CONCLUSION
FATHER HECKER'S prayer during all these years was a state of what
seemed almost uninterrupted contemplation of varied intensity. He
attended the evening meditation of the community as long as he had
strength to do so, frequently giving a commentary on the points read
out at the beginning, simple, direct, and fervent. He was exceedingly
fond of assisting at High Mass on Sundays and feast days, and he had
a small oratory built between the house and the new church, from
which, by passing a few steps from his room, he could hear the music
and see the function through a window opening into the sanctuary.
This often overpowered him with emotion, which was sometimes so
strong as to drive him back to his room and into bed. Once a week and
on the more solemn festivals was as often as he could say Mass, or
even hear it, on account of his extreme weakness in the mornings. For
the last three or four years of his life to say Mass at all became a
struggle which was as curious as it was distressing to witness. Those
who had often read of such things in the lives of the servants of God
were nevertheless amazed at the sight of them in Father Hecker. The
following is from a memorandum:
_"Father Hecker:_ Do you know what it is to be in spontaneous
relations with God--where the Divine Object works upon the soul
spontaneously? It is that which prevents me from saying Mass, because
I make a fool of myself. At any point I am apt to be so influenced by
God as to be utterly deprived of physical force, to sink down
helpless. At my brother's house they expect it and get me a chair. A
few moments on a chair, and I am ready to go on. Now, if I yield to
this I know that I shall be thrown into a clean helpless state, and I
have a practical work to do. _Question:_ Does this effect come at
receiving Communion? _Answer:_ I don't know, as I have never yet
received Communion out of Mass. But I am afraid of it. Any such thing
is apt to throw me off, and I am afraid. _Question:_ But suppose it
to be God's will that you should say Mass notwithstanding this
difficulty? _Answer:_ Then let Him bring it about."
At one time several months passed, months of very low vitality in
body and awful darkness of soul, during which he neither said Mass
nor received Communion. The following memorandum describes how this
period, perhaps the most painful of his life, was ended:
"Christmas, 1885.--For the first time since early summer Father
Hecker undertook to say Mass: I assisted him, and a stormy time we
had of it. It was at five in the morning and in the oratory. He
wanted to have the door locked, but there was no key. 'Don't speak a
word to me,' he said while he was dressing in his room. Arrived in
the oratory, he sank down upon a bench as if some one had struck him;
he threw his birettum down on the floor, and began to weep and cry in
a very mournful way and aloud. But he quickly recovered, and rested
as if he were preparing to be hanged. I supported him over to the
altar, and as he began the _Judica_ he blubbered out the words like a
school-boy being whipped. Most of the Mass he said out loud, hardly
holding in his sobs anywhere except from the _hanc igitur_ till near
the _Pater Noster._ His calmest time was during that most solemn
part, and at his Communion. Three or four times he was forced to sit
down on a chair I had provided for him on the predella. At the
_Memento_ for the living he was deeply affected and patted the floor
with his foot, sobbing aloud and acting like a child with an
unendurable toothache. He was afraid of the _Pater Noster_ and asked
me to say it with him, which I did; also various words and sentences
in other parts of the Mass. I have heard him say that the _Pater
Noster_ is a prayer which breaks him down. After he was through he
insisted on trying to say the Pope's prayers. We said the Hail Marys
and the Hail, Holy Queen, together, and I recited the prayer for him.
I had to take off his vestments the best I could while he sat, and
when I got him down to his room and into bed, he was in a state of
nearly complete unconsciousness. After saying my three Masses, I saw
him again at about 8.30, found him up and dressed and very bright,
and he has been particularly so all day."
What follows is from a letter dated early in 1886, and seems to refer
to the occasion above described. He speaks of himself in the third
person:
"And he [Father Hecker] was never so occupied as now, although he is
doing nothing and has been in that condition for months. Though he
does hear Mass, he does not, because he cannot, say it--without
showing what a _big fool_ he is. However he has begun again to say
it. If it had not been for human respect he would not have said it
last Sunday; he was too feeble. God is killing him by slow fire, by
inches. He dies terribly hard."
If Father Hecker had had an unimpaired physical system when his
interior trials came, he might have resisted the nervous depression
which they caused, at least well enough to maintain an active part in
his undertakings. Or if his bodily weakness, resulting from his early
austerities, had been accompanied with interior equanimity, he might
have held up. A rickety ship can, with care and skill, get into port
if the engine is sound, and so can a sound ship with a broken-down
engine sail home, however slowly. But with both a rickety ship and a
disabled engine the port should be near at hand or there is danger of
shipwreck. That Father Hecker did not die long before he did, was
due, apart from God's special designs, to the extraordinary skill and
care of Doctor James Begen, who was also an attached friend. Mr.
Anthony Ellis, one of his former penitents, served him in his
sick-room out of pure love from 1879 until his death, which preceded
Father Hecker's by about a year. He had a kind-hearted successor in
Mr. Patrick McCann.
Father Hecker's beloved brother George died on February 14, 1888. He
had been ailing for some time and Father Hecker went to see him
frequently. . . . "George and I," he once said, "were united in a way
no words can describe. Our union was something extremely spiritual
and divine." The following memorandum tells how Father Hecker
received the news:
"George Hecker died about nine o'clock last night, and when I
informed Father Hecker of it this morning he was deeply moved. 'Don't
say a word to me!' he cried, 'not a word. Read something! Read
something quick!' I stepped over to the table and took the Scriptures
and began to read the thirteenth chapter of St. John, read it
through, and another chapter. By that time he calmed down. He only
wept twice, except a few little sobs, and went out riding as usual
this afternoon. He is profoundly moved. 'I knew it,' he said this
morning; 'I saw it, I saw it last night--it seemed to me that I saw
it. I came near coming to your room at half-past ten, but concluded
not to do so.' Another time to-day he said: 'If God enables me to
bear this I hope I shall be able to do my allotted work.'"
He bore it well, but it added very much to a burden already too
heavy. For some weeks afterwards he now and then moaned and wept for
his brother, and this happened occasionally till summer came. Those
who attended Father Hecker could not but be convinced, from what they
saw and heard, that God allowed George to visit his brother more than
once after his death, and these supernatural interviews were
productive of mingled consolation of soul and pain of body to the
survivor. George Hecker was worthy of his brother's love. He was a
noble character, full of that sort of religion nowadays most needed.
His piety flourished in the withering atmosphere of wealth and in the
turmoil of commercial life. Industry, thrift, enterprise, quick
perception of opportunities, determination, a keen sense of his
rights and a bold hand to defend them, manly frankness, were
conspicuous traits in him and made him a rich merchant. But all these
qualities served him as well for high spiritual ends. He was
essentially and dominantly a spiritual man, fond of prayer, regular
in all religious duties. He was as honest as the day, and all for
conscience' sake and the love of God. His understanding was wide and
clear, his heart tender, simple, and courageous. He loved his wife
and children, he loved his brother Isaac, with an absorbing
devotedness, and these loves were blended and mingled into one with
the love of God. His charities are known to the reader, but they
should be understood as the result not merely of affection for his
brother, or even of faith in his apostolate, but also from his own
perception of the intrinsic worth of the undertakings themselves. We
know not what quality could be added to George Hecker to make him a
model Christian of our day.
His death had a serious effect on Father Hecker's state of body and
mind. But from the previous autumn and during the winter following he
had failed rapidly. In fact, he had requested and received the last
Sacraments from Father Hewit on September 15, 1887; but this was on
account of an alarming irregularity of the heart's action, which was
but temporary. He had no long distance to drop at any time to get to
the bottom, and it became evident in the summer of 1888 that the end
was not far off. He could not stand the strong air of Lake George
that summer, and came home after being there but a couple of weeks.
He tried the sea-side with even worse success; and the short journeys
he made were extremely painful. The paroxysms of angina pectoris
became more frequent and daily left their victim less able to rally.
Patience strained to the uttermost by physical suffering, the mind
distressed, fits of despondency and of indescribable gloom, the
weight of a body of death--all this he had borne for sixteen years,
with only occasional intervals of peace. There was little left to
suffer except death. His bodily resistance grew weaker towards the
end of his last summer on earth, and he lost flesh rapidly. The
fulness of his face was gone by autumn, and a wan look, as of
decaying force, was stamped upon it. He suffered in literally every
member of his body, by turns or simultaneously. We find the following
memorandum:
"_Question:_ What's the matter with the back of your head? [he was
rubbing it with extract of witch hazel]. _Answer:_ It is sore, it
hurts me. _Q._ Well! As soon as one part is better another gets out
of order? etc. _A._ Do you know it was all revealed to me and
foretold [beginning to weep]. _Q._ When? In your novitiate? _A._ Yes.
_Q._ But not all the details of your sufferings? A. Yes, all the
details. But I will not say another word about it. _Q._ But you ought
to, etc. [He refused to say more.]"
Little by little during the latter years Father Hecker's visitors had
become very few. An occasional call was received from an old friend,
lay or cleric, and this was not apt to be repeated, so painful was
the contrast between the former Father Hecker and the present one.
Instead of the active and powerful man, of contagious courage and
hopefulness, they saw a tall, wan old man bending with the weight of
years and of suffering, but still majestic in his look and bearing,
with a white beard, and soft, attractive eyes. The quick movement,
the joyous greeting, even the smiling serenity, had passed away, and
instead an air of sadness had come, or of enforced cheerfulness.
The following memorandum, taken over two years before his death,
tells of a relief which he hoped would be permanent; but such was not
to be the case:
"Father Hecker said to-day: 'Only within the last three days has God
released me from the sensation that I might die any instant. Oh! how
I have suffered from that feeling for ten years. I did not know
whether I should ever be delivered from it. Now, little by little God
is lifting it off from my soul. For ten years I have been under this
cloud. Oh, how terrible a suffering it has been!' This he said, his
hands covering his face; he had interrupted me to say it while I was
reading St. John of the Cross. 'Oh!' he added, 'how I could weep for
my sins,' and so on for a few more words."
The clouds soon settled down again. The following was noted a little
over a month after the above:
"Father Hecker said to me to-day: 'There was a time when I seemed to
know God so clearly and to be so conscious of His attraction that my
whole thought and wish was death; to break the chain of life to be
united to God in Paradise. Now it is altogether different; nothing
but darkness and depression.'"
Here is another memorandum, taken some time before the above:
"Father Hecker said: 'God is now visiting me with the profoundest
desolation of spirit. I have the most deadly terror of death; if I
yielded to it I should tremble from head to foot. Yet there is a
spell on me which makes me wish that I may die without sensible faith
and deprived of every present spiritual comfort. . . .' He also said
many things about his continued and unbroken desolation of spirit
these several years back. 'Yet,' said he, 'I never knew that God
would permit me to come so near to Him and see so much of Him as I
have.' Then he made me read to him the first chapter of the Book of
Job. . . . After he had gone to bed I read to him part of an article
in _The Month_ on the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and he
discoursed meantime to me most profoundly on that topic. And he
added: 'One reason why I have always been so much interested in the
doctrine of the Holy Ghost acting in the soul is a practical one,
because I myself have never had any other director, though I have
more than once opened my mind entirely to others and profited by
their advice, but none was or could be really my director. Hence,
too, I am so much attracted to saints who have had to struggle on
alone like St. Catherine of Genoa, who was without a director for
twenty-five years.'"
Towards the close of October, 1888, two months before death, Doctor
Begen saw that the end was approaching. This was evident from a
sudden and general failure of strength, the appetite, not much at any
time, seeming now to vanish quite away, although Father Hecker's
strong will forced down a little nourishment. This loss of strength
caused the heart to work badly and to give an occasional sudden
alarm. Internal congestions followed, relaxing the bowels and causing
much bodily annoyance. Meantime he was hardly ever out of his room
and many days he spent entirely in bed. His fits of depression of
spirits were more frequent than usual and more saddening. He no
longer rested at all, what sleep he got being produced by drugs and
serving but to pass the time unconsciously. From the beginning of
December he was apt to fall into a semi-comatose state, though
generally in full use of his faculties. Some days before he died he
seemed to realize that the long struggle was nearly over, and he no
longer talked to the doctor or others of the medicines or of his
bodily ailments, nor did he seem to think of them; and his mind
appeared to have suddenly grown peaceful. The Scriptures as well as
other books were read to him, as usual, up to the very evening before
he died. On the night of the 20th of December, two days after his
sixty-ninth birthday, the last sacraments were administered, Father
Hecker receiving them without visible emotion but in full
consciousness. During the following day he was quiet and apparently
free from acute pain, the benumbed body refusing to suffer more; but
the mind calm and attentive. When the morning of the 22d came all
could see that his time was near at hand. In the middle of the
forenoon the members of the community were gathered at the bedside,
the prayers for the dying were read and the indulgence was given. As
this was over the doctor arrived, and Father Hecker, who had
gradually lost advertence to all around him, was roused by him into
full consciousness, and gave the community his blessing, feebly
raising his hand to make the sign of the cross and uttering the words
in a light whisper. Then he sank away into unconsciousness and in an
hour ceased to breathe.
And so Father Hecker died. Our beloved teacher and father, so
blameless and brave, so gentle and daring, so full of God and of
humanity, entered into his eternal beatitude.
Dying on Saturday, and so near Christmas, the funeral was delayed
till Wednesday, the feast of St. Stephen, the body being embalmed.
Christmas afternoon it was placed in the church and was visited and
venerated by great throngs of people. A vast concourse attended the
Requiem Mass the next morning, which was sung by Archbishop Corrigan
surrounded by many priests, an eloquent sermon being preached by
Father T. J. Campbell, the Provincial of the Jesuits. The body was
placed in the vaults of the old cathedral.
The life we have been following is a harmonious whole from beginning
to end. The child tells of the youth, the youth promises a noble man,
and the promise is more than fulfilled. He was guileless; no dark
ways of forbidden pleasure ever heard the sound of his footstep.
There was no barter of conscience for ambition's prize. He was
fearless; from beginning to end there was no halt from want of
courage. Nor did he rush forward before the light came to show the
road, though he often chafed and panted to hear the word of Divine
command; he never moved at any other. But when the voice of God bade
him forward he never flinched at any obstacle. The ever-recurring
persuasion that there were so few who saw God's will as he saw it cut
him to the heart, and the mystery of the Divine times and moments
grew upon him with fatal force till the end, until he drooped and
pined away with grief that he could but taste the first-fruits. Yet
he was ever submissive to the Divine Will, to live, to die, to begin,
to end the work, to be alone or to be of many brethren, to lead or to
follow. Though a most active spirit, he was yet contemplative, and to
unite the manifestation of the Holy Spirit in the inner and outer
life was the end he always kept in view; but he was distinctively an
interior man.
Few men since the Apostles have felt a quicker pulse than Isaac
Hecker when the name of God was heard, or that of Jesus Christ or the
Holy Spirit. Few men have had a nobler pride in the Church of Christ,
or felt more one with her honor. Few men have grown into closer
kinship with all the family of God, from Mary the great mother and
the holy angels down to the simplest Catholic, than Isaac Hecker. But
his peculiar trait was fidelity to the inner voice. "There are some,"
he once said, "for whom the predominant influence is the external
one, authority, example, etc.; others in whose lives the interior
action of the Holy Spirit predominates. In my case, from my
childhood, God influenced me by an interior light and by the interior
touch of his Holy Spirit." The desperate demand of Philip, "Lord,
show us the Father and it is enough," was Father Hecker's cry all
through early life. After the founding of his community, in 1858, his
life was like an arctic year. From that date till 1872 there was no
set of sun. The unclouded heavens bent over him ever smiling with
God's glorious light; and its golden tints lit up all humanity with
hope and joy. Then the sun went down to rise no more. The heavens
were dark and silent, or rent asunder with wrathful storms, only a
transient flash of the aurora relieving the gloom. When the light
dawned again it was to beam upon his soul in the ecstasies of
Paradise.
We know not what to say of his faults, nor can we think that he had
any that were not to be traced to his eager love of God's cause, such
as his overpowering men with pleading for God in their souls; or too
easily crediting unworthy men who prated to him of liberty and the
Holy Spirit; or over-fondness during his illness for playing in the
lists of fancy at an apostolate denied him in the battle of active
life; he repined at being forced to plan great battles in a
sick-room. He could not help betraying a heart heaving with a pent-up
ocean of zeal, while he was creeping about helplessly, often too
feeble to speak above his breath. A lover of liberty, its only boon
to him at last was liberty to accept and rivet upon himself the chain
of patient love.
Some may say "Hecker was before his time." But no man is before his
time if, having a divine message, he can get but one other to accept
it, can arrest men's attention, can cause them to ponder, to ask why
or why not, whether this be the day or only its vigil. The sower is
not before his time though he dies before the harvest; there is a
time to sow and a time to reap.
And now the tree is dead, but its ripe fruits are in our bosoms
bearing living seeds, which will spring up in their time and give
fruit again each according to its kind.
The life of Father Hecker is a strong invitation to the men of these
times to become followers of God the Holy Ghost, to fit their souls
by prayer and penance in union with Christ and his Church, for the
consecration of liberty and intelligence to the elevation of the
human race to union with God. We do not bid him farewell, for this
age, and especially this nation, will hail him and his teachings with
greater and greater acclaim as time goes on. As God guides His Church
to seek her Apostolate mainly in developing men's aspirations for
better things into fulness of Catholic truth and virtue, Isaac Hecker
will be found to have taught the principles and given the methods
which will lead most surely to success.
THE END
________________________
APPENDIX
________________________
LETTERS FROM CARDINAL NEWMAN
I
THE ORATORY, BIRMINGHAM, February 28, 1889.
MY DEAR FATHER HEWIT: I was very sorrowful at hearing of Father
Hecker's death. I have ever felt that there was this sort of unity in
our lives--that we had both begun a work of the same kind, he in
America and I in England, and I know how zealous he was in promoting
it. It is not many months since I received a vigorous and striking
proof of it in the book he sent me [_The Church and the Age_]. Now I
am left with one friend less, and it remains with me to convey
through you my best condolement to all the members of your society.
Hoping that you do not forget me in your prayers,
I am, dear Father Hewit,
most truly yours,
JOHN H. CARD. NEWMAN.
II
THE ORATORY, BIRMINGHAM, March 15, 1890.
DEAR FATHER HEWIT: In answer to your letter I am glad to be told what
is so interesting to me, viz., that the Life of Father Hecker is in
preparation. I had a great affection and reverence towards him, and
felt that which so many good Catholics must have felt with me on
hearing of his illness and death. I wish, as you ask me, that I could
say something more definite than this of his life and writings, but
my own correspondence with friends, and especially the infirmities of
my age, burden me and make it impossible for me to venture upon it.
This, alas! is all that I have left me now by my years towards the
fulfilment of welcome duties to the grateful memory of an effective
Catholic writer (I do not forget his work in England) and a
Benefactor, if I may use the term, to the Catholic Religion, whose
name will ever be held in honor by the Catholic Church.
Yours most truly,
J. H. N.
________________________
RECOLLECTIONS OF FATHER HECKER BY THE ABBÉ XAVIER DUFRESNE, OF GENEVA
I
I first knew Father Hecker in 1873, meeting him at a Catholic
Congress held at Ferney and presided over by Monsignor Mermillod.
Father Hecker visited Geneva several times after that, living in the
closest intimacy with our family. He spent several weeks on a visit
with my father, Dr. Dufresne, at a chalet situated on Salane mountain
above Geneva, being at the time in feeble health and seeking recovery
by a prolonged sojourn in Europe. For this enforced inactivity he
recompensed himself by continual and earnest conversations, for the
purpose of gaining to his ideas all whom he believed capable of
understanding them, whether Protestants or Catholics. There was about
him an indescribable charm which mysteriously drew one to him and
penetrated one with his influence. Although he did not know French
thoroughly and preferred to use English, yet he spoke with such
power, elevation, exuberance, and depth of thought that he captivated
his hearers.
When I made Father Hecker's acquaintance I had just lost my eyesight,
being at the end of my ecclesiastical studies, and not yet ordained.
He did my soul much good by teaching me a kind of holiness which was
joined to lively intelligence and the most energetic activity. Father
Hecker remains to me not only the type of an American priest, but of
the modern one, the kind needed by the Church for the recovery of the
ground lost as a result of Protestantism and infidelity, as well as
to enable her to start anew in her divine mission.
II
The principal impression produced by Father Hecker on those who came
in contact with him was one of sanctity. In his company one felt his
whole being influenced as if by something venerable and supernatural,
and a constant inclination to correspond to the action of the Holy
Spirit and submit the human will to the divine. In conversing with
him about spiritual things one was transported into a higher region,
the heart growing warmer and the conscience more sensitive. Father
Hecker plainly inclined by habit to the type of character given us by
Jesus Christ. He suffered much, both physically from weakness of
nerves and morally on account of enforced inactivity, yet he not only
never complained but was always cheerful. This was the greater merit
in him because he seemed by nature impatient of opposition and
contradiction. He had a sagacious mind and easily discovered the
faults of others, but, although he spoke of men and affairs with
openness and candor, he yet ever sought for favorable interpretations.
Like St. Francis de Sales, he knew how to judge of people and yet
remain full of charity for his neighbor. Profoundly individual, and
profoundly attached to his ideas, like all Anglo-Saxons, and in fact
like all who have acquired the Protestant habit of free inquiry, he
nevertheless had for the Church a docility almost naïve and
infantile; and this was because he recognized in her the authority
and the action of the Holy Spirit.
It may be said of him without exaggeration that he was every moment
ready, if it became necessary, to bear witness to the divinity of the
Church by martyrdom, and in fact he often made that declaration. In
him the most heroic virtue was faith. He had come into the Catholic
Church in spite of the most extreme natural repugnance, and he
remained in it, overcoming the perpetual objection of Protestants
that Catholicity could not be the truth because Catholic countries
had become the least powerful and the least prosperous in the
civilized world. On this point he loved to expound the text of
Scripture which says that it is better to lose an eye and an arm and
enter into the kingdom of heaven, than to save both, and fall into
hell. His piety was wholly interior. It consisted in the perpetual
exercise of the presence of God. He had a natural disinclination for
devotional practices as they are in vogue among the southern races.
His tendency was to spiritualize as much as possible all the
devotions in use in the Church. His own principal one was to the Holy
Ghost and His divine Gifts. He never spoke of the Incarnation and the
Eucharist without deep emotion and a contagious love. As to devotion
to the Blessed Virgin, he explained it in a most elevated manner,
ever showing, and with great dignity and nobility of manner, how it
flowed from the principle of the divine maternity. The last book he
sent me was one on the Blessed Virgin written by an American priest.
Since Father Hecker's death I have never failed a single day to
invoke him in my prayers, and to his intercession I attribute many
graces obtained, some of them very important.
III
Father Hecker had a marvellous openness of heart. I heard him relate
several times the story of his life, his conversion, his joining the
Redemptorists, his case before the Roman Congregations, and the
founding of the Paulist community. I can still recall the banks of
the Lake of Geneva at the Villa Bartoloni, where Father Hecker,
walking with a friend and myself, told us of his leaving the
Redemptorist order. It was the way in which he talked of so delicate
a matter that enabled me to appreciate that the man was a saint. He
liked to repeat, while on this subject, what Cardinal Deschamps had
said of him: "Here is a man who has been able to leave our
Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer without committing even a
venial sin."
In my opinion, Father Hecker was, after Père Lacordaire, the most
remarkable sacred orator of the century. This does not apply to his
writings, for his ideas lost much of their force in the process of
getting into print. Like all natural orators his chief quality was a
power of drawing and persuading, which, to use an expression often
applied to Père Lacordaire, had something magnetic about it. He had a
prodigious gift of showing his Protestant or infidel hearers that
their own hearts and their own reason aspired by instinct towards the
Catholic truth which he was teaching them. In that way he drew his
hearers to discover the truth in their own minds instead of receiving
it by force of argument or any extrinsic authority. To acquire this
power he had made a great study of the Gospel, and, sustained by
Divine grace, he went about the exposition of the truth as Jesus
Christ did. One of the most original aspects of his mind was that he
joined the practical sense of the American to the taste and aptitude
of the European for speculation. He had not been able to make a
complete course of studies because he had spent several years in
commercial life, but he had great natural gifts for metaphysics,
theology, and above all mysticism.
Unlike the English converts of the Oxford school, he had reached
Catholicity by way of liberal Protestantism, which he had renounced
because it could not satisfy the religious aspirations of his nature.
It would be interesting to study his case in connection with those of
Newman and Manning, for it shows that souls are led to Catholicity by
all roads, even the most opposite, and that minds most inclined to
rationalize can be drawn to the Church as easily as those of a
conservative or traditional temperament.
IV
But I wish to dwell especially on what preoccupied Father Hecker's
mind and formed the fundamental theme of his eloquent words. We were
just on the morrow of the Vatican Council, of the defeat of France by
Prussia, and in the first agonies of the Culturkampf in Germany and
Italy. Now, if one remembers that Father Hecker was of an American
family originally from the town of Elberfeld, Prussia, he can better
understand the gravity of the problem which weighed upon his mind, as
upon that of so many others. Must we admit, it was asked, that the
Council of the Vatican has affixed its seal upon the decadence of
Catholicity, binding the Church to the failing fortunes of the Latin
races? Must Protestantism finally triumph with the Saxon races? And
here Father Hecker's faith did not halt an instant, but grasped the
difficulty in all its terrible magnitude. His solution may be
questioned by some, but I believe that no one will dispute that the
mind which conceived it was of the first order.
Father Hecker remarked, as did many others, that, starting from the
sixteenth century, the Church, although ever exerting a considerable
influence, no longer appeared at the head of the world's activity.
This was in contrast with what she had done in the era of the
conversion of the Roman Empire, during that of the invasion of the
barbarians, and amid the immense religious movement which
characterized the apogee of the Middle Ages. Father Hecker discovered
the cause of this lessening influence in the fact that since the
sixteenth century the Church had been compelled to stand upon the
defensive. This had greatly paralyzed her power of initiation and her
liberty. As a consequence of the Protestant heresy, which threatened
the utter destruction of the principle of authority, the Church had
been forced to concentrate on that side of her fortress all her means
of defence. In order to protect herself from the excesses of the
principle of individuality and free inquiry, she had been obliged to
resort to a multitude of restrictive measures, which were conceived
in a very different spirit from that which animated her in previous
centuries. In the sixteenth century the Church placed before
everything else the idea of authority. She sacrificed the development
of personality to fostering the association of men whose wills were
absolutely merged by discipline in one powerful body. It can be seen
at a glance how intimately and profoundly the spirit of the dominant
religious orders of the later era differs from that of the great
orders of the Middle Ages, in respect to the expansion of nature and
the development of individuality. The needs of the sixteenth century
were altogether different from those of the ages preceding it, and to
meet those needs God inspired St. Ignatius with the idea of a
different type of Christian character. The result was the triumphant
repulse of Protestantism from all the southern nations. But the
victory was gained at the price of real sacrifices; the Catholics of
the recent centuries have not displayed the puissant individuality of
those of the Middle Ages, the types of which are St. Bernard, St.
Gregory VII., Innocent III., St. Thomas Aquinas. The Divine Spirit
often exacts the sacrifice of certain human qualities for the
preservation of the faith; and it is in this sense that we should
interpret the mysterious words of Jesus Christ, that it is better to
lose an eye and an arm and not fall into hell, than to save an eye
and an arm and be lost eternally.
The Council of the Vatican, Father Hecker maintained, by giving to
the principle of authority its dogmatic completion, has placed it
above all attacks, and consequently has brought to a close the
historical period in which it was necessary to devote all efforts to
its defence. A new period now opens to the Church. She has been
engaged during three centuries in perfecting her external organism,
and securing to authority the place it should have in working out her
divine life; she will now undertake quite another part of her
providential mission. It is now to be the individuality, the
personality of souls, their free and vigorous initiative under the
direct guidance of the Holy Spirit dwelling within them, which shall
become the distinctive Catholic form of acting in these times. And
this will all be done under the control of her divine supreme
authority in the external order preventing error, eccentricity, and
rashness.
The Latin races were fitted by nature to be the principal instruments
of the Holy Spirit during the period just passed. In the new one the
Anglo-Saxon and Teutonic races, of a nature strongly individual and
independent, will take their turn as instruments of Divine
Providence. This is not saying that the development of the Church is
the result of the natural aptitudes of races, but that God, who has
created these aptitudes, takes them one after the other, and at the
hours He chooses, and causes them to serve as instruments for
carrying out His designs. It was thus, from the fourth to the seventh
century, that He made use of the metaphysical subtilty implanted by
Him in the Greek genius, issuing in all those great definitions which
have fixed not only the substance but the verbal form of Catholic
dogma. Hence the first general councils were all held in the East.
Father Hecker cherished hopes for the conversion of the Teutonic and
Anglo-Saxon races. Doubtless God could convert them suddenly, but
considering the way heretofore followed that conversion will be
brought about insensibly and by the two following instrumentalities:
On the one hand, the new development of individuality in souls within
the Church will create a sympathetic attraction towards her on the
part of Protestants, who will discover affinities with her of which
they were wholly unaware. On the other hand, the more the Protestant
races expand, the more they will find the dwarfed Christianity which
they profess falling short of their aspirations, and by that means
they will be inclined towards Catholicity. It is not a little
remarkable that Father Hecker expressed himself thus during the last
years of the pontificate of Pius IX., at a moment when such ideas
seemed to be least in favor in high Catholic circles. But soon
afterwards the pontificate of Leo XIII. began, and with it a movement
in the spirit indicated by the American priest, and in a manner so
strikingly in accord with his views that Father Hecker seemed to have
been enlightened from above in his presages of the future.
Father Hecker developed a grand theological synthesis of what he
called the exterior and interior mission of the Holy Spirit in the
Church. He has explained it in a pamphlet; but how much more
impressive it was when he expounded it in person! We had the
privilege of hearing him do so in a long conversation with the most
celebrated Protestant minister of French-speaking countries, the
illustrious philosopher and orator, Ernest Naville. Father Hecker
said that the antipathy of Protestants for the Church arose from the
fact that they imagined that Catholicity reduced all religion to
obedience to external authority. Protestants, on the other hand,
pretend to place all religion in the interior life, directly
generated in souls by the Holy Spirit, and it is for this reason that
Catholicity impresses them as a tyrannical usurpation and a stupid
formalism. In this they are deceived, as a close acquaintance with
Catholics and with such writings as those of St. Francis de Sales and
St. Teresa soon proves to them. So, also, when they fancy that the
authority of the Church is not necessary to the preservation of the
action of the Holy Spirit in the soul. As a matter of fact, the
innumerable divisions of Protestants among themselves plainly show
that the interior action of the Holy Ghost does not extend to making
each individual infallible. To safeguard souls against deception,
scepticism or illuminism, there is need of another action of the Holy
Spirit which shall be conservative of the interior life. That other
action is exterior, and is exercised by means of the authority of the
Church. The Holy Spirit cannot be brought into contradiction with
Himself. By His action in the exterior authority of the Church He can
never interfere in the least degree with the fulness or the
spontaneity of His own interior action in souls.
The exterior action is one of control and of verification, to hinder
souls from being lost in the depths of illusion and in the deceits of
pride. But besides this, humility, obedience, self-abnegation,
virtues dear by excellence to the heart of Jesus Christ, are
impossible without due submission to the external authority. When one
believes only in himself, he obeys only himself, and hence has never
practised complete renunciation nor complete humility.
Father Hecker also maintained that the direction of souls in
confession should be made to strengthen and develop individual life.
We do not need blood-letting, he said, as if we suffered from
plethora, but rather we need a course of tonics, sea-baths, and the
invigorating air of the mountains. We should not hold our penitents
in leading-strings, but should teach them to live a self-reliant life
under the direction of the Holy Spirit. Souls tempered by that
process would render the Church a thousand times more service than
they do now.
No doubt such souls may sometimes run the risk of pride and of
temptation to revolt. But in such cases the Church is so provided
with power by the dogma of infallibility, as proclaimed by the
Vatican Council, as to be able to counteract this danger without
serious loss, as was proved in the case of Döllinger and the Old
Catholics.
The Holy Spirit, preparing for a great development of individual
life, has made provision beforehand that the Church should be armed
with power sufficient to repress all waywardness, and this was done
by the Vatican Council. Some had feared that the definition of
infallibility would introduce an extravagant use of authority, and
lead to a diminution of reasonable liberty and individuality in the
Church even greater than before. But the very contrary has been the
result.
With reference to the interior life, I can affirm that Father
Hecker's was full and rich. Having spent the greater part of his life
in a devouring activity, at its close he lived as a true
contemplative. He was a genuine mystic. We heard him discourse with
marvellous beauty on the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Eucharist,
expounding these great truths in a way not only to enrapture one with
their splendor, but utterly to refute deism, pantheism, and
materialism. The latter error, he said, owed its introduction partly
to the fact that Protestantism had refused to the senses their
legitimate place in divine worship, this excessive spiritualizing
having brought about a reaction.
V
Father Hecker often spoke of the future reserved for Catholicity in
the United States, saying that it was there that the union of the
Church with democracy would first take place. In that nation the
prejudice against the Church is not so strong as in Europe, and her
position is free from the embarrassments of traditional difficulties.
Catholicity is there valued for its immediate effect upon human
nature, and the rancor born of historical recollections is not in
such full control of men's minds; hence conversions are more easily
made. Furthermore, Father Hecker believed that it would finally be
discovered that the Protestant spirit is contrary to the political
spirit of the American Republic. America has based her Constitution
on the fact that man is born free, reasonable, and capable of
self-government. The Protestant Reformers, on the contrary, never
ceased to teach that original sin deprived man of his free will and
made him incapable of performing virtuous acts; and if Protestants
seek to escape from this whirlpool of fatalism, they fall into
infidelity. The day will come when Americans will admit that if they
are to be at once religious and reasonable, they must become
Catholics. Therefore, whether it be acknowledged or not, every
development of political liberty in the United States contributes to
the advance of Catholicity. The Constitution of the United States has
formulated the political principles most conformable to the Canons of
the Council of Trent.