BEGINNINGS OF THE PAULIST COMMUNITY
DURING the seven months of Father Hecker's stay in Rome the band of
American missionaries were busily occupied. Missions were given in
the following order: Newark, N.J.; Poughkeepsie, Cold Spring on the
Hudson, and Utica, N.Y.; Brandywine, Del.; Trenton, N.J.; Burlington,
Brandon, East and West Rutland, Vt., and Plattsburgh, Saratoga, and
Little Falls, N.Y. All these labors were undertaken subject to the
authority of the Redemptorist Provincial and in a spirit of entire
obedience. The mission at Little Falls closed on Palm Sunday, March
28, and the missionaries, with the exception of Father Baker, who was
sent to Annapolis, Md., returned to the Redemptorist house in Third
Street, New York. On the Tuesday after Easter, April 6, 1858, the
official copy of the Pope's decision reached them, and they bade
farewell to their Redemptorist brethren and to the community in which
they had spent so many happy years, and witnessed, as Father Hewit
has written, "so many edifying examples of high virtue and devoted
zeal, to enter upon a new and untried undertaking."
Archbishop Kenrick, as soon as he heard of this, made a determined
effort to secure Father Baker for the diocese of Baltimore, but the
latter never for a moment faltered in his purpose to cast his lot
with his brethren, and the archbishop gave up his claim upon him at
the request of Cardinal Barnabo.
Their engagements called for two more missions before the season
ended--one at Watertown, N.Y., and the other at St. Bridget's Church,
New York City. The first of these opened on the 18th of April, and
while waiting for that date the Fathers lived with Mr. George Hecker
in Rutger's Place, saying Mass in his private chapel and following
their religious rule as far as circumstances allowed, continuing
meantime to obey Father Walworth, their former superior of the
missions. They journeyed to Watertown, fearful lest the faculties for
giving the Papal blessing and the mission indulgences should not
arrive there in time. But late on Saturday night, April 19, they were
received, much to the joy of the Fathers.
Here occurred a noteworthy coincidence. Watertown was at that time in
the diocese of Albany, of which Bishop McCloskey was then the
ordinary. He had received Father Hecker into the Church and had been
his first guide in the spiritual life, and now he was the first to
publicly welcome his brethren at the beginning of their new career.
The following is from a letter of his to Father Walworth in answer to
one announcing the recent changes:
"I am happy to hear that your difficulties have at length received
their solution, and in a manner, I presume, as satisfactory as you
could well expect. The future must now in great measure depend upon
yourselves. You will, of course, have difficulties to surmount and
prejudices to encounter, but I trust that with God's blessing your
new community when once organized will continue from day to day to
gain increased stability and strength, and be enabled to carry out
successfully all its laudable aims for the good of our holy religion.
The faculties already given you in this diocese you will not consider
as being withdrawn by the act of your separation from the
Redemptorist order, and there is nothing that I know of to interfere
with your proposed mission in Watertown."
During the mission at St. Bridget's--that is, in the first half of
the month of May--Father Hecker arrived in New York and measures were
at once taken for the practical organization of the new community.
Nothing was done hurriedly; a fair and full consideration of all
questions from every point of view, which lasted until early in the
month of July, enabled each one clearly to understand his new
relation in its every aspect. Father Walworth not being entirely in
agreement with the others, withdrew to the diocese of Albany and took
charge of a parish; he returned again in 1861, remaining with the
community till 1865, when his health becoming quite shattered, he
reluctantly decided to withdraw altogether. It need hardly be said
that the relations between him and the community have always been
most cordial. Meantime the others, Fathers Hecker, Hewit, Deshon, and
Baker, organized by electing the first-named the Superior, and drew
up and signed what was termed a Programme of Rule. This was submitted
to Archbishop Hughes and by him approved and signed on July 7, 1858.
The Apostle of the Gentiles was chosen as patron, and the name
selected was, The Missionary Priests of St. Paul the Apostle, which
has been popularized into Paulists. The habit agreed upon was in form
somewhat like that of the students of the Propaganda in Rome, black
throughout, with a narrow linen collar and buttoned across the
breast, being held at the waist by a cincture.
The Programme of Rule adopts an order of spiritual exercises similar
to that observed by the Fathers while Redemptorists. A perpetual
voluntary agreement takes the place of the vows as the security of
stability, the members affirming that they are fully determined to
promote their sanctification by leading a life in all essential
respects similar to that led in the religious orders. Besides the
chastity imposed upon them by the priesthood the other evangelical
counsels of obedience and poverty are adopted and their observance
enjoined upon the members, together with the daily and periodical
exercises of community life. As to the external vocation, the
missions are named as the basis of general apostolic labors, and
parish work also, though in a subordinate degree. The entire document
looks forward to a complete Rule to be drawn up and submitted to the
Holy See at a future day, for which it actually furnished the
outlines some twenty years afterwards. The approval of the Programme
of a Rule by the Archbishop of New York gave the Fathers the
canonical status anticipated by the decree _Nuper nonnulli._ This was
confirmed by an official permission of the Holy See to the Archbishop
of New York to establish the Paulist Institute in his diocese, with
the consent of his suffragans, which was asked for and obtained.
A little more than a fortnight after these events Father Hecker wrote
as follows to a friend:
"Before leaving Rome our Holy Father Pius IX. gave us his special
blessing for the commencement of our new organization, promised us
any privileges we might need to carry on our missionary labors, and
held out the hope of his sanction, in proper time, of the rules which
we might make. In my last visit to his Eminence Cardinal Barnabo he
gave me advice how to organize, what steps were to be taken from time
to time, and expressed a most lively interest in our undertaking. The
same did Monsignor Bedini. On my return we organized as advised,
wrote out an outline of our new institution and submitted it to the
ordinary of this diocese, the initiatory step of all such
undertakings. He gave it his cordial approbation, and said that he
found no word to alter, to add, or improve. Thus we are so far
regularly canonically instituted.
"Our aim is to lead a strict religious life in community, starting
with the voluntary principle; leaving the question of vows to further
experience, counsel, and indications of Divine Providence. Our
principal work is the missions, such as we have hitherto given, but
we are not excluded from other apostolic labors as the wants of the
Church may demand or develop. . . . We begin early this fall our
campaign of missions, and we never had before us so fine a list. One
thing I may say, and I trust without boasting, we are of one mind and
heart, resolved to labor and die for Jesus Christ, for the good of
His holy Church, for the advancement of the Catholic faith. We have
the encouragement of a number of bishops, and also, we trust, the
prayers, sympathy, and assistance of the faithful. We shall have to
face obstacles, opposition from friends and foes; but if we are the
right kind of men and have the virtues which such a position as ours
demands, our trials will only strengthen us and make us the better
Christians. Every good work must expect opposition from pious men,
and our minds are made up to that."
After St. Bridget's mission the little community found itself
homeless, and it remained so till the spring of the year 1859. But
during part of this period Mr. George Hecker, taking his family to
the country, gave up his whole house to the Fathers, servants and
all, making provision for the supply of every want in the most
generous manner. For the greater portion of the time, however,
especially between missions in the winter and spring of 1858-9, the
Fathers depended for temporary shelter upon the hospitality of
friends among the clergy and laity, even lodging for a short while in
a respectable boarding-house in Thirteenth street, at a convenient
distance from several churches and chapels where Mass could be said
daily.
But in the spring of 1858 arrangements had been made with Archbishop
Hughes for establishing a house and parish in New York. The present
site of St. Paul's Church and convent, then in the midst of a
suburban wilderness, was chosen, and, by dint of hasty collections
from private friends and with the help of a very large gift from Mr.
George Hecker, money enough was paid down to obtain the deeds.
Sixtieth Street was not quite opened at the time, and this part of
Ninth Avenue existed only on paper; but by energetic efforts made by
all the Fathers and their friends, and by personal appeals in every
direction, especially in the down-town parishes in which they had
given missions, sufficient funds were raised to clear the ground and
lay the foundations of a building which was to include both convent
and church. Early in the summer of 1858 circulars asking assistance
had been sent out to the clergy of the United States, and by this
means also a considerable amount was secured, the very first answer
with a handsome donation coming from Father Early, President of
Georgetown College. In the spring of 1859 the Fathers rented a frame
house on Sixtieth Street, just west of Broadway, fitted up a little
chapel in it, and lived there in community till the new house was
finished.
The corner-stone of the new structure was laid by Archbishop Hughes
on Trinity Sunday, June 19, 1859, in the presence of an immense
concourse of people. During that summer and fall every effort was
made to keep the builders at work. The task was no easy one. The
times were hard, the country still suffering from the effects of the
financial crisis of 1857, the financial depression being aggravated
by the ominous outlook in the political world. But the house was
finally completed, and was blessed by Father Hecker on the 24th of
November, the feast of St. John of the Cross, one of his very special
patrons. This was within a few weeks of his fortieth birthday. On the
27th of the same month, the first Sunday of Advent, the chapel was
blessed and Solemn Mass was celebrated in it. Thereafter the Fathers
had to act as parish priests as well as missionaries. A few weeks
before this the first recruit joined the little band in the person of
Father Robert Beverly Tillotson, a convert, who, though an American,
had been for some time a member of Dr. Newman's Oratory. He was a
charming preacher and a noble character, much beloved by all the
fathers, and especially by Father Hecker. He died, deeply mourned, in
the summer of 1868, having given the community nine years of most
valuable service. He came just in time to set free three of the
Fathers for missionary duty, the other two remaining in care of the
parish. This was at first small enough in numbers, though in
territory it reached from Fifty-second Street to very near
Manhattanville. The accession of Father Alfred Young, of the diocese
of Newark, and the return of Father Walworth considerably relieved
the pressure, though the rapid growth of the parish and the widening
scope of the community's labors kept every one busy enough.
The newly-founded Paulist community was heartily welcomed by both
clergy and people. Missions were given in various parts of the
country, applications being often declined for want of time and
missionaries. Several prelates, among whom were the Archbishops of
Baltimore and Cincinnati, wrote to Father Hecker offering to
establish the community in their dioceses; Bishop Bayley, of Newark,
also wished to secure the Fathers, and he was especially urgent in
his request. One has but to know the intensely conservative spirit of
the Catholic hierarchy and clergy to appreciate how stainless must
have been the record of the Fathers to elicit such testimonials of
good-will just after they had fought a hard battle on the ground of
authority and obedience. As to the Catholic laity, the following
extract from a letter of the poet George H. Miles, whose early death
some years after was so deeply lamented, shows how they regarded the
new community. It was written from Baltimore under date of August 13,
1858:
"MY VERY DEAR FATHER HECKER: . . . Since we last parted you have been
to me one of those grand, good memories we take to heart and cherish.
I have loved you better than you could believe, for I felt that in
the extremity of sorrow or temptation you were the man and the priest
I would have recourse to, could my own wish be granted. You are not
wrong in considering me a friend; that is, if much love may atone for
little power to befriend. . . . _Providentially,_ it now appears, you
men have always had an individual force that detached you completely
from your _confrères._ To me and to the multitudes you were never
Redemptorists, never Liguorians, but Hecker, Walworth, Hewit, Deshon,
Baker. I mean to utter nothing disrespectful to the society which has
blessed this nation in training and developing you and your new body
of preachers, but I maintain that you stood so completely apart from
that society, so absolutely individualized, that, etc."
The three years following Father Hecker's return from Rome were
exceedingly active ones. The missions were maintained, money
collected for the purchase of the property and the building of the
convent at the corner of Fifty-ninth Street and Ninth Avenue, and,
after the opening of the new church in November, 1859, the regular
duties of a city parish were added.
"I am hard at work," writes Father Hecker to a friend, in the very
midst of these labors, "in soliciting subscriptions for our convent
and temporary church. I have worked hard in my life, but this is
about the hardest. However, it goes. I had, a couple of weeks ago, a
donation of $200 from a Protestant. Yesterday a subscription of $90
from another. _Sursum Corda_ and go ahead, is my cry!" And, indeed,
he was full of courage and conscience in the future, all his letters
breathing a cheerful spirit.
Before giving Father Hecker's principles for community life, which we
will do in the next chapter, it may be well to say a few words more
about the attitude in which he and his companions had been placed, by
the action of the Holy See, toward the Catholic idea of authority.
Just as he was about to sail for America he wrote to his brother
George: "I return from Rome with my enthusiasm unchilled and my
resolution to labor for the conversion of our people intensified and
strengthened. I feel that the knowledge and experience which I have
acquired are most necessary for the American Fathers in their present
delicate position." And in truth his stay in Rome had prepared him
for the new responsibilities in store for him. His sufferings there
had purified his motives, his humiliations and his anguish had taught
him the need of reliance, total and loving, on Divine Providence. He
had studied authority in its chief seat, and he had done so with the
depth of impression which a man on trial for his life experiences of
the power of the advocates and the dignity of the judges. The result
of that trial was of infinite benefit. The test of genuine liberty is
its consonance with lawful authority, and in Father Hecker's case the
newest liberty had been roughly arraigned before the most venerable
authority known among men, tried by fire, and sent forth with Rome's
broad seal of approval.
Without doubt the chief endeavor of authority should be to win the
allegiance of free and aspiring spirits; but, on the other hand, no
one should be so firmly convinced of the rights of the external order
of God as the man who is called to minister to the aspirations of
human liberty.
No man ought to be so vividly conscious of the prerogatives of
authority as he who lays claim to a vocation to extol the worth of
liberty. It was, therefore, fitting that Father Hecker should learn
his lesson of the prerogatives of the visible Church from that
teacher who has no master among men. At the same time Rome sent forth
in the person of Father Hecker a living and powerful argument
addressed to this Republic, that the Catholic Church is worthy of the
heartiest allegiance of our citizens.
This providential aspect of the case should not be forgotten. When
Father Hecker had been expelled from the Redemptorists it might have
been thought that he was done for, and that if he had ever had a
mission it had suffered total shipwreck, whether deserved or not. But
in reality the very reverse was the truth. The disgrace of expulsion,
the sudden horror of being thus cast out, a calamity which set him
forth to all Catholics as a ruined priest, had but served to bring
him into the notice of the supreme authority of the Church. And when
in this God had wrought all His work His servant was purified within
and mightily strengthened without. In his inmost soul he was
conscious of his divine mission with a deeper certitude than ever
before; and as he began his apostolate he bore on his arm the buckler
of Rome, against which all the darts of enemies, if any should arise,
would strike harmless and fall to the ground.
It was fitting that the Paulist community, appealing to the men and
women of to-day with the credentials as well of their own individual
independence as of the good will of the Pope and the Bishops, should
be launched into existence from the very deck of Peter's bark, and
furnished with all the testimonials of ecclesiastical authority short
of canonical sanction. This was the more proper because, in a few
years after the beginning of the community, European revolutionists
were to be scourged with the Syllabus, whose every word agonized the
souls of unworthy advocates of liberty. That Pontifical document has
created a literature of its own in comment and explanation, some
tying more knots in every lash and others mitigating its severity or
palliating the errors it smote with such pitiless rigor. But the best
interpretation of the Syllabus is the Paulist community. It is a body
of free men whose origin was the joint result of the personal
workings of the Holy Spirit in the soul of a man who loved civil and
political freedom with a mighty love, and the decision of the highest
court of Catholicity declaring him worthy of trust as an exponent of
the Christian faith. If the Syllabus shows what the Church thinks of
those who in the guise of freemen are conspirators against religion
and public order, the approval of the Paulist community shows the
Church's attitude towards men worthy to be free.
Nor was Rome's course chosen without weighing the consequences,
without a full estimate of the public significance of the act. Father
Hecker's adversaries fixed upon him every stigma of radicalism and
rebellion possible in a good but deluded priest. For seven long
months they poured into ears which instinctively feared revolt in the
name of liberty, every accusation his doings and sayings could be
made to give color to, in order to prove that he and the American
Fathers were tainted with false liberalism. And he seemed to lend
himself to their purpose. His guileless tongue spoke to the
cardinals, prelates, and professors of Rome about nothing so much as
freedom, and its kinship with Catholicity. He seemed to have no
refuge but the disclosure of the very secrets of his soul. During
those months of incessant accusation and defence Father Hecker talked
Rome's high dignitaries into full knowledge of himself, until they
saw the cause mirrored in the man and gave approval to both. Some,
like Barnabo, were actuated by the quick sympathy of free natures;
others, like Pius IX., arrived at a decision by the slower processes
of the removal of prejudice from an honest mind, and the careful
comparing of Father Hecker's principles with the fundamental truths
of religion.
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