THE PAULIST PARISH AND MISSIONS
IN serving the parish, the Paulists, led by Father Hecker, endeavored
to utilize the individual qualities of each member, as well as the
advantages of a community, so as to bring them to bear as distinct
forces upon the people. What George Miles had said of them as
missionaries, as quoted in a previous chapter, applied to them as
parish priests, and told accordingly in result. Their personal
excellences found free room for activity, without any lack of oneness
of spirit and without interfering with harmony of action.
The missionary makes an efficient parish priest. Accustomed to severe
labor as well as to very moderate recreation, he pours the energy of
apostolic zeal into parochial channels. A high order of preaching is
often the result, combined with tireless application to visiting the
sick, hunting up sinners, and hearing confessions. On the other hand,
the experience of regular parish duty is of assistance to the
missionary when he returns to his "apostolic expeditions," as Pius
IX. called them; he is all the better fitted to plan and execute his
proper enterprises from having obtained a fuller knowledge of the
ordinary state of things in a parish.
It will not be expected that a detailed account of the parish work of
St. Paul's will here be given, or more than a brief summary of that
of the missions. These latter were kept up with vigorous energy from
1858 till the close of the war in the spring of 1865. On April 4 of
that year Father Baker died, and the missions, which had been a
grievous burden to the little band, now became an impossibility. They
were suspended till 1872, excepting an occasional one, given not so
much as part of the current labor of the community, as to retain
their sweet savor in the memory and as an earnest of their future
resumption. But up to Father Baker's death this small body of men had
preached almost everywhere throughout the country, getting away from
the South just before the war blocked the road. Eighty-one missions
had been given, hundreds of converts had been received into the
Church and many scores of thousands of confessions heard. Numerous
applications for missions were refused for want of men to preach
them. Scarcely a city of any size in the United States and Canada but
knew the Paulists and thanked God for their missions.
The Fathers conducted them in the same spirit as when they were
Redemptorists, and followed, as the community still continues to do,
substantially the same method. It is not easy to improve on St.
Alphonsus. But they did not fail to bring out the qualities and call
for the peculiar virtues demanded by Divine Providence in these
times. Their preaching was distinguished by appeals to manliness and
intelligence, as well as to the virtues distinctly supernatural. The
people were not only edified by their zeal and religious discipline,
but the more observant were attracted by the Paulists' freedom of
spirit, and by their constant insistence on the use of the reasoning
faculties to guide the emotions aroused by the sermons. The
missionaries were men of native independence, and their religious
influence was productive of the same quality. Great attention was
paid to the doctrinal instructions. As to special devotions, the
Paulists have never had any to propagate, though competent and
willing to assist the pastor in his own choice of such subsidiary
religious aids. Non-Catholics of all classes were drawn to hear the
convert missionaries, and the exercises usually received flattering
notices from the secular press. An unrelenting warfare was carried on
against the dangerous occasions of sin peculiar to our country and
people, and the Fathers were from the beginning, and their community
is yet well known for particular hostility to drunkenness, and to the
most fruitful source of that detestable and widespread vice, the
saloon. Their antagonism to drunkenness showed their appreciation of
its evil supremacy among the masses, and the condemnation of the
saloon was a necessary result.
This attitude of the missionaries was often a bitter-sweet morsel to
the pastors, nearly all of whom at that time had been trained in the
Old World. They were glad of the good done, yet sorry to see their
liquor-dealers put to public shame. One pastor is recorded as saying:
"The only people that have looked sad at this mission are the first
men in my parish, the rum-sellers." The following is a piece of
evidence worth publishing, though it is but one of very many which
could be produced. It is found in the Mission Record in Father
Baker's handwriting:
"A Catholic one evening, on his way to the mission, stopped in a
grog-shop and took a glass with the proprietor. 'Won't you go with me
to hear the Fathers?' said the guest. 'No,' said the other, 'these
men are too hard on us. They want all of us liquor-dealers to shut up
our shops. If we were rich we could do it; but we an't--we are poor.
These men are too high and independent; Father wouldn't dare to speak
as they do. But after all,' continued he, 'they are good fellows; see
the effect of their labors.' Then, taking out of his pocket a
crumpled letter which he had received through the post-office, and
which was badly spelled and badly written, he read as follows: 'SIR:
I send you three dollars which I received by mistake three years ago
from your clerk. And now I hope that you will stop _selling
damnation,_ and that God may give you grace to stop it.
Yours: A Sinner.'"
Whatever may have been the misgivings of some, the opposition of the
Paulists to the liquor-traffic was approved by the most enlightened
and influential prelates and priests of the country, as is shown by
the number of cathedrals and other prominent churches in which the
missions were preached. It should be added that this antagonism to
drunkenness, to convivial drinking, and to saloon-keeping, not only
received the unanimous applause of the Catholic laity, but edified
the non-Catholic public, and brought out many commendations from the
secular press as well as from the police authorities of our crowded
cities. A mission is a terror to obstinate evil-doers of all kinds,
but to habitual drunkards and saloon-keepers it is especially so. The
attitude of the Church in America on this entire subject, as
officially expressed by the decrees of the Third Plenary Council and
by its pastoral letter, fully justifies the action of Father Hecker
and his companions.
As soon as the church in Fifty-ninth Street was opened the community
exerted itself to make the surroundings attractive. The building
occupied but a small part of the property, the rest of which was laid
out in grass-plats and gravel walks; many shade-trees and some
fruit-trees were set out, and a flower and vegetable garden planted.
It was Father Hecker's delight to superintend this work, and to
participate actively in it when his duties allowed. The grounds soon
became an attractive spot, to which in a few years church-goers from
all parts of the city began to make Sunday pilgrimages. They came in
considerable numbers every Sunday to assist at Mass or Vespers in St.
Paul's quiet, country-like church. Meantime the residents of the
parish, not very numerous and nearly all of the laboring class,
formed deep attachments for their pastors, and an almost ideal state
of unity and affection bound priests and people together.
Nearly the entire region was covered with market gardens, varied with
huge masses of rock, and groups of shanties. Very many of the
parishioners of that early period lived in these nondescript
dwellings, of which they were themselves both the architects and
builders, a fact which added not a little to their quaint and
picturesque appearance. The sites upon which these "squatters'" homes
were placed, and over which roamed and sported their mingled goats,
dogs, and children, are now occupied in great part by blocks of
stately residences and apartment houses; but we know not whether the
grace of God abounds more plentifully now than it did then. At any
rate, whoever heard Father Hecker in those primitive days call his
parish "Shantyopolis," could see no sign of regret on his part that
he had a poor and simple people as the bulk of his parishioners.
Much attention was given to the preparation and preaching of sermons,
with the result of a full attendance at High Mass on Sundays.
Beginning with 1861, a volume of these discourses was published under
Father Hecker's direction each year, till a series of seven volumes
had been completed. These were very well received by the Catholic
public, and were bought in considerable numbers by non-Catholic
clergymen. They had an extensive sale, though when their publication
was first proposed it was feared that they would not succeed. They
are almost wholly of a strictly parochial character, brief, direct in
style, abounding in examples from every-day life, and plentifully
illustrated with Scripture quotations. Although Father Hecker
preached regularly in his turn, only a few of his sermons were
contributed to these volumes, but his suggestions and encouragement
greatly assisted the other Fathers in preparing theirs, as indeed in
all their duties, parochial and missionary. Some years after the
series was ended two volumes of Five-Minute Sermons were published,
providing short instructions for Low Masses on Sundays.
The Paulist Church also became well known for the attention paid to
the public offices of religion, as well as for rubrical exactness in
ceremonies, the greater feasts of the year being celebrated with all
the splendor which a simple church-building and limited pecuniary
means allowed.
Father Hecker was from first to last strongly in favor of
congregational singing, and assisted to the best of his power in
introducing it. It began in our church in modest fashion back in
those early days, and was fostered zealously at the Lenten devotions
and society meetings. It never failed of some good results, and has
finally attained a flourishing state of success in this parish. His
attention to the children was constant. No matter who had charge of
the Sunday-school, as long as his health permitted Father Hecker was
there every Sunday that he was at home, asking questions, talking to
the teachers and children, enlivening all by his encouragement and
cheerfulness. He was a martinet on one question, and that was
cleanliness, and its kindred virtue, orderliness. He was never above
working with mop, broom and duster indoors, and shovel and rake in
the garden; and this trait added much to the appearance of things as
well as to the comfort of all concerned in the use of the convent and
the church.
Though assiduous in every parish duty, his favorite task was the
relief of the poor. They multiplied in number in undue proportion to
the increase of the parish, drifting out this way from the
overcrowded quarters down town. Father Hecker enlisted the best men
and women in the congregation in the work of caring for them,
organizing a conference of the St. Vincent de Paul Society, in whose
labors he joyfully and energetically participated.
The death of Father Baker was, humanly speaking, a loss to the
community beyond all calculation, and was the great event of the
first period of the Paulist community. Father Hecker had the very
highest estimate of his holiness, and mourned him with the mingled
sorrow and joy with which saints are mourned. The reader should get
Father Hewit's Memoir of Father Baker if he would know his virtues.
Father Hecker was often heard to say that few men understood his
ideas so clearly as did Father Baker and had so much sympathy with
them. And his death was the signal for an impulse whose power plainly
indicated its supernatural origin. Up to that time there had been but
two priests added to the community, and those who had offered
themselves as novices and been rejected were, as a rule, little
calculated to inspire hope. But from 1865 onwards good subjects,
mostly converts, applied in sufficient numbers, and in a few years
the missions were resumed. But what was of even more importance, the
apostolate of the press, started in the publication of THE CATHOLIC
WORLD the month in which Father Baker's death occurred, assumed a
national prominence, and together with the Catholic Tracts and the
Catholic Publication Society set the Paulists at work in their
primary vocation, the conversion of non-Catholics to the true
religion. To this, and to Father Hecker's lectures, we now turn. Of
course we might dwell longer on the parish and the missions, about
which there are many things of interest left untold, but only the
lapse of time can sufficiently dissociate them from living persons to
allow of their being made public.
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