Andrew's last week, where, old enmities forgotten, friends and foes of other days packed the church for his requiem Mass.