AT THE DOOR OF THE CHURCH--CONTINUED
THE first Bishop of Boston, John Louis de Cheverus, who left that
diocese to become successively the Bishop of Montauban and the
Cardinal-Archbishop of Bordeaux, was, in the strictest sense, a
missionary during his American episcopate. Thoroughly French in
blood, in training, in manners, and in zeal, his penetrating
intelligence not less than his saintly life and his tireless charity
recommended him to men of all creeds and of none. His departure from
Boston was regarded by all its citizens as a public misfortune, and
by himself as cause for profound personal sorrow. He had learned
there a lesson of liberty which he found it hard to forget when he
went away. One of his biographers records that Charles X., whose
offer to make him Minister of Ecclesiastical Affairs Cheverus had
declined, once questioned him concerning the liberty enjoyed by the
Church in the United States. "There," said the archbishop in reply.
"I could have established missions in every church, founded
seminaries in every quarter, and confided them to the care of Jesuits
without any one thinking or saying aught against my proceedings; all
opposition to them would have been regarded as an act of despotism
and a violation of right." "That people understand liberty, at
least," returned the king; "when will it be understood among us?"
We have spoken of Bishop Cheverus because, at the time of Isaac
Hecker's acquaintance with his successors, his influence was still
felt in Boston.
His immediate successor was Benedict Joseph Fenwick, a Marylander,
descended in direct line from one of the original English Catholic
pilgrims who founded that colony under Lord Baltimore. During his
episcopate the diocese grew amazingly. When he went to it, in 1826,
although it comprised the whole of New England, it contained but two
churches fit for divine service, and only two priests besides
himself. When he died, in 1846, he left behind him two bishoprics
where there had been but one; while in that of Boston alone there
were then fifty churches, served by as many priests. Although
conversions had not been rare, the increase was mainly due to
immigration, which the great famine in Ireland was speedily to
increase. The efforts of Bishop Fenwick and those of his coadjutor
and successor were, in the nature of things, conservative rather
than aggressive.
Bishop Fitzpatrick, also, was American by birth and training. A
native of Boston, he was reared in its public grammar and Latin
schools until the age of seventeen, when he began his studies for the
priesthood, which he finished in France. Both of these prelates
continued the tradition of Cheverus so far as their own persons were
concerned. But while they easily won and retained the respect of
their more intelligent Protestant fellow-citizens, the confidence
they inspired as men was not ample enough to protect the Church over
which they ruled when once it began to show signs of solid
prosperity. Cheverus was not wrong in counting with assurance upon
American love for and understanding of true liberty, but he doubtless
owed more than he thought at the time to the insignificance and
scanty numbers of his flock. There came a period, even in the career
of his immediate successor, when liberty itself seemed but a feeble
sapling which a strong wind of stupid bigotry might avail to root out
and cast away; while the chronicle of Bishop Fitzpatrick's episcopate
contains the record of convents invaded under forms of law, and of
both convents and churches sacked and burned by "Native American"
mobs, who were secure of their immunity from punishment. Such
outrages, witnessed by the second and third Bishops of Boston, and
the incessant conflict to which they were compelled with the bigotry
which caused them and which protected their perpetrators, predisposed
both them and their clergy to a distrustful attitude toward converts
like Brownson and Hecker, in whom American traits of character were
very conspicuous. Dr. Brownson has recorded in _The Convert,_ p. 374,
the fact that his entrance into the Church was delayed for months by
his fear of explaining to Bishop Fitzpatrick the precise road by
which he had approached it. He says:
"I really thought that I had made some philosophical discoveries
which would be of value even to Catholic theologians in convincing
and converting unbelievers, and I dreaded to have them rejected by
the Catholic bishop. But I perceived almost instantly that he either
was ignorant of my doctrine of life or placed no confidence in it;
and I felt that he was far more likely, bred as he had been in a
different philosophical school from myself, to oppose than to accept.
I had, indeed, however highly I esteemed the doctrine, no special
attachment to it for its own sake, and could, so far as it was
concerned, give it up at a word without a single regret; but, if I
rejected or waived it, what reason had I for regarding the Church as
authoritative for natural reason, or for recognizing any authority in
the bishop himself to teach me? Here was the difficulty. . . . My
trouble was great, and the bishop could not relieve me, for I dared
not disclose to him its source."
The reader will understand that we do not compare the course of
Bishop Fitzpatrick in Brownson's case with that taken by him toward
Isaac Hecker. The latter was a young man, unknown to the bishop save
by what he may have said of his own antecedents, while Brownson was a
well-known publicist, concerning whom some reserve was natural and
prudent.
With Bishop Fenwick, who was already in failing health, the new
candidate for admission to the fold seems to have had very little
intercourse. As we have seen, the journal makes only a passing
reference to him, but is more explicit with regard to his coadjutor.
Certain points in their interview which remained ever fresh in his
memory were, at the time, cast into the shade by his deep
preoccupation with what may, perhaps, be called the spiritual as
distinguished from the intellectual side of the Church. That in her
which makes her the tender and bountiful mother of the simple was
what chiefly attracted him, just as others are mainly drawn to her as
the adequate teacher and guide of the intellect. If he found the door
at which he was knocking something hard in turning on its hinges; if
the vestibule into which he was ushered seemed a trifle narrower than
he had expected at the entrance of a temple so world-wide; his
satisfaction at having determined upon entrance made all other
considerations for the moment dwindle. But that the impressions he
received were permanent, in their suggestiveness at least, is
witnessed by an article in this magazine for April, 1887, entitled
"Dr. Brownson and Bishop Fitzpatrick," as well as by the several
references to this period which occur in the memoranda.
In the article just named Father Hecker threw into a paragraph or
two, which we subjoin, the substance of his first, and perhaps at
this time his only, interview with Bishop Fitzpatrick:
"It was always difficult to detect how much of conviction and how
much of banter there was in his treatment of men engaged in the
actual intellectual movement of our times. I found such to be the
case in my own intercourse with him. He always attacked me in a
bantering way, but, I thought, half in earnest too. Hence I never
found it advisable to enter into argument with him. How can you argue
with a man, a brilliant wit and an accomplished theologian, who
continually flashes back and forth between first principles and
witticisms? When I would undertake to grapple with him on first
principles he would throw me off with a joke, and while I was
parrying the joke he was back again upon first principles.
"An illustration of his way of treating men and questions was his
reception of me when I presented myself to him, some months before
Dr. Brownson did, for reception into the Church. 'What truths were
the stepping-stones that led you here?' he would have asked if he had
had the temperament of the apostle. But instead of searching for
truth in me he began to search for error. I had lived with the Brook
Farm Community and with the Fruitlands Community, and before that had
been a member of a Workingman's party in New York City, in all which
organizations the right of private ownership of property had been a
prime question. . . . But, as for my part, at the time Bishop
Fitzpatrick wanted me to purge myself of communism, I had settled the
question in my own mind, and on principles which I afterwards found
to be Catholic. The study and settlement of the question of ownership
was one of the things that led me into the Church, and I am not a
little surprised that what was a door to lead me into the Church
seems at this day to be a door to lead some others out. But when the
bishop attacked me about it, it was no longer with me an actual
question. I had settled the question of private ownership in harmony
with Catholic principles, or I should not have dared to present
myself as a convert. But I mention this because it illustrates Bishop
Fitzpatrick's character.
"His was, indeed, a first-class mind both in natural gifts and
acquired cultivation, but his habitual bearing was that of suspicion
of error; as man and prelate he had a joyful readiness to search it
out and correct it from his own point of view. He was a type of mind
common then and not uncommon now--the embodiment of a purpose to
refute error, and to refute it by condemnation direct, authoritative
even if argumentative: the other type of mind would seek for truth
amidst the error, establish its existence, applaud it, and endeavor
to make it a basis for further truth and a fulcrum for the overthrow
of the error connected with it.
"It will be seen, then, what kind of man Dr. Brownson first met as
the official exponent of Catholicity, one hardly capable of properly
understanding and dealing with a mind like his; for he was one who
had come into the possession of the full truth not so much from
hatred of error as from love of truth. Brownson's soul was intensely
faithful to its personal convictions, faithful unto heroism--for that
is the temper of men who seek the whole truth free from cowardice, or
narrowness, or bias. He has admitted that the effect of his
intercourse with the bishop was not fortunate. He confesses that he
forced him to adopt a line of public controversy foreign to his
genius, and one which had not brought him into the Church, and
perhaps could not have done so."
The memoranda contain a more familiar account of this interview:
"I presented myself for instruction and reception into the Church at
the episcopal residence, and was received by the old bishop, Fenwick.
He questioned me on the essential doctrines and found me as I was;
that is, firm as a rock and perfectly clear in my belief. Then he
said, 'You had better see Bishop John.' I did so. He tried to get me
started on questions of modern theology such as he suspected I might
be (as he would doubtless think, knowing my antecedents) unsound on;
for example, rights of property, etc. I refused to speak my
sentiments on them. I said I had no difficulties about anything to
submit to him. I knew the Catholic faith and wished to be received
into the Church at once. I had come seeking the means to save my
soul, and I wanted nothing from him but to be prepared for baptism."
More interesting than either of these narrations is the following
conversation, recorded on July 4, 1884. Besides furnishing a very
explicit answer to a question which may occur to some minds, as to
why a man who always took such a hopeful view of human nature as
Isaac Hecker did, should not have been repelled from Catholicity by
the doctrine of original sin, it adds some further particulars to the
meagre array of facts in our possession:
"Suppose," he was asked, "that the deliverances of the Council of
Trent on original sin, and the theories of Bellarmine on that
doctrine, had been offered you during your transition period: what
would you have thought of them?"
"I would have received them readily enough. Why, the book I took to
Concord to study was the Catechism of the Council of Trent, which has
the strongest kind of statement of that doctrine. Bellarmine's
formula of _nudus_ and _nudatus_ would have opened my eyes amazingly
to a solution of the whole difficulty."*
[* Reference is here made to a very famous saying of Bellarmine's in
explanation of a prevalent teaching on original sin. According to
that teaching, if Adam had been originally constituted in a state of
pure nature, devoid of supernatural gifts and graces, his spiritual
condition might be described as naked--_nudus._ On the other hand,
man as now born is _nudatus,_ stripped of those gifts and graces,
suffering the penal privation of them on account of Adam's sin.
"The corruption of nature," says Bellarmine, "does not come from the
want of any natural gift, or from the accession of any evil quality,
but simply from the loss of a supernatural gift on account of Adam's
sin."]
The Catechism of the Council of Trent, to which Father Hecker so
often refers, was the very best book he could have had for learning
just what Catholicity is in doctrine and practice. It is unique in
Catholic literature, being the only authoritative expression of the
Church, in extended form, on matters of pastoral theology. Outside
the dogmatic circle of doctrinal definition it enjoys the fullest and
most distinct authorization. The express command of the council
caused it to be prepared by a special congregation of prelates and
divines, and it was promulgated to the episcopate to be translated
into the language of the people and expounded to them by all pastors.
It may be said of it that it is the only book which has the Catholic
Church for its author. It is a book which never can grow old; and in
witness of that perennial quality, it may be mentioned that Cardinal
Newman said that he never preached without using it in preparation.
It is an exponent of Catholic truth absolutely free from the danger
of private, or national, or racial, or traditional bias--the very
book Isaac Hecker was in need of. Its plentiful use of Scripture; its
confident appeal to antiquity; its perfect clearness; its
completeness; its tone of conviction no less than its attitude of
authority; make it to such minds as his the very all-sufficient organ
of truth. Furthermore, the entire system of doctrine and morals known
to revealed religion finds here its adequate exposition. We are glad
of an occasion to say these words, not merely to chronicle the
usefulness of the book to Father Hecker, but also to recommend its
restoration to its proper place, which both by merit and by authority
is the first in the moral and pastoral literature of the Church.
"The truth is," continue the memoranda, "that original sin _as taught
by the Church_ would never have been a great difficulty to me: of
course the Calvinistic doctrine is quite a different affair.
"I was led, after I got to work at the Catechism of the Council of
Trent, in a way quite positive. For example, one thing I wanted was a
satisfaction of that feeling and sentiment which has made so many
persons Spiritualists. I found that in the Church there was no
impassable barrier dividing the living from the departed. That was an
intense delight to me.* The doctrine of penance, and the forgiveness
of sins in the Sacrament of Penance, had a wonderful beauty as soon
as I found them. To be taught that God had somehow given men power to
dispense His graces and mercies made me say, Oh, how delightful a
doctrine that is, if I only could believe it! The doctrine of the
Communion of Saints and that of the Sacrament of Penance were very
pleasing to me. Hence, I soon saw that what I already had of truth
and light; what my best nature and conscience and my clearest natural
knowledge told me was truth; was but elevated and lifted up beyond
all conception by these and other doctrines of the Church. From this
I was soon in a position to appreciate the Church's claim to
authoritative teaching. If she, and she alone, had taught such
things, she must possess God's teaching authority.
[* Reference is here made to the Catholic doctrine of the Communion
of Saints.]
"When, therefore, I went into Boston and saw Bishop Fitzpatrick (who
is now, I hope, in the kingdom of heaven), he had little to do with
me in the way of instruction. The Trinity and other fundamental
doctrines I accepted readily on the authority of the Church. He was
very anxious to argue with me about socialistic theories, on account
of my having been at Brook Farm and Fruitlands. But I told him I had
no such difficulties as he supposed; that I had only gone to these
places in search of truth, not because I had formed any such theories
as they generally held. He then asked me whether I would not prefer
to be received into the Church in New York, where my friends were. I
said I did not care; if he would give me a letter I would present it.
He gave me one to Bishop McCloskey, who was then coadjutor in this
city."
The reader may be interested in the terms in which the Catechism of
the Council of Trent expresses the doctrine of the Communion of
Saints. So far as that doctrine concerns the spiritual side of man it
is expounded in these words:
"For the unity of the Spirit, by which the Church is governed,
establishes among all her members a community of spiritual blessings,
whereas the fruit of all the sacraments is common to all the
faithful, and these sacraments, particularly baptism, the door, as it
were, by which we are admitted into the Church, are so many
connecting links which bind and unite them to Jesus Christ."
That it extends to the mystical and miraculous gifts so dear to
Father Hecker, was thus explained to him:
"But the gifts which justify and endear us to God are not alone
common: 'graces gratuitously granted,' such as knowledge, prophecy,
the gifts of tongues and of miracles, and others of the same sort,
are common also, and are granted even to the wicked; not, however,
for their own, but for the general good; for the building up of the
Church of God."
That the doctrine is the foundation of a real though not a legal
community of material goods, was evident to our young social reformer
from the following:
"In fine, every true Christian possesses nothing which he should not
consider common to all others with himself, and should therefore be
prepared promptly to relieve an indigent fellow-creature; for he that
is blessed with worldly goods, and sees his brother in want, and will
not assist him, is at once convicted of not having the love of God
within him."
Besides giving him a letter to Bishop McCloskey, Bishop Fitzpatrick
also furnished the young catechumen with one to the president of Holy
Cross College, an institution which had been established at
Worcester, Mass., in 1843 by Bishop Fenwick, and presented by him to
the Society of Jesus, of which he had been a member. The following
letter was written by Isaac to his family after he had arrived there;
his stay was not long:
"Worcester, Mass., June, '44--Respecting the purpose which leads me
to New York I have scarcely a word to say. Quietly, without
excitement, I come with an immovable determination to be joined to
the Roman Catholic Church. There is a conviction which lies deeper
than all thought or speech, which moves me with an irresistible
influence to take this step, which arguments cannot reach, nor any
visible power make to falter. Words are powerless against it and
inexpressive of it; to attempt to explain, or give to the intellectual
mind the reasons why and wherefore, would be as impossible as to
paint the heavens or to utter the eternal Word, the centre of all
existence. It would be like asking, 'Wherefore is that which is?' the
finite questioning the infinite; an impossibility. . . .
"No man by his own wisdom can find out God; and it is only by the
grace of Heaven that we come to, and by the heart perceive, the true
Church of Jesus Christ. Grace teaches us to feel and know that which
before was unfelt, unknown, invisible. Perfect submission to His love
breaks open all seals, unlocks all mysteries, and unfolds all
difficulties. . . .
"No external event of any kind or character induces me to take this
step. If what does is delusion, what to name my former life I am at a
loss to know. . .
"The heads of the college here appear to be men of good character,
devoted to the Church, innocent of the Protestant world of
literature, philosophy, etc. The president is a very social, frank,
warm-hearted man, of more extensive acquaintance in the world of
letters."
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