Frank Sheed as street preacher

The piece that inspired this post was suggested by a link emailed us by our trusty correspondent, Guy Noir, to this article by Andrée Peterson (World, October 18, 2013), on history's storied street preachers, which I commend to you. The quotation below is the "ecumenical insertion" added by our own intrepid Mr. Noir, to remind us that Catholics, too, have had their storied street preachers:

And Roman Catholic Frank Sheed, realizing that the priests who said Mass might not reach his fallen-away Catholics -- much less the majority of the rough and tumble of this world -- scandalized fellow churchmen by mounting a soapbox in London's Hyde Park in what looked like an appropriation of Holy Roller tactics. Wife and fellow preacher Maisie Ward recalled with a wink, “my first intimation that my aunts had heard about me came from Aunt Anne Kerr, who told me with a smile that a hat I was wearing looked just like a Salvation Army lassie’s bonnet. So, the murder was out ...” (Unfinished Business 105). Of the eclectic crew that made up their Catholic Evidence Guild Sheed wrote, “[Our] sole eccentricity was that [we] could not sleep quietly while millions were starved for food Christ meant them to have. [We] were an unusualcombination of dead seriousness and total lightheartedness” (The Church and I, 47).]

[Hat tip to JM]