FATHER HECKER'S IDEA OF A RELIGIOUS COMMUNITY
THE beginnings of the Paulist community having been sketched, it is
now in order to state the principles with which Father Hecker, guided
no less by supernatural intuition than by enlightened reason,
intended it should be inspired; and this shall be done as nearly as
possible in his own words. The following sentences, found in one of
his diaries and quoted some chapters back, embody what may be deemed
his ultimate principle:
"It is for this we are created: that we may give a new and individual
expression of the absolute in our own peculiar character. As soon as
the new is but the re-expression of the old, God ceases to live. Ever
the mystery is revealed in each new birth; so must it be to eternity.
The Eternal-Absolute is ever creating new forms of expressing itself."
What the new order of things was to be in the spiritual life could be
learned, Father Hecker held, by observing men's strivings after
natural good. The tendencies which shape men's efforts to secure
happiness in this world, in so far as they are innocent, indicated to
him what choice of means should be made to propagate the knowledge
and love of God. According to this, the most successful worker for a
people's sanctification will be kindred to them by conviction and by
sympathy in all that concerns their political and social life. Men's
aspirations in the natural order point out the highway of God's
representatives. As these aspirations change from era to era, so do
the main lines of religious effort change, the highways of one age
becoming the byways of another. It is true that no method for the
elevation of human nature to divine union, which the Church has
sanctioned, ever becomes quite obsolete, but the merest glance at the
differences between the spiritual characteristics of the martyrs, the
hermits, the monks, the friars, shows that one form of the Christian
virtues succeeds another in general possession of men's souls. The
new spirit, without crowding the old one off its beaten track,
follows men to the new ways whither the providence of God in the
natural order has led them. "First the natural man," says St. Paul,
"and then the spiritual." Different types of spirituality are brought
forward by Almighty God to sanctify men in new conditions of life.
Among the foremost of these are religious communities of men and
women. Hence their duty to adjust themselves, as far as faith and
discipline permit, to the circumstances of the times. The power of a
religious community for good will be measured by its ability to
elevate the natural to the supernatural without shocking it or
thwarting it.
Now, every one knows that this age differs materially from past ones.
It differs by a wider spread of education and an uncontrollable
longing after liberty, civil, political, and personal.
Father Hecker was penetrated with the belief that the intelligence
and liberty, whose well-ordered enjoyment he had witnessed in
America, and which he loved so deeply himself, were divine
invitations to the apostolate of the Holy Spirit. He was profoundly
impressed with the certainty of the development, the extension, and
the permanence of these political and social changes; and he knew
that they demanded of men a personal independence of character far in
advance of previous generations. And he knew, also, that for the
sanctification of such men the aids of religion, though not changed
in themselves, must be applied in a different spirit. Discipline and
uniformity, though never to be dispensed with, must yield the first
places to more interior virtues. The dominant influence must be
docility to the guidance of the Holy Spirit dwelling within every
regenerate soul. Applying this, towards the end of his life, to
religious communities, Father Hecker wrote: "The controlling thought
of my mind for many years has been that a body of free men who love
God with all their might, and yet know how to cling together, could
conquer this modern world of ours." The sentence may be taken as a
brief description of the Paulist community as he would have it. And
it is easily seen why free men loving God with all their hearts are
suited to conquer this modern world; because men are determined to be
free.
The following extracts from notes, letters, and diaries more fully
develop this idea:
"A new religious order is an evidence and expression of an uncommon
or special grace given to a certain number of souls, so that they may
be sanctified by the practice of particular virtues to meet the
special needs of their epoch, and in this way to renew the spiritual
life of the members of the Church and to extend her fold. A new
community is this, or it has no reason for its existence. The means
to accomplish its special work are both new and old. It should lay
stress on the new, and not despise but also make use of the old. 'The
wise householder bringeth forth from his treasury new things and
old.'"
"The true Paulist is a religious man entirely dependent on God for
his spiritual life; he lives in community for the greater security of
his own salvation and perfection, and to meet more efficiently the
pressing needs of the Church and of humanity in his day."
"The Church always finds in her wonderful fecundity wherewith to
supply the new wants which arise in every distinct epoch of society."
"A new religious community, unless its activity is directed chiefly
to supplying the special needs of its time, wears itself out at the
expense of its true mission and will decline and fail."
"We must realize the necessity of more explicitly bringing out our
ideal if we would give a sufficient motive for our students and
members, keep them in the community, bring about unity of action, and
accomplish the good which the Holy Spirit demands at our hands. A
Paulist, as a distinct species of a religious man, is one who is
alive to the pressing needs of the Church at the present time, and
feels called to labor specially with the means fitted to supply them.
And what a member of another religious community might do from that
divine guidance which is external, the Paulist does from the
promptings of the indwelling Holy Spirit."
"A Paulist is a Christian man who aims at a Christian perfection
consistent with his natural characteristics and the type of
civilization of his country."
"So far as it is compatible with faith and piety, I am for accepting
the American civilization with its usages and customs; leaving aside
other reasons, it is the only way by which Catholicity can become the
religion of our people. The character and spirit of our people, and
their institutions, must find themselves at home in our Church in the
way those of other nations have done; and it is on this basis alone
that the Catholic religion can make progress in our country."
"What we need to-day is men whose spirit is that of the early
martyrs. We shall get them in proportion as Catholics cultivate a
spirit of independence and personal conviction. The highest
development of religion in the soul is when it is assisted by free
contemplation of the ultimate causes of things. Intelligence and
liberty are the human environments most favorable to the deepening of
personal conviction of religious truth, and obedience to the interior
movements of an enlightened conscience. To a well-ordered mind the
question of the hour is how the soul which aspires to the
supernatural life shall utilize the advantages of liberty and
intelligence."
"The form of government of the United States is preferable to
Catholics above other forms. It is more favorable than others to the
practice of those virtues which are the necessary conditions of the
development of the religious life of man. This government leaves men
a larger margin for liberty of action, and hence for co-operation
with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, than any other government under
the sun. With these popular institutions men enjoy greater liberty in
working out their true destiny. The Catholic Church will, therefore,
flourish all the more in this republican country in proportion as her
representatives keep, in their civil life, to the lines of their
republicanism."
"The two poles of the Paulist character are: first, personal
perfection. He must respond to the principles of perfection as laid
down by spiritual writers. The backbone of a religious community is
the desire for personal perfection actuating its members. The desire
for personal perfection is the foundation stone of a religious
community; when this fails, it crumbles to pieces; when this ceases
to be the dominant desire, the community is tottering. Missionary
works, parochial work, etc., are and must be made subordinate to
personal perfection. These works must be done in view of personal
perfection. The main purpose of each Paulist must be the attainment
of personal perfection by the practice of those virtues without which
it cannot be secured--mortification, self-denial, detachment, and the
like. By the use of these means the grace of God makes the soul
perfect. The perfect soul is one which is guided instinctively by the
indwelling Holy Spirit. To attain to this is the end always to be
aimed at in the practice of the virtues just named. Second, zeal for
souls; to labor for the conversion of the country to the Catholic
faith by apostolic work. Parish work is a part, an integral part, of
Paulist work, but not its principal or chief work--and parish work
should be done so as to form a part of the main aim, the conversion
of the non-Catholic people of the country. In this manner we can
labor to raise the standard of Catholic life here and throughout the
world as a means of the general triumph of the Catholic faith."
"I do not think that the principal characteristic of our Fathers and
of our life should be poverty or obedience or any other special and
secondary virtue, or even a cardinal virtue, but zeal for apostolic
works. Our vocation is apostolic--conversion of souls to the faith,
of sinners to repentance, giving missions, defence of the Christian
religion by conferences, lectures, sermons, the pen, the press, and
the like works; and in the interior, to propagate among men a higher
and more spiritual life. To supply the special element the age and
each country demands, this is the peculiar work of religious
communities: this their field. It is a fatal mistake when religious
attempt to do the ordinary work of the Church. Let religious practise
prayer and study; there will always be enough of the work to which
they are called."
"Are the Paulists Religious? Yes, and no. Yes, of their age. No, of
the past; the words in neither case being taken in an exclusive
meaning."
"As regards the growth of the Paulist, he must develop in an
apostolic vocation--that is, in apostolic works, Catholic, universal;
not in works which confine his life's energies to a locality. He must
do the work of the Church. The work of the Church, as Church, is to
render her note of universality more and more conspicuous to render
it sensible, palpable. This is the spirit of the Church in our
country."
The following refers to the second trait of the character above
given: "A Paulist is to emphasize individuality; that is, to make
individual liberty an essential element in every judgment that
touches the life and welfare of the community and that of its
members. Those who emphasize the community element are inclined to
look upon this as a dangerous and impracticable experiment."
"_Individuality is an integral and conspicuous element in the life of
the Paulist._ This must be felt. One of the natural signs of the true
Paulist is that he would prefer to suffer from the excesses of
liberty rather than from the arbitrary actions of tyranny."
"The individuality of a man cannot be too strong or his liberty too
great when he is guided by the Spirit of God. But when one is easily
influenced from below rather than from above, it is an evidence of
the spirit of pride and that of the flesh, and not 'the liberty of
the glory of the children of God.'"
What follows touches the relation between the personal and common
life:
"Many other communities lay the main stress on community life as the
chief element, giving it control as far as is consistent with
fundamental individual right; the Paulists, on the contrary, give the
element of individuality the first place and put it in control as far
as is consistent with the common life."
"The spirit of the age has a tendency to run into extreme
individuality, into eccentricity, license, revolution. But the
typical life shows how individuality is consistent with community
life. This is the aim of the United States in the political order, an
aim and tendency which we have to guide, and not to check or
sacrifice."
"The element of individuality is taken into account in the Paulist
_essentially,_ integrally, practically. But when it comes into
conflict with the common right, the individual must yield to the
community: the common life outranks the individual life in case of
conflict. But the individual life should be regarded as sacred and
never be effaced. How this is to operate in particular cases belongs,
where it is not a matter of rule, to the virtue of prudence to
decide."
"When the personality of the individual comes into conflict with the
life of the community, the personal side must not be sacrificed, but
made to yield to the common. In case of conflict, as before said,
common life and interests outrank personal life and interests. It may
be asked how, in the ordinary regulation and government of a
community of this kind, the individual and common elements are to be
made to harmonize? The answer is, that the one at the head of affairs
must be a true Paulist that is to say, keenly sensitive of personal
rights as well as appreciative of such as are common: where the
question is not a point of rule, its decision is dependent on the
practical sagacity and prudence of the superior more than on any
minute regulations which can be given. He who interprets the acts of
legitimate authority as an attack on his personal liberty, is as far
out of the way as he who looks upon the exercise of reason as an
attack on authority."
"How about persons of dull minds or of little spiritual ambition
coming into the use of this freedom? First, no such person should be
allowed to enter into the community: such persons should be excluded.
Second, a full-fledged Paulist should have passed a long enough
novitiate to have acquired the special virtues which are necessary
for his vocation. Absence of supernatural light is the cause why a
man is not fit to be a Paulist, for he cannot understand rightly or
appreciate the value of the liberties he enjoys. He either is or he
becomes a turbulent element in the community."
"A Paulist, seeing that he has so much individuality, should have a
strong, nay, a very strong attrait for community life; he should be
fond of the Fathers' company, prefer them and their society when
seeking proper recreation, feel the house to be his home and the
community and its surroundings very dear to him; in the routine of
the day all the community exercises and labors are, in his judgment,
of paramount obligation and importance.
"The civil and political state of things of our age, particularly in
the United States, fosters the individual life. But it should do so
without weakening the community life: this is true individualism. The
problem is to make the synthesis. The joint product is the Paulist."
"A Paulist should cultivate personal freedom without detriment to the
community spirit; and, vice versa, the community spirit should not be
allowed to be detrimental to personal freedom. But when the
individual life runs into eccentricity, license, and revolution, that
is a violation and sacrifice of the community life."
"The duty of the Paulist Superior is to elicit the spontaneous zeal
of the Fathers and to further it with his authority. For lack of
one's own initiative that of another may be used, and herein the
Superior offers a constant help. But the centre of action is
individual, is in the soul moved by the Holy Ghost; not in the
Superior of the community or in the authorities of the Church. And if
he be moved by the Holy Spirit, he will be most obedient to his
superior; and he will not only be submissive to the authority of the
Church, but careful to follow out her spirit."
In explaining the routine of daily life Father Hecker said: "The
member of a community who does not make the common exercises [of
religion] his first care is derelict of his duty. A common exercise
should be preferred to all other devotional practices or occupations
whatever; as far as possible all other exercises ought to be made
subordinate to common ones, which should never be omitted without
permission of the superior."
Father Hecker was once asked: "Which would you prefer: to have a rule
and manner of life adapted to a large number of men, embracing many
of a uniform type, men good enough for average work, intended to
include and seeking to retain persons of mediocre spirit, and having
a dim understanding of our peculiar institute? or would you prefer
the rule to be made only for a select body, composed of such men as
----and ----, and the like?'" [Answer:] "I should prefer the rule to
be made for the smaller and more select body of men. Religious
vocations are not common, but special. It is a fatal mistake for
religious to take the place of secular priests."
No one can be misled by what he has read in the foregoing pages into
the notion that Father Hecker had any other aim than the entire
consecration of liberty and intelligence to the influence of the Holy
Spirit. To know Father Hecker well was to be more deeply impressed
with his longing for the reign of the Spirit of God in men's souls
than even with his love of human liberty. In his esteem the worth of
the latter was altogether in proportion to its aptitude for the
former. His love of liberty was that of a means to an end--the
perfect oblation of the inner man to God. He aimed at individuality
because of his belief in the action of the Holy Ghost in the
individual soul. Such action, he was quick to maintain, is given to
every Christian, but it is to be looked for in a high degree in those
who are called by a special vocation to assist independent characters
to find the spirit of God within them; or, if already known, to obey
His direction implicitly. Paulists after Father Hecker's heart would
be men whom experience and study had rendered fit instruments for
disseminating the knowledge of the ways of God the Holy Ghost in
men's hearts; for instructing the faithful how to distinguish the
voice of God in the soul from the vagaries of the imagination or the
emotions of passion, and able to stimulate a ready and generous
response to every call of God from within.
It is because of this indwelling of the Holy Spirit in every
regenerate soul that Father Hecker so vigorously maintained that the
freedom of the individual is a golden opportunity for the Catbolic
apostolate, according to the text "Where the Spirit of the Lord is,
there is liberty." Freedom, he affirmed, was in absolute consonance
with Catholic doctrine. But he furthermore insisted that it has
become the world-wide aspiration of men by interposition of Divine
Providence and with a view to their higher sanctification; and
however grossly abused, it is yet a direct suggestion to an
apostolate whose prospects are in the highest degree promising. And
this is the answer to the question which reasonable persons may well
ask, namely: Why should the new institution differ so radically from
the old ones, which were certainly works of God? Because the change
of men's lives in the entire secular and natural order is in the
direction of personal liberty and independence, and this change is a
radical one. "The Eternal-Absolute is ever creating new forms of
expressing itself." If, indeed, men's aspirations for liberty and
intelligence be all from the powers of darkness, then let every
longing for freedom be repressed and condemned, crushed by authority
in the state, anathematized by the Church. But if men are yearning to
be free, however blindly, because God by their freedom would make
them holier, then let us hail the new order as a blessing; and let
those who love freedom and are worthy of it use its privileges to
advance themselves and their brethren nearer to immediate union with
the Holy Spirit.
It has been seen that the important question whether the end of the
new community would be better attained with the usual religious vows
or without them was decided in the negative. They were not definitely
rejected in the beginning; but starting without them, the Fathers
were willing to allow experience to show whether or not they should
be resumed. The lapse of time but confirmed the view that the
voluntary agreement and the bond of fraternal charity were, under the
circumstances, preferable as securities for stability and incentives
to holiness.
There can be little doubt that Father Hecker's ideas on this feature
of the religious state had been greatly modified between the writing
of the _Questions of the Soul_ and the end of the struggle in Rome.
Much is said in that book of community life in the Catholic Church,
and generally as rendered stable and its spirit of sacrifice made
complete by the vows; and in the statement given in Rome to his five
chosen advisers, he says that one reason for writing the volume named
was to induce young men to enter the religious orders as the only
means of perfection--meaning orders under vows. But when he was
released from his own obligations and was confronted with the choice
of means for following his vocation, the horizon broadened away until
he could see beyond the institutions and traditions in which he had
lived since entering the novitiate at St. Trond. His ideas of
perfection in its relation to states of life underwent a change.
Therefore he said, Let us wait for the unmistakable will of God
before we bind ourselves with vows amidst a free people. He never
depreciated the evident value of these obligations; indeed, he seldom
was heard to speak of them. But he knew from close observation the
truth of the words of the Jesuit Avancinus:
"The net (St. Matthew 13:44) is the Catholic Church, or, to take a
narrower view, it means the station in which you are placed. As in a
net all kinds of fish are to be found, so in our position, as in all
others, there are good and bad Christians. . . . Should yours be a
sacred calling, you are not, on that account, either the better or
the more secure; your sanctity and your salvation depend on yourself,
not on your calling." (_Meditations,_ Fourteenth Friday after
Pentecost)
It never entered into the minds of the Fathers to question the
doctrine and practice of the Church concerning vows. But personal
experience proves the lesson of history, that what religion needs is
not so much holy states of life as holy men and Women.
Looking back into the past, Father Hecker saw St. Philip Neri, to
whom he had a great devotion and for whose spiritual doctrine he had
a high admiration. The following is from an exponent of that
doctrine, and is much in point:
"Although our Fathers and lay brothers [Oratorians] make no vow of
obedience, as do religious, they are, nevertheless, no way inferior
in the perfection of this virtue to those who profess it in the
cloister with solemn vows. They supply the want of vows with love,
with voluntary promptitude, and perfection in obeying every wish of
the superior. And it is a thing for which we must indeed thank God,
that without the obligation of obeying under pain of sin, without
fear of restraint or other punishment (except that of expulsion in
case of contumacy), all the subjects are prompt in this obedience,
even in things most humiliating and severe, according to the terms of
the rule. All take pleasure in meeting the wishes of the superior,
etc." (_The Excellences of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri,_ p. 136.
London: Burns & Oates.)
Father Hecker did not dream that by relinquishing the vows he and his
companions in the Paulist community had cast away a single incentive
to virtue capable of moving such men as they, or had even failed to
secure any of the insignia adorning the great host of men and women
in the Catholic Church whose entire being has been given up to the
divine service. "The true Paulist," said he once, "should be fit and
ready to take the solemn vows at any moment." He felt strongly the
truth of the following words of the Jesuit Lallemant:
"A desire and hunger after our perfection, a determined will to be
constantly tending towards it with all our strength--let this be
always our chief object and our greatest care. Let us bear in mind
that this care is more of the essence of religion [i.e., of a
religious order] than vows themselves; for it is on this that our
whole spiritual progress depends. Herein consists the difference
between true religious and those who are so only in appearance and in
the sight of men. Without this care to advance in perfection the
religious state does not secure our salvation; but nothing is more
common than to deceive ourselves on this point." (_The Spiritual
Doctrine of Father Louis Lallemant, S.J,_ p. 111. New York: Sadlier &
Co.)
With regard to stability, men of stable character need no vow to
guarantee adherence to a divine vocation, and men of feeble character
may indeed vow themselves into an outward stability, but it is of
little fruit to themselves personally, and their irremovability is
often of infinite distress to their superiors and brethren. The
episcopate is the one religious order founded by Our Lord, and its
members are in the highest state of evangelical perfection; yet they
are neither required nor advised to take the oaths or vows of
religious orders.
Neither Father Hecker nor any of his associates had the least
aversion to the vows. On the contrary, they had lived contentedly
under them for many of their most active years, and it will be
remembered of Father Hecker that he never found them irksome, had
never known a temptation against them.
The question which arose was a choice between two kinds of community,
the one fast-bound by external obligations to the Church in the form
of vows, placing the members in a relation of peculiar strictness to
the Canon Law; or another kind, in which the members trusted wholly
to the strength of Divine grace, and their own conscious purpose
never to give up the fight for perfection; which of these states
would better facilitate the action of the Holy Spirit in the present
Providence of God; and which of them would tend to produce a type of
character fitted to evangelize a nation of independent and
self-reliant men and women? The free community was chosen.
No doubt this involved some risk of criticism, particularly in the
beginning, for it was a wonder to many that men should organize for a
life-long endeavor after perfection and not swear to it, especially
as none of the free communities existing in Europe had houses in
America, for the Sulpicians belong to the secular clergy. And there
was also danger of unworthy subjects creeping in under favor of a
freedom they were unfit to enjoy. For it may be reproached against us
that we are apt to be victimized by men ruled by caprice, indulging
in extravagant schemes or deluded by wandering fancies; and also by
superiors who would let everybody do as he pleased. No doubt such
dangers are to be guarded against. But vowed communities do not claim
to be free from difficulties. No state of life and no organization
claims to be so perfect as totally to prevent abuse of power on the
part of superiors or caprice and sloth on the part of members.
Both kinds of organized religious life have their difficulties: the
one, the martinet superior and the routine subject; the other, the
capricious subject and the lax superior. In one kind the bond of
union as well as the stimulus of endeavor is mainly obedience,
fraternal charity assisting; in the other it is mainly fraternal
charity, obedience assisting; each has to overcome obstacles peculiar
to itself.
What has been said in this chapter, besides serving to exhibit Father
Hecker's principles as a founder, will be, we trust, a sufficient
answer to the silly delusion which the Paulists have encountered in
some quarters, that their society tolerates a soft life and supposes
in its members no high vocation to perfection; or that the voluntary
principle allows them a personal choice in regard to the devotional
exercises, permitting them to attend or not attend this or that
meditation or devotion laid down in the rule, as "the spirit moves
them." This is as plain an error as another one which had much
currency for years and which is not yet everywhere corrected: that
the Paulist community was open to converts alone and received none
others.
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