. . . . . . . .

"At that time (towards the end of the novitiate) I felt a special attraction and devotion toward Our Blessed Lord in the Holy Sacrament and an almost irresistible desire of receiving the blessed Communion of Divine love. This desire so far from having abated has greatly increased, so that I have a constant hunger and thirst for Our Lord in the sacrament of His body and blood. If it were possible I would desire to receive no other food than this, for it is the only nourishment that I have a real appetite for. I cannot consider it other than the source and substance of my whole spiritual and interior life. The day on which I have been deprived of it I have experienced a debility and want of both material and spiritual life like one who is nearly famished. The doctrine of the real presence of our Lord seems to be with me a matter of conviction arising more from actual experience than from faith. At times, when I would make my visit, I am seized with such a violent love towards the Blessed Sacrament that I am forced to break off immediately, being unable to support the attraction of the Spouse, the Beloved, the Only One of my soul. For some time back, wherever I may be, or on whatever side I turn, I seem to feel the presence of Our Lord in the Sacrament in the tabernacle. It seems as though I were in the same sphere as our Lord in the sacrament, where there appears no time nor space, yet both are.

. . . . . . . .

"At times, especially during the great retreat before making the vows, I was as it were inebriated with love, so that I scarcely knew what I said or did.

. . . . . . . .

"This was the stage of my interior life on entering the house of studies at Wittem, October, 1846. Here the principal acts in all my spiritual exercises were those of resignation and conformity to the will of God, an entire fidelity to the inspirations and attractions of the Holy Spirit, and a total abandonment of myself to the conduct of Divine Providence. God seemed always engaged in my soul by means of His grace in repressing my own activity. The end of my proper activity, I said to myself, is its destruction. God commands a total and entire abandonment of the soul to Him in order that He may with his grace destroy and annihilate all that He finds in it against His designs and will. God at times seemed to demand of me a frightful and heroic abandonment of my soul to His good pleasure. God alone knows how to exercise the soul in virtue, and the Holy Spirit is its only true master in the spiritual life. Not only did the spirit of God excite and elicit in me voluntary acts of self-abandonment, but often my soul was as if stripped of all support, and placed, as it were, over a dark and unfathomable abyss, and thus I was made to see that my only hope was to give myself up wholly to Him. The words of Job well express this purgation of the soul when he says: 'The arrows of the Lord are in me, the rage whereof drinketh up my spirit, and the terrors of the Lord war against me.' (Here follow other quotations from the book of Job.) Sometimes these pains penetrate into the remotest and most secret chambers of the soul. The faculties are in such an intensive purgation that from the excessive pain which this subtile and purifying fire causes they are suspended from their ordinary activity, and the soul, incapable of receiving any relief or escaping from its suffering, has nothing left but to resign itself to the will and good pleasure of God. Though enveloped with an unseen but no less real fire, suffering in every part, limb, and fibre from indescribable pains, fixed like one who should be forced to look the sun constantly in the face at midday, she is nevertheless content, for she has a secret consciousness that God is the cause of all her sufferings, and not only content—she would suffer still more for His love."

[Here follows an account of the mortifications to which this interior pressure drove him, shortening of sleep, wearing hair-shirts, severe discipline, abstinence and fasting, and the like.]

. . . . . . . .

"There were no penances that I have read of that seemed to me impossible. The vilest habits and other things that I was allowed to wear and to use gave me the greatest pleasure. The thought of not having wherewith to cover my nakedness, to be contemned, ridiculed, and spit upon, gave me an extreme joy. My delight consisted in wanting that which is considered necessary . . . all this I did not only do without reluctance, difficulty, and pain, but with great pleasure, ease, and joy. They seemed as nothing, and I was as though I had scarcely need of a body in order to live, or, in other words, it seemed that I lived for the most part independent of the body.

"It was about this period that God gave me the grace which I had long desired and sighed after: to be able to act and suffer without the idea of any recompense. I call it a gift, for although I had so long wished and demanded of God the power to act and to love Him disinterestedly, still I was unable to do so. I felt myself a slave and hireling in the service of God, and this mortified me and made me much ashamed of myself. But when this grace was given, which happened unexpectedly, I could not forbear going immediately to my director to express my joy of the favor I had received, and the freedom and magnanimity of soul which it inspired me with. I do not mean to say that the soul has no idea of any recompense, for she has it tacitly, but this is not her formal intention in her actions; for she is to such a degree animated to act for the good pleasure and sole glory of God, that she quasi forgets all else. . . .

"Sometimes I have felt singularly present and in intimate communion with certain of the saints, such as St. Francis of Assisi, St. Bonaventure, St. Thomas, St. Peter of Alcantara, our holy father Alphonsus, etc. During this time—and sometimes it is for many days—the life, the virtues, the spirit with which the saint acted occupies almost exclusively my mind. I seem to feel their presence much more intimately and really than that of those who are around me. I understand and comprehend them better, and experience a more salutary influence from them than perhaps I would have done had I lived and been with them in their time. . . . Twice I remember having experienced in this manner the presence of Our Blessed Lord. While this lasted I felt myself altogether another person. His heroic virtues, His greatness, tenderness, and love seemed to inspire me with such a desire to follow Him and imitate His example that I lost sight of all things else. His presence excited in me a greater love and esteem for the Christian virtues than I could have acquired otherwise in years and years. . . .

"About the commencement of the second year of studies, during some weeks my faculties were drawn and concentrated to such a degree towards the centre of my soul that I was as one bereft of his exterior senses and activity. Before the vacation I had desired to pass that time in solitude and retreat, but it was not allowed."

We have omitted much of this singular document, including detailed accounts of supernatural occurrences, and also quotations from the works of Goerres, St. Teresa, St. John of the Cross, St. Bonaventure, Father Rigoleu, Richard of St. Victor, Scaramelli's Directorium Mysticum, and other mystical writings. These references he had collected to certify to the reality of his experience.

Throughout all these three years of trial he had employed what he calls his "lucid intervals" of mental power in studying in his own way, God aiding him in His own way to the destined end, as He had hindered him from choosing any other way. These intervals seemed so slight in his memory that the reader has seen his statement that he had not studied at all. When he had been a year at Clapham he was found, on examination, to be well enough prepared, as he had promised he would be. Having been ordained sub-deacon and deacon at old Hall College, by Bishop Wiseman, he was ordained priest by the same prelate in his private chapel in London. The event took place on the 23d of October, 1849, the feast of the Most Holy Redeemer. Father Hecker said his first Mass the following day at Clapham, that being the feast of St. Raphael the Archangel: one year from the date of his account of conscience written out and given to his superiors.

The following is from a letter to his mother announcing his ordination:

"DEAR MOTHER: You have been doubly blessed by Almighty God within the past few weeks. Your youngest son has been ordained priest in God's one, holy, Catholic Church, and prays for you daily when he offers up to God the precious body and blood of His beloved Son, our Lord; and besides you have received, by the marriage of another of your sons [George], a new daughter, who, being also a child of the Holy Church, must be kind, dutiful, pious, fearing God, and loving above all things our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. Are not these, dear mother, blessings? Do they not convey to your heart joy and consolation? They ought and surely do. Your latter days dear mother, will be your happiest."

The remainder of the letter is filled with exhortations to enter the Church, and arguments drawn from Scripture.

We may mention a letter written to Father Hecker by Father Heilig on the eve of the former's departure for America; a message full of affectionate good wishes and claims of friendship and union in prayer with the singular young pilgrim from the Western World.

The following extracts from the memoranda may be of interest as embodying Father Hecker's views of how to study divinity, resulting from his own experience in preparing for the priesthood:

"March, 1884.—I told Father Hecker, in course of conversation, about my reading the life of the Cure of Ars. He said: 'A saintly man indeed, and one gifted with a supernatural character to an extraordinary degree. But it seems to me that his biographer misunderstood him somewhat. He seems to admit that the Cure of Ars had a naturally stupid mind, because he had so much difficulty in getting through his studies for the priesthood. The truth, probably, was that just at that time the supernatural action of the Holy Spirit came upon him and incapacitated him for his studies. But everything about his after life shows that, though a rustic man, he had a good mind, a keen native wit, quick and clear perception. I had something the same difficulty myself.

"During my novitiate and studies one of my great troubles was the relation between infused knowledge and acquired knowledge; how much one's education should be by prayer and how much by study; the relation between the Holy Ghost and professors.

"In the novitiate they were all too much on the passive side— unbroken devotional and ascetic routine. In the studentate, too much on the active side—leaving nothing for infused science and prayer as a part of the method of study. They soon broke me down. I told them so. If I went on studying I would have been driven mad. Let me alone, I said. Let me take my own way and I will warrant that I will know enough to be ordained when the time comes. They said I was a scandal. Then they sent me to England to De Held. I am persuaded that in the study of divinity not enough room is given to prayer and not enough account made of infused science."





CHAPTER XXIII

A REDEMPTORIST MISSIONARY

"I WOULD not have become a priest had I lived in Europe, for I never had or could have any strong attrait for sacerdotal functions. But I felt that the Church in America was in need of all the help that could be given by her children for the work of the priesthood." Father Hecker said this when near his end, and a full knowledge of his character bore him out in it. The sacerdotal, the ecclesiastical, were qualities which he had assumed with full consciousness of their sanctity, yet they united with his other characteristics in a way to leave traces of the point of contact. He was certainly an edifying priest, and to hear his Mass was to be spiritually elevated by his joyous fervor. But you would never say of him "he is a thorough ecclesiastic, he is a typical priest." The external aids of religion he imparted with a reverence which displayed his faith in his priestly character as a dispenser of the sacramental mysteries of God. But the other mysteries of God which are hidden in his providential guidance of men, he could expound with the instinctive familiarity of a native gift; the voice of God in nature, in reason, and in conscience, and its response in revelation, he could elicit with a power and unction rarely met with. He has left the following words on record: "After my ordination the duties of the sacred ministry appeared to me most natural; the hearing of confessions and the direction of souls was as if it had been a thing practised from my childhood, and was a source of great consolation."

The year spent in England after ordination was occupied by Father Hecker mainly in parochial duties at Clapham and some neighboring stations attended by the Redemptorists of that house. Father Walworth enjoyed some missionary experience with Fathers Pecherine and Buggenoms, but Father Hecker had only been at one or two small retreats—one at Scott-Murray's estate in company with Father Ludwig and another at that of Weld-Blundells in Lancashire; but in neither of these had he preached or given any instructions, serving only in the confessional and in hunting up obstinate sinners. He certainly did preach once before leaving England, perhaps only once, and that was at Great Marlowe, near London, in the church built by the Hornihold family. It was on Easter Sunday, 1850, and was well remembered by Father Hecker and referred to in after years. He thought the sermon a good one as a beginning, but it seems to have given him no encouragement, and we venture to think that if it profited his hearers somewhat it also amused them a little. He needed a teacher, and he found one in Father Bernard, the newly appointed provincial of the American province.

In 1850 Father Bernard Joseph Hafkenscheid* was made Provincial of the Redemptorist houses in America. His patronymic was too formidable for ordinary use, and he was universally known as Father Bernard. He was in the prime of life on taking this office, and although he had spent twenty years on the missions in Holland, his native country, in Belgium and England, he yet showed no signs of these labors; he continued them for fourteen years longer, for the most of the time in the Netherlands, his death resulting from accident in 1865. By common consent he is ranked in the highest order of popular preachers. He had entered the community from the secular priesthood shortly after his ordination; he had made a brilliant course of studies at Rome, which was crowned by the doctorate of the Roman College. He was physically a tall, powerful man, and of majestic bearing. His features were full of intelligence, his glance penetrating, his voice clear, sympathetic, and vibrating, his gestures expressive. If half that is handed down of Father Bernard be true, he was a wonderful preacher of penance and of hope, his high gifts of natural eloquence served by a perfect education and inspired by a most enthusiastic love of the people.

[* The reader is referred to his life by Canon Claessens (Catholic Publication Society Co.) It is all too brief, yet is a good summary of the career of the great Redemptorist missionary, one of St. Alphonsus' noblest sons.]

He was a popular preacher in the best sense of the term, calm in demeanor and simple in language as he opened, but when at the point of fervor pouring forth his soul in a fiery torrent of oratory, whose only restraint was the inability of the human voice to express all that the heart contained. In style impassioned, he yet often chose language bordering on the familiar, but was not vulgar. He is an instance of the fallacy of the saying that the preacher must stoop to his auditory if he would be popular. Father Bernard was ever true to himself, never appeared less than an educated priest and grave religious, and yet he was a most popular preacher. The great truths of eternal life are a universal heritage, and the use of plain words is not getting down from good style even in the literary sense, and a familiar manner is a trait of affection. We have stopped the reader for this moment with Father Bernard because he was Father Hecker's teacher of mission preaching and instructing, and was ever beloved by him as an appreciative friend and a wise and indulgent preceptor. He had made his first visit to America with Father de Held in 1845, but remained only a few months to acquire information and gain impressions for a report to the Rector Major. He made a second voyage in January, 1849, acting as superior of the American houses, as Vice-provincial, and remained about eighteen months. The United States now forming a separate province and Father Bernard made Provincial, he demanded Fathers Hecker and Walworth as his subjects, and they were given to him.

A letter from Father Hecker announces his departure for New York as fixed for some time in October, 1890; but delays occurred, and the following is an extract from one to his mother, dated January 17, 1851; it says that the departure is fixed for some day the same month:

"Oh! may Almighty God prosper our voyage, and may His sweet and blessed Mother be our guide and protector on the stormy sea. And may my arrival in America be for the good of many souls who are still wandering out of the one flock and away from the one shepherd! I hope that to no one will it be of more consolation and benefit than to you, my dearest mother."

The ship was named the Helvetia and sailed from Havre the 27th of January, the captain being a genuine down-east Yankee, and the crew a mixed assortment of English and American sailors. Father Bernard's party consisted of Fathers Walworth, Hecker, Landtsheer, Kittell, Dold, and Giesen, and the students Hellemans, Mueller, and Wirth, the American fathers having come to Havre from London by way of Dover, Calais, and Paris. The weather was unfavorable during nearly the entire voyage, the ship being driven back into the English Channel and forced to anchor in the Downs. They were beaten about for two weeks before they got fairly upon the Atlantic, and while crossing the Newfoundland banks were in danger from icebergs. Nearly all the party were more or less sea-sick, including Father Hecker. This did not prevent his attempting the conversion of the boatswain, who seemed the only hopeful subject in the ship's company. There were a hundred and thirty steerage passengers, emigrants for the most part from Protestant countries, though a party of Garibaldian refugees and a few equally wild Frenchmen enlivened the monotony of sea-life by some bloody fights. There were but two cabin passengers besides the Redemptorists, and the former being confined to their staterooms by nearly continual sea-sickness, the cabin was turned into a "floating convent," to borrow Father Dold's expression in a long letter descriptive of the voyage, given by Canon Claessens in his Life of Father Bernard.

The wintry and stormy voyage had already tested the missionaries' patience for some weeks, when Father Bernard informed the captain that he and his companions were going to make a novena to St. Joseph to arrive at New York on or before his feast, March the 19th. "St. Joseph will have to do his very prettiest to get us in," was the answer. And when the ship was still far to the east, being off the banks, and the weather quite unfavorable, and only three days left before the feast, the captain called out: "St. Joseph can't do it—give it up, Father Bernard." But the latter would still persevere; and that night the wind changed. The Yankee ship now flew along at the rate of fourteen miles an hour. When the eve of St. Joseph's Day came they were wrapped in a dense fog, and the captain, dreading the nearness of the coast, hove to. When day dawned the fog lifted, and the ship was found to be off Long Branch, and a wrecked ship was seen on the shore; she had been driven there during the night. The pilot soon came aboard and they sailed through the Narrows and into the harbor of New York, having spent fifty-two days on the ocean. As they approached the city a little tug-boat was seen coming to meet them. It bore George and John Hecker and Mr. McMaster, whose cordial greetings were the first welcome the young Redemptorists heard on their return to the New World. They were soon at their home in the convent in Third Street, and on the sixth of April following the first mission was opened in St. Joseph's Church, Washington Place, New York.

Here is Dr. Brownson's greeting, from his home in Chelsea, Mass., received by Father Hecker soon after his arrival:

"My very dear friend, you cannot imagine what pleasure it gives me to learn of your arrival in New York. . . . I want to see you much, very much. You have much to tell me that it is needful that I should know, and I beg you to come to see me. Tell your superiors from me that your visit to me will be more than an act of charity to me personally, and that it is highly necessary—not merely as a matter of pleasure to us two—that we should meet; and tell them that I earnestly beg to have you come and spend a few days with me. I am sure that they will permit you to do so in furtherance of the work in which I as well as you are engaged, and I have a special reason for wishing to see you now. I would willingly visit you at New York or anywhere in the United States, but there is no place so appropriate as my own house. . . . I am more indebted to you for having become a Catholic than to any other man under heaven, and while you supposed I was leading you to the church, it was you who led me there. I owe you a debt of gratitude I can never repay . . . Come, if possible, and as soon as possible."

At the Third Street house the new-comers found Father Augustine F. Hewit, a convert from the Episcopal Church, in which he had tarried for a few years on his way from Calvinism to the true religion. He had been a secular priest for a short time previous to entering the order. He was directed to join the newly-formed missionary band, and was destined to be more to Father Hecker than any other man, and to succeed him as superior of the Paulist community.

After more than five years' absence Father Hecker thus finds himself in America, the land of his apostolate, a member of a missionary community whose external vocation is the preaching of penance, and the conversion of sinful Catholics to a good life. A mission is a season of renewal of the religious life among the people of a parish. It is a course of spiritual exercises in which the principles of religion are called forth and placed in more active control of men's conduct, and by means of which their emotional nature is stimulated to grief for sin, love of God, yearning for eternal happiness. The sermons and instructions are given twice, and sometimes oftener, each day, during the early mornings and in the evenings. These exercises are conducted in the parish church, but not by the parish clergy. The people see among them the members of a religious order, men set apart, by the interior touch of the Holy Spirit and the public approval of the church, for this particular work—powerful preachers, confessors as indefatigable as they are patient, priests full of masterful zeal, moving in disciplined accord together against vice. The call they address to the people is the peremptory one: "Do penance, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." Their words are given forth not from the usual pulpit, but from a platform at the communion railing, and in the presence of a high black cross set up in the sanctuary. They wear no surplice or stole while preaching, the only insignia of their office being a crucifix on their breasts. The bishop usually extends to them greater powers than are commonly given for reconciling sinners who have incurred ecclesiastical censures. The Holy See empowers them to extend the most abundant spiritual favors in its gift in the form of indulgences, and the pastor informs the congregation several Sundays beforehand that he expects the entire Catholic population of his parish to attend the mission and receive the sacraments.

To be absorbed in such labors as above described was not the primary object of Father Hecker's vocation, but he accepted his place joyfully as chosen by the evident will of God. The missionary life was never in his eyes what the reader might surmise it to be—a mere interlude in his career, a period of patient waiting. Such is far from having been the case. The missions are eminent works of Catholic zeal, and there is not any vocation known to the active ministry which may not commute with them on equal terms. Human nature has never felt influences more deeply religious than those set at work by missions, recalling the effects of the preaching of the Apostles themselves. Remorse of conscience, loathing for sin, terror at the divine wrath, confidence in God, sympathy for our crucified Saviour, the ecstatic joy of the new-found divine friendship, utter contempt for the maxims of the world, iron determination to love God to the end—these are the sentiments which, by the preaching of missions, are made to dominate entire parishes in a degree simply marvellous. Nor can it be said that these dispositions are fleeting. Allowing for exceptions, especially in large cities, their permanency is often an evidence of the solidity of the motives which inspired them, as well as of the supernatural graces which gave them life. Every missionary will bear witness, as Father Hecker often did, that he has never assisted at a mission in which he was not profoundly impressed by the tears of hardened sinners. Every parish priest, however much he may regret the backsliding of some, will testify to the valuable results of missions among his people: the quickening of faith and the revival of supernatural motives, drunkards reformed, restitutions made, lust cleansed away, families united, the church thronged with worshippers, saloons deserted. Father Hecker never thought that all this was too dearly bought by the dreary toil of the confessional, the discomforts of for ever changing residences and living in strange places, nor even by the growing nerve-troubles which the fathers are often subject to, from brains superheated over and over again in the burning fires of mission preaching. Father Hecker did not think the privileges of such a life too dearly bought even by the postponement of his proper apostolate, and was ever glad of his labors as a missionary.

They schooled him in public speaking. In his antecedents there was abundant reason for diffidence, and he knew full well that what was good enough language for an harangue to the Seventh Ward Democracy would be ridiculous in a Catholic pulpit. Nor was he deceived into the notion of his ability to preach because he could influence men in private. Conversation is not public speaking, and the defects of grammar, or any other such defects, if pardoned in an earnest and honest man in private interchange of views, if committed on the public rostrum are unpardonable and are usually fatal. Father Hecker found in the incessant practice of the missionary platform, and in the assistance of his present superior, exactly what he needed by way of preparation. Besides the mission sermon at night—the great sermon, as it was called—there is a short doctrinal instruction at the same service and a moral one on the sacraments or commandments in the morning. These became his share of the mission preaching, and the school in which he acquired that direct, convincing, and popular manner of discourse for which he was afterwards renowned as a lecturer.

We find the following among the memoranda:

"When I came over to America with Fathers Bernard and Walworth, Bernard wanted to know what I could do. Well, by that time I had given up all hopes of any public career. I couldn't preach. My memory and intellectual faculties generally were so influenced by my interior state that theology was out of the question. The lights that God had given me about the future state of religion in this country were still clear as ever, but I thought that I should have to confine myself to imparting them to particular and individual souls whom the providence of God should throw in my way; for I was persuaded that the Redemptorist community was unfitted for the future work I had caught a glimpse of and I was entirely contented to live and die a Redemptorist, and was quite certain that I should. So, when Bernard asked me what I could do, I told him to get me some place as chaplain of a prison or public institution of charity, as that was about all that I was capable of. But he thought differently.

"My first instructions on the missions were almost word for word given me by Bernard. I didn't seem to have a single thought of my own."

To preach, whether to Catholics or to non-Catholics, one must learn how, and Father Hecker with all his gifts knew that this gift seldom comes from above except by way of reward for steady labor. The opportunity of the missions, and of Father Bernard as a guide, was eagerly accepted in lieu of the prison chaplaincy.

The missions also enabled him to know the Catholic people. The non-Catholics he already knew from vivid recollection of his own former state and from that of his early surroundings; Brook Farm and Fruitlands had completed his knowledge of the outside world; but the Redemptorist novitiate and studentate and his sojourn in England did not give him a similar knowledge of the Catholic people, priesthood, and hierarchy. To the average looker-on Catholicity is what Catholics are, and Catholics in America viewed from a standpoint of morality were then and still are a very mixed population. Why the fruits are worse than the tree is a sore perplexity even to expert controversialists, and Father Hecker had need to equip himself well for meeting that difficulty, a patent one in the rushing tide of stricken immigrants then pouring into America. The missions are an unequalled school for learning men. All men and women in a parish are made known to the missionary, for they walk or stumble through his very soul.

Nor can one fail to see the use of missions as an evidence to the non-Catholic public itself of the supernatural power of Catholicity over men's lives. To practical people like Americans there is no oral or written evidence of the true religion so valid as the spectacle of its power to change bad men into good ones. Such a people will accept arguments from history and from Scripture, but those of a moral kind they demand; they must see the theories at work. A mission is a microcosm of the church as a moral force. It shows a powerful grasp of human nature and an easy supremacy over it. It is an energetic, calm, and clean-sweeping influence for good, bold in its choice of the most sublime truths of supernatural religion as the sole motives of repentance. And it uniformly achieves so complete a victory over the best-entrenched vices that non-Catholic prejudice is invariably shaken at the spectacle. And in America the pioneer work of the apostolate must be to remove prejudice. The character of the men who conduct these exercises, their courage, intelligence, devotedness, discipline, and ready command of the people; the indiscriminate humanity which rushes to hear them, to pray, to confess their sins, to listen with mute attention—long before day-break and in the hours of rest after work—all regardless of social differences or of moral ones, soon become well known to the public and generally excite comment in the press. All this contributes to prepare non-Catholics to hear from the same teachers the invitation which our Lord intended in saying: "Other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also must I bring, and they shall hear my voice, and there shall be one fold and one shepherd."

Furthermore, it was necessary that Father Hecker should be made personally known to the bishops and priests of the country. The time was coming when he would have a public cause to advance, and their approval is a necessary sign of divine favor. Now, the missionary is closely studied by them and soon is intimately known, for there are too many things in common between priests but that they can readily test each other. Before the Paulist community had been organized, Father Hecker had been the guest of the most prominent clergymen of the entire United States, and of many even in the British Provinces, and was a well-known man throughout the Catholic community. Meantime the humiliations of his study-time had been quickly recovered from, if they had ever been a real hindrance to public effort, and we find no sign of protest on his part or of request to be let off from giving instructions beyond his answer to Father Bernard as above recorded. As he loved his vows as a Redemptorist, so he loved the work of the missions, because they were God's will for him; because they are a work of the highest order of good for souls; because the reputation of Catholicity is always raised in a community by a mission, and a good name is necessary for a controversial standing; because in them he daily learned more of men and of the means to win them; and because the members of the divine order of the episcopate and secular priesthood must be well known by him and he well known to them before any extensive work could be done among non-Catholics; and the missionary becomes a familiar friend everywhere he goes. Hence controversial sermons were sometimes preached during the missions, lectures of the same sort given after them, and during their continuance many converts received into the church. Father Hecker, as we have tried to show the reader, was a very observant nature, always learning lessons from life, and ready to try his 'prentice hand on what material offered in the way of converting Protestants at every opportunity public and private.

Nevertheless, the missions could not be made the ordinary channel of direct influences for turning sceptics and Protestants to the true religion. The attempt to make them so, involving, as it does, a notable interspersion of controversial sermons, has never been tried by the Redemptorist or Paulist Fathers to our knowledge, and when done by others has resulted in not enough of controversy for making solid converts, and too little penitential preaching for the proper reformation of hard sinners among Catholics. Father Hecker fully appreciated this. He threw himself into the mission work just as it was with the utmost ardor, and learning from Father Bernard how to prepare the matter for the morning and evening instructions, his natural gifts, together with hints and suggestions from his brethren, supplied him with the best possible manner of giving them. The writer has often served on missions in parishes where Father Bernard's new-formed band had preached in former years, and the testimony is universal that as a doctrinal and moral instructor Father Hecker was unequalled among missionaries. He was so frank, so clear, so lively, so impressible, and, in a certain way, so humorous, that he carried the people away with him. And he carried them all, high and low, learned and simple. With persons of education his homely words did not break the charm, nor did his simple but extremely well chosen illustrations do so—all taken, as they were, from common life or the lives and writings of the saints. He never preached the great sermons and never aspired to do it. He never sought to arouse terror or to be pathetic. He always reasoned and instructed. In truth, he was not competent to deal adequately with such subjects as Death, Judgment, and Hell—that is to say, as they are preached at missions, for the emotions have honest rights on such occasions, and Father Hecker acknowledged his deficiency in emotional oratory. But, to tell you the qualities of true sorrow, or to show you how to make a true confession, to picture the manliness of virtue and the dignity of the Christian state, he was unsurpassed. And the general effect remaining after his instructions was always a bright understanding of just what to do for a good life, with many happy examples to aid the memory, together with a strong personal affection for the holy man who showed religion to be a most happy as well as most reasonable service of God. To his penitents in the confessional he was ever most kind and patient. "No school of perfection," he once said, "can equal the self-denial necessary to hear confessions well." God is now rewarding him, we trust, for the cheerful, often even bantering, words of encouragement he gave to the multitudes of poor sinners who knelt at his feet during the toilsome years he spent on the missions; and for the enlightenment and encouragement of his big-hearted influence, and for his trumpet notes of hope in the early morning instructions. After the hard pounding of the night sermons it is always sought to pick the sinner up out of the dust and to hearten him by the early instructions, as well as to guide him to the precise methods and means of reform and of a good life for the future. As to the sacrament of penance, the saying of St. Alphonsus is a maxim with us all: "Be a lion in the pulpit, but a lamb in the confessional."

The reader must indulge us in thus dwelling so long on the Catholic missions, for we are inclined to say many words of praise of so lovely a life, in which the same men sow and reap a great harvest in the same week, expend their vitality in preaching the word and administering the sacraments and comforting sinners who are wholly broken down with the truest contrition.

In 1851 the American Redemptorists had before them a missionary field almost untouched. Public retreats had been given from time to time in the United States by Jesuits and others, but the mission opened at St. Joseph's Church, New York City, on Passion Sunday, 1851, was the first mission of a regular series carried on systematically by a body of men especially devoted to the vocation. The merit of inaugurating them is chiefly due to Father Bernard, who had no hesitation in getting to work with his three American fathers; though Father Joseph Mueller, rector of the Third Street convent, and Rev. Joseph McCarron, the rector of St. Joseph's Church, had something to do in arranging the details and in facilitating the work. Several Redemptorists from Third Street helped in the confessionals.*

[* Observers of coincidences will be interested to notice the arrival of the missionaries in America on St. Joseph's day, under the Provincial Bernard Joseph Hafkenscheid, to open their first mission at St. Joseph's Church, the pastor being Joseph McCarron, the mission having been negotiated by Joseph Mueller, the rector of the Third Street convent. Father Hecker had a special devotion for St. Joseph.]

We have space for only the following extracts from the brief record of the missions, preserved by the fathers. They illustrate how earnestly Father Hecker worked. In the record of the second mission at Loretto, Pa., we find this:

The instructions and Rosary were generally given by Father Hecker, who received from the people the name of "Father Mary." . . . During the first few days the people did not attend well; but after Father Hecker had gone through the village and among a clique of young men who were indifferent and disaffected to the clergy, and the evil geniuses of the place, and after some fervent exhortations had been made to the people, they flocked to the mission and crowded the church.

At Johnstown, Pa.: After two or three days a man happened to die on the railroad, and all the men at that station, perhaps a hundred in number, accompanied the corpse to the church. Father Hecker seized the opportunity to address them and to give them a mission ferveroso. And the next day he went on horseback, accompanied by the pastor, Father Mullen (since Bishop of Erie), to several stations and addressed the men, inviting them to attend the mission. The result was successful. Procession after procession marched in, filling the church, and numbers of them stayed all day, lying on the grass about the church. . . . Father Hecker called out a noted politician, who had not been to the sacraments for many years until the mission, to receive the scapular as an example, and the good man did not fail to receive a plentiful supply of holy water from the vigorous arm of the said father.

The following entry in the record under date of February, 1852, made after a mission given in St. Peter's Church, Troy, N.Y., will be of interest to missionaries, and to others who are observant of their methods: "At Youngstown, Pa., (the preceding December) the experiment of preaching from a platform had been successfully tried and was repeated here, as at other missions since (Youngstown). On the platform a large black cross, some ten feet or more in height, was erected, from the arms of which a white muslin cloth was suspended. This use of cross and platform has thus been regularly introduced into the missions." Previously it had been the custom to erect a large cross out of doors in front of the church as one of the closing ceremonies of the mission.

Fathers Hecker, Hewit, and Walworth, led by Father Bernard, made a unique band of missionaries, one, we think, hardly equalled since they yielded their place to others. Each was a man of marked individuality, whose distinct personality was by no means obscured by the strict conformity to rule evident in their behavior. Fathers Hewit and Walworth were orators, differing much from each other, both full of power. Father Hecker was a born persuader of men, and could teach as a gift of nature, earnest in mind and manner. His two companions saw him learn by hard work how so to modulate his voice and to manage it and his manner as to exactly suit himself to his duties as the instructor of the band, while they delivered finished discourses at the night services, many of them masterpieces of mission oratory. Their very poise and glance on the platform stilled the church, and their noble rhetoric clothed appeals to the intelligence and to the heart in most attractive garb. In Father Hecker you saw a man who wanted to persuade you because he was right and knew it, and because he was deeply interested in your welfare. He sought no display, and yet held you fast to him by eye and ear. He had no tricks to catch applause, for he had no vanity. He said what he liked, for he was totally devoid of diffidence or awkwardness, and his best aid was his invariable equipment of an earnest purpose. "But I don't believe," said Father Walworth to the writer, "that Demosthenes ever worked through greater difficulties than Father Hecker in making himself a good public speaker."

Father Bernard managed the missions for the first year, and dealt with the pastors as superior of the band, meanwhile devouring more than his share of the work in the confessional. The least experience shows that there can be little of the discipline of the barracks order on the missions, and all the fathers must of necessity consult together, the superior leading in the observance of such community devotional customs as are possible, and setting a good example in stooping to the burdens which all must bear. As to Father Bernard, the Americans could only admire and love him. In his own tongue a renowned orator, he yet never preached in English while with these three men unless on rare occasions, such as when one of them was prevented by sickness. From him they received the manner of giving missions handed down from St. Alphonsus, and they have transmitted the tradition to their spiritual children in all its integrity.

Nearly two years passed of hard missionary campaigning under Father Bernard, when he was recalled to Europe, and Father Alexander Cvitcovicz took his place. His last name was seldom used, for the same evident reason as in his predecessor's case. Father Alexander was a Magyar, past the meridian of life, long accustomed to missions in Europe, learned, devout, kindly, and of a zeal which seemed to aspire at utter self-annihilation in the service of sinners. '"It was not unusual for Father Alexander," says Father Hewit in his memoir of Father Baker, "to sit in his confessional for ten days in succession for fifteen or sixteen hours each day. He instructed the little children who were preparing for the sacraments, but never preached any of the great sermons. In his government of the fathers who were under him he was gentleness, consideration, and indulgence itself. In his own life and example he presented a pattern of the most perfect religious virtue, in its most attractive form, without constraint, austerity, or moroseness, and yet without relaxation from the most ascetic principles. He was a most thoroughly accomplished and learned man in many branches of secular and sacred science and in the fine arts; and in the German language, which was as familiar to him as his native language, he was among the best preachers of his order. . . . We went through several long and hard missionary campaigns under his direction, until at last we left him, in the year 1854, in the convent at New Orleans, worn out with labor, to exchange his arduous missionary work for the lighter duties of the parish."

Father Walworth now became superior, and the missions went on in the same spirit and with the same success as before. In the record of the one given at the church of Our Lady, Star of the Sea, Brooklyn, we find the following entry: "Missionaries, Fathers Walworth, Hecker, Hewit, and George Deshon (late lieu-tenant Ordnance, U. S. A., a convert from the Episcopal Church. This was his first mission)." Father Deshon had been ordained not long before, and soon began to share the instructions with Father Hecker. This was in February, 1856, and in November of the same year, at St. Patrick's Mission, Washington, D. C., they were joined by Father Francis A. Baker, ordained in the preceding September, a distinguished convert from the Episcopal ministry of the city of Baltimore. Much we would say of him, his eloquence and his very amiable traits of character, but all this and more is well said by Father Hewit, in his memoir of Father Baker, published after the latter's death in 1865 (Catholic Publication Society Co.) This increase of members allowed a division of the band for smaller-sized missions.

In our judgment those men were a band of missionaries the like of whom have not served the great cause among the English-speaking races these recent generations. Fathers Walworth, Hewit, and Deshon have survived their companions of those early days, and may they long remain with us, calm and beautiful and devout old veterans of the divine warfare of peace!

Father Hecker gave several retreats to religious communities of men and of women during the six or seven years we are considering, devoting for the purpose portions of the summer months usually unoccupied by missions. Copies of notes of his conferences, taken down by some of his hearers, are in our possession and may aid us further on in giving the reader a view of his spiritual doctrine.

The following extract from the Roman statement summarizes what we have been telling in this chapter, and introduces the reader to Father Hecker's first missionary activity as a writer:

"My superiors sent me back to the United States, and on my return being asked by my immediate superior in what way he could best employ me, my reply was, in taking care of the sick, the poor, and the prisoners. The stupidity which still reigned over my intellectual faculties, and the helplessness of my will, and my sympathy with those classes led me to choose such a sphere of action as most suitable to my then condition. And although the conversion of the non-Catholics of my fellow-countrymen was ever before my mind, yet God left me in ignorance how this was to be accomplished. Such strong and deep impulses, and so vast in their reach, took possession of my soul on my return to the United States in regard to the conversion of the American people, that on manifesting my interior to one of the most spiritually enlightened and experienced fathers of the congregation on the subject to obtain his direction, he bade me not to resist these interior movements, they came from God; and that God would yet employ me in accordance with them. Such were his words. After a few weeks in the United States the work of the missions began. My principal duties on these were to give public instructions and hear confessions, and up to this time (1858) these missionary labors have occupied me almost exclusively.

"The blessings of God upon our missions were most evident and most abundant and my share in them most consoling, as usually the most abandoned sinners fell to my lot. But holy and important as the exercises of the missions among Catholics are, still this work did not correspond to my interior attrait, and though exhausted and frequently made ill from excessive fatigue in these duties, yet my ardent and constant desire to do something for my non-Catholic countrymen led me to take up my pen. That took place as follows: One day alone in my cell the thought suddenly struck me how great were my privileges and my joy since my becoming a Catholic, and how great were my troubles and agony of soul before this event! Alas! how many of my former friends and acquaintances, how many of the great body of the American people were in the same most painful position. Cannot something be done to lead them to the knowledge of the truth? Perhaps if the way that divine Providence had led me to the church was shown to them many of them might in this way be led also to see the truth. This thought, and with it the hope of inducing young men to enter into religious orders, produced in a few months from my pen a book entitled Questions of the Soul. The main features of this book are the proofs that the Sacraments of the Catholic Church satisfy fully all the wants of the heart. . . .

"But the head was left to be yet converted; this thought led me to write a second book, called Aspirations of Nature; and which has for its aim to show that the truths of the Catholic faith answer completely to the demands of reason. My purpose in these two books was to explain the Catholic religion in such a manner as to reach and attract the minds of the non-Catholics of the American people. These books were regarded in my own secret thoughts as the test whether God had really given to me the grace and vocation to labor in a special manner for the conversion of these people. The first book, with God's grace, has been the means of many and signal conversions in the United States and England, and in a short period passed through three editions. The second has been published since my arrival in Rome. . .

"On an occasion of a public conference (discourse) given by me before an audience, a great part of which was not Catholic, the matter and manner of which was taken from my second book, my fellow-missionaries were present; and they as well as myself regarded this as a test whether my views and sentiments were adapted to reach and convince the understanding and hearts of this class of people, or were the mere illusions of fancy. Hitherto my fellow-missionaries had shown but little sympathy with my thoughts on these points, but at the close of the conference they were of one mind that my vocation was evidently to work in the direction of the conversion of the non-Catholics, and they spoke of such a work with conviction and enthusiasm."

This last event occurred in St. Patrick's Church, Norfolk, Va., in April, 1896, and is thus mentioned by Father Hewit in the record of the mission: "Father Hecker closed with an extremely eloquent and popular lecture on 'Popular Objections to Catholicity.'"

The Questions of the Soul was well named, for it undertakes to show how the cravings of man for divine union may be satisfied. It does this by discussing the problem of human destiny, affirming the need of God for the soul's light and for its virtue, proving this by arguments drawn from the instincts, faculties, and achievements of man. The sense of want in man is the universal argument for his need of more than human fruition, and in the moral order is the irrefragable proof of both his own dignity and his incapacity to make himself worthy of it. Father Hecker urged in this book that man is born to be more than equal to himself—an evident proof of the need of a superhuman or supernatural religion. Eleven chapters, making one-third of the volume, are devoted to showing this, and include the author's own itinerarium from his first consciousness of the supreme question of the soul until its final answer in the Catholic Church, embracing short accounts of the Brook Farm and Fruitlands communities, and mention of other such abortive attempts at solution. Three chapters then affirm and briefly develop the claim of Christ to be the entire fulfilment of the soul's need for God, with the Catholic Church as his chosen means and instrument. These are entitled respectively, "The Model Man," "The Model Life," and "The Idea of the Church." Three more chapters discuss Protestantism, stating its commonest doctrines and citing its most competent witnesses in proof of its total and often admitted inadequacy to lead man to his destiny. Bringing the reader back to the Church, the fourteen last chapters fully develop her claims, dealing mostly with known facts and public institutions, and citing largely the testimony of non-Catholic writers.

It is something like the inductive method to infer the existence of a God from that of an admitted appetite, as also to learn the kind of food from the nature of the organs provided by nature for its reception and digestion. So the longings of man's moral nature, Father Hecker felt, when fairly understood, must lead to the knowledge of what he wants for their satisfaction—the Infinite Good—and that by a process of reasoning something equivalent to the scientific. Such is the statement of his case, embracing with its argument the introductory chapters. The inquiry then extends to the claimants in the religious world, not simply as to which is biblically authentic or historically so, but rather as to which religion claims to satisfy the entire human want of God and makes the claim good as an actual fact. It is wonderful how this line of argument simplifies controversy, and no less wonderful to find how easily the victory is won by the Catholic claim. The reader will also notice how consistent all this is with Father Hecker's own experience from the beginning.

The literary faults of the book are not a few; for if the argument is compact, its details seem to have been hastily snatched up and put together, or perhaps the occupations of the missions prevented revision and consultation. There is a large surplusage of quotations from poets, many of them obscure, and worthy of praise rather as didactic writers than as poets; yet every word quoted bears on the point under discussion. To one who has labored in preparing sermons, each chapter looks like the cullings of the preacher's commonplace book set in order for memorizing; and very many sentences are rhetorically faulty. But, in spite of all these defects, the book is a powerful one, and nothing is found to hurt clearness or strength of expression. What we have criticised are only bits of bark left clinging to the close-jointed but rough-hewn frame-work.

The Questions of the Soul was got out by the Appletons, and was at the time of its publication a great success, and still remains so. The reason is because the author takes nothing for granted, propounds difficulties common to all non-Catholics, sceptics as well as professing Protestants, and offers solutions verifiable by inspection of every-day Catholicity and by evidences right at hand. Catholicity is the true religion, because it alone unites men to God in the fulness of union, supernatural and integral in inner and outer life—a union demanded by the most resistless cravings of human nature: such is the thesis. There can be little doubt that prior to this book there was nothing like its argument current in English literature; a short and extremely instructive account by Frederick Lucas of his conversion from Quakerism is the only exception known to us, and that but partially resembles it, is quite brief, and has long since gone out of print.

The Aspirations of Nature deals with intellectual difficulties in the same manner as the Questions of the Soul does with the moral ones. The greatest possible emphasis is laid upon the two-fold truth that man's intellectual nature is infallible in its rightful domain, and that that domain is too narrow for its own activity. The validity of human reason as far as it goes, and its failure to go far enough for man's intellectual needs, are the two theses of the book. They are well and thoroughly proved; and no one can deny the urgent need of discussing them: the dignity of human nature and the necessity of revelation. Like Father Hecker's first book, the Aspirations of Nature is good for all non-Catholics, because in proving the dignity of man's reason Protestants are brought face to face with their fundamental error of total depravity; enough for their case surely. If they take refuge in the mitigations of modern Protestant beliefs, they nearly always go to the extreme of asserting the entire sufficiency of the human intellect, and are here met by the argument for the necessity of revelation.

An extremely valuable collection of the confessions of heathen and infidel philosophers as to the insufficiency of reason is found in this book, as well as a full set of quotations from Protestant representative authorities on the subject of total depravity. Over against these the Catholic doctrine of reason and revelation is brought out clearly. The study of the book would be a valuable preparation for the exposition of the claims of the Catholic Church to be the religion of humanity, natural and regenerate—the intellectual religion.

As might be expected from one who had such an aversion for Calvinism, the view of human nature taken by the author is what some would call optimistic, and the tone with regard to the religious honesty of non-Catholic Americans extremely hopeful. Perhaps herein was Dr. Brownson's reason for an adverse, or almost adverse, criticism on the book in his Review. He had given the Questions of the Soul a thoroughly flattering reception, and now says many things in praise of the Aspirations of Nature, praising especially the chapter on individuality. But yet he dreads that the book will be misunderstood; he has no such lively hopes as the author; he trusts he is not running along with the eccentricities of theologians rather than with their common teaching; fears that he takes the possible powers of nature and such as are rarely seen in actual life as the common rule; dreads, again, that Transcendentalists will be encouraged by it; and more to the same effect. But Father Hecker, before leaving for Europe in 1857, had submitted the manuscript to Archbishop Kenrick and received his approval; nor did Brownson's unfavorable notice ruffle the ancient friendship between them.

The Aspirations of Nature was put through the press by George Ripley, at that time literary editor of the New York Tribune, Father Hecker having gone to Rome on the mission which ended in the establishment of his new community. Mr. McMaster had assisted him similarly with the Questions of the Soul. The second book sold well, as the first had done, and has had several editions. It is not so hot and eager in spirit as the Questions of the Soul, but it presses its arguments earnestly enough on the reader's attention. It is free from the literary faults named in connection with its predecessor, reads smoothly, and has very many powerful passages and some eloquent ones.





CHAPTER XXIV

SEPARATION FROM THE REDEMPTORISTS

THE events which led to the separation of the band of American missionaries from the Redemptorist community took place in the spring and summer of 1857. A misunderstanding arose about the founding of a new house in Newark, N.J., or in New York City, which should be the headquarters for the English-speaking Fathers and become the centre of attraction for American subjects, and in which English should be the language in common use. Application had been made by Bishop Bayley, and afterwards by Archbishop Hughes, for such a foundation, but superiors, both in the United States and in Rome—the latter dependent on letter-writing for understanding the difficulties which arose—became suspicious of the aims of the American Fathers and of the spirit which actuated them. To establish their loyalty and to explain the necessity for the new foundation, the missionary Fathers believed that one of their number should go to Rome and lay the matter in person before the General or Rector Major of the order. The choice fell on Father Hecker, who sailed on August 5, 1857, arrived in Rome the 26th, and was expelled from the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer on Sunday, the 29th of the same month, the General deeming his coming to Rome to be a violation of the vows of obedience and poverty.

The grounds of his expulsion were then examined by the Propaganda, from which the case passed to the Holy Father, who sought the decision of the Congregation of Bishops and Regulars. Pius IX. gave his judgment as a result of the examination made by the last-named Congregation; but he had made a personal study of all the evidence, and had given private audiences to both the General and Father Hecker. It was decided that all the American Fathers associated in the missionary band should be dispensed from their vows as Redemptorists, including Father Hecker, who was looked upon and treated by the decree as if he were still as much a member of the Congregation as the others, his expulsion being ignored. This conclusion was arrived at only after seven months of deliberation, and was dated the 6th of March, 1898. The decree, which will be given entire in this chapter, contemplates the continued activity of the Fathers as missionaries, subject to the authority of the American bishops; their formation into a separate society was taken for granted. Such is a brief statement of the entire case. If the reader will allow it to stand as a summary, what follows will serve to fill in the outline and complete a more detailed view.

And at the outset let it be fully understood that none of the Fathers desired separation from the order or had the faintest notion of its possibility as the outcome of the misunderstanding. One of the first letters of Father Hecker from Rome utters the passionate cry, "They have driven me out of the home of my heart and love." We have repeatedly heard him affirm that he never had so much as a temptation against his vows as a Redemptorist. But in saying this we do not mean to lay blame on the Redemptorist superiors. In all that we have to say on this subject we must be understood as recognizing their purity of intention. Their motives were love of discipline and obedience, which they considered seriously endangered. They were persuaded that their action, though severe, was necessary for the good of the entire order. And this shows that the difficulty was a misunderstanding, for there is conclusive evidence of the loyalty of the American Fathers—of Father Hecker no less than the others; as also of their fair fame as Redemptorists with both the superiors and brethren of the community up to the date of their disagreement. When Father Hecker left for Rome the Provincial gave him his written word that, although he disapproved of his journey, he bore witness to him as a good Redemptorist, full of zeal for souls; and he added that up to that time his superiors had been entirely satisfied with him; and to the paper containing this testimony the Provincial placed the official seal of the order. On the other side, a repeated and careful examination of Father Hecker's letters and memoranda reveals no accusation by him of moral fault against his Redemptorist superiors, but on the contrary many words of favorable explanation of their conduct. When the Rector Major, in the midst of his council, began, to Father Hecker's utter amazement, to read the sentence of expulsion, he fell on his knees and received the blow with bowed head as a visitation of God. And when, again, after prostrating himself before the Blessed Sacrament and resigning himself to the Divine Will, he returned to the council and begged the General on his knees for a further consideration of his case, and was refused, he reports that the General affirmed that his sense of duty would not allow him to act otherwise than he had done, and that he by no means meant to condemn Father Hecker in the court of conscience, but only to exercise jurisdiction over his external conduct.

In truth the trouble arose mainly from the very great difference between the character of the American Fathers and that of their superiors in the order. It is nothing new or strange, to borrow Father Hewit's thoughts as expressed in his memoir of Father Baker, that men whose characters are cast in a different mould should have different views, and should, with the most conscientious intentions, be unable to coincide in judgment or act in concert:

"There is room in the Catholic Church for every kind of religious organization, suiting all the varieties of mind and character and circumstance. If collisions and misunderstandings often come between those who have the same great end in view, this is the result of human infirmity, and only shows how imperfect and partial are human wisdom and human virtue."

What Father Hewit adds of Father Baker's dispositions applies as well to all the Fathers. In ceasing to be Redemptorists, they did not swerve from their original purpose in becoming religious. None of them had grown discontented with his state or with his superiors. They were all in the full fervor of the devotional spirit of the community, and as missionaries were generously wearing out their lives in the toil and hardship of its peculiar vocation. But both parties became the instruments of a special providence, which made use of the wide diversities of temperament existing among men, and set apart Father Hecker and his companions, after a season of severe trial, for a new apostolate. They did not choose it for themselves. Father Hecker had aspirations, as we know, but he did not dream of realizing them through any separation whatever. But Providence led the Holy See to change what had been a violent wrench into a peaceful division, exercising, in so doing, a divine authority accepted with equal obedience by all concerned.

What Father Hewit further says of Father Baker applies exactly to Father Hecker:

"For the Congregation in which he was trained to the religious and ecclesiastical state he always retained a sincere esteem and affection. He did not ask the Pope for a dispensation from his vows in order to be relieved from a burdensome obligation, but only on the condition that it seemed best to him to terminate the difficulty which had arisen that way. When the dispensation was granted he did not change his life for a more easy one. . . Let no one, therefore, who is disposed to yield to temptations against his vocation, and to abandon the religious state from weariness, tepidity, or any unworthy motive, think to find any encouragement in his example; for his austere, self-denying, and arduous life will give him only rebuke, and not encouragement."

After the expulsion the General begged Father Hecker to make the convent his home till he was suited elsewhere, and Father Hecker, having thanked him for his kindness and stayed there that night, took lodgings the following day in a quiet street near the Propaganda. During the seven months of his stay in Rome he frequently visited the General and his consultors, sometimes on business but at other times from courtesy and good feeling.

He at once presented the testimonials intended for the General to Cardinal Barnabo, Prefect of the Propaganda, who examined them in company with Archbishop Bedini, the Secretary of that Congregation. As may be imagined, the attitude of these prelates was at first one of extreme reserve. But every case gets a hearing in Rome, and that of this expelled religious, and therefore suspended priest, could be no exception. A glance at the credentials, a short conversation with their bearer, a closer examination of the man and of his claim, produced a favorable impression and led to a determination to sift the matter thoroughly. The principal letters were from Archbishop Hughes and Bishop Bayley. The former spoke thus of Father Hecker: "I have great pleasure in recommending him as a laborious, edifying, zealous, and truly apostolic priest."

Some of the letters were from prominent laymen of the City of New York, including one from Mr. McMaster, another from Dr. Brownson, and another from Dr. Ives; in addition he had the words of praise of the Provincial in America already referred to. Finally he showed letters from each of the American Fathers, one of whom, Father Hewit, was a member of the Provincial Council, all joining themselves to Father Hecker as sharing the responsibility of his journey to Rome, and naming him as the representative of their cause.

It is not our purpose to trace the progress of the investigation through the Roman tribunals. We will but give such facts and such extracts from letters as throw light on Father Hecker's conduct during this great crisis. One might be curious to know something about the friends he made in Rome. The foremost of them was the Cardinal Prefect of the Propaganda.

"The impression that Cardinal Barnabo made upon me," he writes in one of his earliest letters, "was most unexpected; he was so quick in his perceptions and penetration, so candid and confiding in speaking to me. He was more like a father and friend; and both the cardinal and the archbishop (Bedini) expressed such warm sympathy in my behalf that it made me feel, . . . in a way I never felt before, the presence of God in those who are chosen as rulers in His Church."

In another letter he says:

"He (the cardinal) has been to me more than a friend; he is to me a father, a counsellor, a protector. No one enjoys so high a reputation in every regard in Rome as the cardinal. He gives me free access to him and confides in me."

There is much evidence, too much to quote it all, that the cardinal was drawn to Father Hecker on account of his simplicity and openness of character, his frank manner, but especially for his bold, original views of the opportunity of religion among free peoples. Cardinal Barnabo was noted for his sturdy temper and was what is known as a hard hitter, though a generous opponent as well as an earnest friend. He espoused Father Hecker's cause with much heartiness; official intercourse soon developed into a close personal attachment, which lasted with unabated warmth till the strong old Roman was called to his reward.

Father Hecker speaks in his letters of spending time with him, not only on business but in discussing questions of philosophy and religious controversy, and in talking over the whole American outlook.

The cardinal became the American priest's advocate before the Pope, and also with the Congregation of Bishops and Regulars after the case reached that tribunal. "When I heard him speak in my defence," he said in after times, "I thanked God that he was not against me, for he was a most imperious character when aroused, and there seemed no resisting him."

Archbishop Bedini, the Secretary of the Propaganda, was another hearty friend. Our older readers will remember that he had paid a visit to America a few years before the time we are considering, and that his presence here was made the occasion for some of the more violent outbreaks of the Know-nothing excitement. He knew our country personally, therefore, and was acquainted with very many of our clergy; his assistance to the Roman Court in this case was of special value. He became so demonstrative in his friendship for Father Hecker that the Pope was amused at it, and Father Hecker relates in his letters home how the Holy Father rallied him about the warmth of his advocacy of the American priest's cause, as did various members of the Pontifcal court.

At that time and for many years afterwards Doctor Bernard Smith, an Irish Benedictine monk, was Professor of Dogmatic Theology in the College of the Propaganda; he is now the honored abbot of the great Basilica of St. Paul without-the-walls. How Father Hecker came to know the learned professor we have been unable to discover; but both he and Monsignor Kirby, of the Irish College, became his firm friends and powerful advocates. Without Doctor Smith's advice, indeed, scarcely a step was taken in the case.

An unexpected ally was found in Bishop Connolly, of St. John's, New Brunswick. He had been robbed on his way between Civita Vecchia and Rome, and that misfortune gave him a special claim to the regard of the Pope, with whom he soon became a favorite. The Holy Father admired in him that energy of character and zeal for religion which distinguished him in after years as Archbishop of Halifax. On hearing of Father Hecker's case he studied it on account of sympathetic interest in the aspects of Catholicity in the United States, part of his diocese being at that time, we believe, in the State of Maine. How ardent his friendship for Father Hecker soon became is shown by his exclamation: "I am ready to die for you, and I am going to tell the Pope so." He even offered to assist Father Hecker in paying his personal expenses while in Rome. In a letter to the American Fathers of December 18 Father Hecker writes:

"Another recent and providential event in our favor has been the friendship of Bishop Connolly, of St. John's, New Brunswick. By his extraordinary exertions and his warm friendship for us he has succeeded in giving us the vantage ground in all quarters where we were not in good favor. I told you in the last note that he had spoken to the Holy Father in favor of our cause, but I had no time to give you the substance of what was said. Bishop Connolly is a full-blooded Irishman, but, fortunately for us, not implicated in any party views in our country, and seeing that the Propaganda regarded our cause as its own and had identified itself with our success, . . . it being friendly to us as missionaries, he exerted all his influence in our favor. His influence was not slight, for the Pope had conceived a great friendship for him, and heaped all sorts of honors on him. Well, he had a regular tussle with his Holiness about us and our cause, and when the Holy Father repeated some things said of me—against me, of course—he replied: 'Your Holiness, I should not be at all surprised if some fine day you yourself would have to canonize one of these Yankee fellows.' In one word, he left nothing unsaid or undone with the Pope in our favor; and the Pope suggested to him obtaining dispensation of our vows and forming a new company. 'They cannot expect me,' he said, 'to take the initiatory step; this would be putting the cart before the horse. Let them do this, and present their plan to me, and if I find it good, it shall have my consent.' . . . The bishop has also seen and won over to our favor Monsignor Talbot, who said to him: 'The only way now of settling the difficulties is to give the American Fathers the liberty to form a new company for the American missions.' In addition, the bishop wrote a strong document in favor of our missions and of us, and presented it to Cardinal Barnabo, which will be handed in to the Congregation of Bishops and Regulars, who have our affairs in hand. . . . If this good bishop should come in your way, whether by writing or otherwise, you cannot be too grateful for what he has done for us. After Cardinal Barnabo and Archbishop Bedini we owe more to him than to any one else.

"Wind and tide are now in our favor, and my plan is to keep quiet and stick close to the rudder to see that the ship keeps right."

On his way home from Rome Bishop Connolly wrote the following letter to Father Hecker, dated at Marseilles, January 20, 1858:

"From the deep interest I feel in your concerns you will pardon my curiosity in wishing to have the earliest intelligence of your fate in the Congregation of Bishops and Regulars. I could wish I were near you all the time, and have nothing else to attend to; but you have got One more powerful than I at your right hand. Fix your hopes in Him and you will not be confounded. After having done everything on your part that unsleeping energy as well as prudence could suggest, you must take the issue, however unpalatable it may be, as the undoubted expression of God's will, and act (as I am sure you will act) accordingly. . . . You must keep steadily in view the glorious principle for which you came to Rome, and which I am convinced is for the greater glory of God and the greater good of religion in America. If you can start as a religious body with the approbation of Rome, this would be the holiest and most auspicious consummation. . . . Be guided at every step by the holy and enlightened men whose sympathies you have won and in whose hands you will be always safe: Cardinal Barnabo in primis, and after him Monsignor Bedini and Doctors Kirby and Smith. United with them at every step, failure is impossible—you must and you will succeed. . . . I am sure that you know and feel this as well as I do (for we have been, marvellously of the same way of thinking on nearly all points), but as I feel I must write to you, as it may be, perchance, of some consolation to you in your troubles, I thought it better to say it over again. . . . If a letter or anything else from me could be of any service, I need not tell you that I am still on hand and only anxious to be employed. (Here follows his address in Paris and Liverpool.) With all good wishes for your success, and with the hope of hearing the happy tidings from your own hand before I leave Europe, I am, Reverend dear Sir,

"Very faithfully yours in Christ,

"+ THOMAS L. CONNOLLY,

"Bishop of St. John's, N.B."

From what has been so far communicated to the reader, it will be seen that Father Hecker's case had the strength of friendship to assist it. But he was himself his best advocate. His traits of character were lovable, and the very incongruity of such a man forced to plead against the direst penalty known to a religious, was a singularly strong argument. His cheerful demeanor while fighting for his life; his puzzling questions on social and philosophical points; his mingled mysticism and practical judgment; his utterance of political sentiments which, as he truly said in one of his letters, if spoken by any one but an American would elicit instant reproof; his total lack of obsequiousness united to entire submission to lawful authority, all helped to make for himself and his cause friends in every direction.

The unanimous adhesion of the American Redemptorist missionaries was a powerful element in his favor, and a priceless boon for his own consolation. He was continually in receipt of such words as these: "We all desire you to consider us fully identified with you and to act in our name." "We have the utmost confidence in your discretion, and your conservative views are quite to our mind." His whole heart went out in response to these greetings. On October 24 he writes to the Fathers:

"The contents of your note were what I had a right to expect from you: sympathy, confidence, and reliance on Divine Providence. How much these trials will endear us to each other! If we keep together as one man and regard only God, defeat is impossible. Do not forget to offer up continually prayers for me. How much I see the hand of Providence in all our difficulties! And the end will, I trust, make it evident as the sun."

But where he placed his entire trust is shown by the following, a part of the same letter:

"Our affairs are in the hands of God. I hope no one will feel discouraged, nor fear for me. All that is needed to bring the interests of God to a successful issue is grace, grace, grace; and this is obtained by prayer. And if the American Fathers will only pray and get others to pray, and not let any one have the slightest reason to bring a word against them in our present crisis, God will be with us and help us, and Our Lady will take good care of us. So far no step taken in our past need be regretted. If it were to be done again it would have my consent. The blow given to me I have endeavored to receive with humility and in view of God. It has not produced any trouble in my soul, nor made me waver in the slightest degree in my confidence in God or my duty towards Him. Let us not be impatient. God is with us and will lead us if we confide in Him."

During his stay in Rome he corresponded regularly with his brother George, whose ever-open purse paid all his expenses. We have also found a very long letter of loving friendship from Doctor Brownson, conveying the profoundest sympathy. This came during the most critical period of the case and gave much consolation. It called forth an answer equally affectionate.

He received exceedingly sympathetic letters from Fathers de Held and de Buggenoms. The former was at the time rector of the house in Liege, and wrote a letter to Cardinal Barnabo, a copy of which has been preserved, which treats most favorably of Father Hecker's character and discusses his case at length, petitioning a decision which should reinstate him in the order.

Late in November he sought an interview with Cardinal Reisach, holding him closely interested for two hours, conversing upon American religious prospects and quite winning his friendship. By means of such interviews, which, at Cardinal Barnabo's suggestion, he sought with the chief prelates in Rome, he became widely known in the city, and the state of religion in America was made a common topic of conversation.

The following introduces a singular phase in the case. It is from a letter written before the end of September, less than a month after his arrival:

"My leisure moments are occupied in writing an article on the 'Present Condition and Future Prospects of the Catholic Faith in the United States,' for the Civilta Cattolica. They have promised to translate and publish it."

The Civilta is still a leading Catholic journal, the foremost exponent of the views of the Society of Jesus. At that time it was the official organ of Pius IX., who read all its articles in the proofs, and it went everywhere in Catholic circles. The editors became fast friends of Father Hecker, though we are not aware that they took sides in his case. His article was divided in the editing, and appeared in two successive numbers of the magazine. It attracted wide attention, being translated and printed in the chief Catholic periodicals of France, Belgium, and Germany, and published by Mr. McMaster in the Freeman's Journal. In Rome it served a good purpose. To some its views were startling, but its tone was fresh and enlivening. It undertook to show that the freest nation in the world was the most inviting field for the Catholic propagandist. We suppose that the author's main purpose in writing was but to invite attention to America, yet he so affected public opinion in Rome as to materially assist the adjustment of the difficulty pending before the high tribunals. Cardinal Barnabo was quite urgent with Father Hecker that he should write more of the same kind, but either his occupations or his expectation of an early return home hindered his doing so. As it was, he had caused himself and the American Fathers to be viewed by men generally through the medium of the great question of the relation of religion to the young Republic of the Western World. That topic was fortunate in having him for its exponent. He was an object-lesson of the aspirations of enlightened Catholic Americans as well as an exalted type of Catholic missionary zeal. Very few men of discernment ever really knew Father Hecker but to admire him and to be ready to be persuaded by him of his life-thesis: that a free man tends to be a good Catholic, and a free nation is the most promising field for apostolic zeal.

Soon after his arrival in Rome he made the acquaintance of George L. Brown, an American artist of some note, and a non-Catholic. He was an earnest man, and Father Hecker attacked him at once on the score of religion, and before December had received him into the Church. This event made quite a stir in Rome. The city was always full of artists and their patrons, and Mr. Brown's conversion, together with the articles in the Civilta, influenced in Father Hecker's favor many persons whom he could not directly reach. This was especially the case with the Pope, to whose notice such matters were brought by Archbishop Bedini, his office enabling him to approach the Holy Father at short intervals. He exerted a similar influence on all the high officials of the Roman court.

In spite of all this favor the usual delays attendant upon serious judicial investigations oppressed Father Hecker with the heavy dread of "the law's delay," detaining him in Rome from the first week in September, 1857, when the case was opened in the Propaganda, till it was closed by the decision of the Congregation of Bishops and Regulars early in the following March. Nor was the "insolence of office" quite absent. He was once heard to tell of his having been snubbed in the Pope's antechamber by some one in attendance, and often put aside till he was vexed with many weary hours of waiting and by being compelled to repeatedly return.

"I had to wait for three days," we read in the memoranda, "and then was reproached and scolded by the monsignor in attendance for coming late. I had not come late but had been kept waiting outside, and I told him so. 'You will see those hills of Albano move,' said I, 'before I move from my purpose to see the Holy Father.' When he saw my determination he changed and gave me my desired audience."

When events had taken the question out of the Jurisdiction of be Redemptorist order and into the general court of the Catholic Church, its settlement was found to be difficult. The restoration of Father Hecker by a judicial decision would not, it is plain, have left him and his companions in that harmonious relation so essential to their personal happiness and to their success as missionaries. It was then suggested that they should petition for a separate organization under the Rule of St. Alphonsus approved by Benedict XIV., acting directly subject to the Holy See, thus making two Redemptorist bodies in the United States, as is the case with various Franciscan communities. It was also suggested that the Cisalpine, or Neapolitan Redemptorists, at that time an independent congregation, would gladly take the American Fathers under their jurisdiction. The alternative was what afterwards took place—the dispensation of the Fathers from their vows, in view of their forming their own organization under direction of the Bishops and the Holy See. A petition praying the Holy Father to give them either the Rule of Benedict XIV. in the sense above suggested, or their dispensations from the vows, was drawn up and forwarded by the Fathers remaining in America, the dispensation being named as the last resort. Father Hecker's legal case not being decided, he was advised by Cardinal Barnabo to reserve his signature to this document for the present. It will be seen at a glance that the dispensation from the vows and an entirely new departure in community existence was more in accordance with his aspirations. But no aspiration was so strong in him as love of his brethren, and he was fully determined not to be separated from them if he could prevent it.

Much delay was caused by waiting for further testimonials from American bishops confirmatory of the good character of the Fathers and of the value of their labors as missionaries. Father Hecker, meantime, wrote many letters to his brethren discussing the alternatives in question.

In one of October 24 he tells of a pilgrimage he made to Nocera, to the tomb of St. Alphonsus, bearing his brethren in his heart with him. He also visited the Redemptorist house there and in Naples, and was quite charmed with the fathers, who were entirely willing to receive the Americans into their organization, which, as the reader knows, was separate from that of the General in Rome. Knowing the mind of his brethren, and determined to take no step alone, Father Hecker would have been content with this arrangement had it seemed good to the Holy See. Meantime he tells how greatly he enjoyed his visit to Nocera, how he said Mass over the holy body of the founder, and adds: "Ever since I feel more consoled and supported and confident."

The following is from a joint letter of the American Fathers dated November 17; they prefer, in case Father Hecker is not reinstated, being separated from the order and made "immediately dependent on the Holy See, or the Prefect of the Propaganda, rather than anything else; . . . called, for instance, 'Religious Missionaries of the Propaganda,' if the Holy Father would make us such. With the Rule of St. Alphonsus and the same missionary privileges we now enjoy, and our dear Father Hecker among us again, we should feel happy and safe. . . . But we wait for the words of the Holy See to indicate our course."

His words to them are to the same effect: "Our first effort should be directed to the securing our hopes through the Transalpine Congregation [this means the regular Redemptorist order to which they then belonged]. . . . If this is not successful, then to endeavor to accomplish our hopes through the Cisalpine (Neapolitan) Fathers, who will be heart and soul with us and grant all our best desires. Or, thirdly, to obtain permission to act as a band of missionaries in our country under the protection, for the present, of some bishop. . . . It is a consolation to me to see that our affairs are so far developed and known, and our views are so identical that you can act on your part, and write, without having to delay for information [from me]. You can easily imagine that it was no pleasant state for me to be in while in suspense about what would be the determination you would come to. Thank God and Our Lady, your recent letter set that all aside! The work now to be done is plain, and the greatest care and prudence is to be exercised not to commit any fault, or make any mistake which may be to us a source of regret afterwards."

In another letter he says that Cardinal Barnabo spoke of the unpleasant relations likely to exist after his restoration to the order, and then continues:

"The cardinal had a long conversation with me, and he suggested whether God might not desire of me a special work. I told him I would not think of this while the dismission was over my head. He said, 'Of course not; for if you are a mauvais sujet, as the General thinks, God will surely not use you for any special mission.'" The letter here details more of the exchange of views between the cardinal and Father Hecker, the latter astounded to hear from this direction suggestions so closely tallying with his own interior aspirations about the apostolic outlook in America. "But," continues the letter, "you must well understand that I should not accept such a proposition for myself before having asked the best counsel of men of God and received their unhesitating approval of its being God's will. There are holy men here, and I take counsel with them in every important step; and they are religious, so that they are good judges in such important matters. . . . If God wishes to make use of us in such a design, and I can be assured of this on competent authority, whatever it may cost, with His grace I will not shrink from it. I call competent authority the approbation of good and holy men, and one like the cardinal, who knows the country, knows all our affairs now, and has every quality of mind and heart to be a competent judge in this important matter. Though you have made me your plenipotentiary, yet this is an individual affair, one we did not contemplate, one of the highest import to our salvation and sanctification, and must depend on God and our individual conscience.