Life of Father Hecker Part 27

[* Nuper nonnulli ex Presbyteris Congregationis SSmi Redemptoris in provinciis Americae Septentrionalis foederatis existentibus SSmum D.

N. Pium PP. IX., supplici prece deprecabantur, ut eis ob speciales circ.u.mstantias concederet ab auctoritate et jurisdictione Rectoris Majoris subtrahi, ac a proprio Superiore Apostolicae Sedi immediate subjecto juxta regulam a Benedicto XIV., sanctae memoriae, approbatam gubernari. Quod ad id eis datum non esset, dispensationem a votis in dicta Congregatione emissis, humillime expostulabant. Re sedulo perpensa, Sanct.i.tas Sua existimavit hujusmodi separationem unitati Congregationis officere, et S. Alphonsi inst.i.tuto minime respondere ideoque haud permittendum esse. c.u.m autem relatum sit oratores nulli labore parcere in sacris expeditionibus peragendis, et in proximorum conversione, Christianaque inst.i.tutione curanda, et idcirco a pluribus Antistibus commendentur, visum est SSmo Domino magis expedire eos a praefata Congregatione eximi, ut in sacri ministerii opera promovenda sub directione Antist.i.tum locorum inc.u.mbere possint.

Quapropter Sanct.i.tas Sua presbyteros Clarentium Walworth, Augustinum Hewit, Georgium Deshon, et Francisc.u.m Baker, una c.u.m presbytero Isaac Hecker, qui eorumdem postulationibus quoad dispensationem a votis adhaesit, a votis simplicibus, etiam permanentiae in Congregatione SSmi Redemptoris emissis, hujus Decreti tenore, Apostolica auctoritate dispensat, et dispensatos, ac prorsus solutos esse declarat, ita ut ad eamdem Congregationem amplius non pertineant. Confidit vero Sanct.i.tas Sua memoratos Presbyteros, qua opere, qua exemplo, qua sermone, in vinea Domini sub directione et jurisdictione Antist.i.tum locorum, ad praescriptum SS. Canonum adlaboraturos, ut aeternam animarum salutem alacriter curent, atque proximorum sanctificationem pro viribus promoveant.

Datum Romae, ex Secretaria Sacrae Congregationis Episcoporum et Regularium, Die 6 Martii, 1858.

[L. + S.] G. CARDINAL DELLA GENGA, Praef.

A., ARCHIEPISCOPUS PHILIPPEN, Sec.]

NOTE.--I wish to add to this, that the relations between the Redemptorists and Paulists are, and I trust will continue to be, most amicable.

AUG. F. HEWIT, C.S.P., Superior.

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CHAPTER XXV

BEGINNINGS OF THE PAULIST COMMUNITY

DURING the seven months of Father Hecker's stay in Rome the band of American missionaries were busily occupied. Missions were given in the following order: Newark, N.J.; Poughkeepsie, Cold Spring on the Hudson, and Utica, N.Y.; Brandywine, Del.; Trenton, N.J.; Burlington, Brandon, East and West Rutland, Vt., and Plattsburgh, Saratoga, and Little Falls, N.Y. All these labors were undertaken subject to the authority of the Redemptorist Provincial and in a spirit of entire obedience. The mission at Little Falls closed on Palm Sunday, March 28, and the missionaries, with the exception of Father Baker, who was sent to Annapolis, Md., returned to the Redemptorist house in Third Street, New York. On the Tuesday after Easter, April 6, 1858, the official copy of the Pope's decision reached them, and they bade farewell to their Redemptorist brethren and to the community in which they had spent so many happy years, and witnessed, as Father Hewit has written, "so many edifying examples of high virtue and devoted zeal, to enter upon a new and untried undertaking."

Archbishop Kenrick, as soon as he heard of this, made a determined effort to secure Father Baker for the diocese of Baltimore, but the latter never for a moment faltered in his purpose to cast his lot with his brethren, and the archbishop gave up his claim upon him at the request of Cardinal Barnabo.

Their engagements called for two more missions before the season ended--one at Watertown, N.Y., and the other at St. Bridget's Church, New York City. The first of these opened on the 18th of April, and while waiting for that date the Fathers lived with Mr. George Hecker in Rutger's Place, saying Ma.s.s in his private chapel and following their religious rule as far as circ.u.mstances allowed, continuing meantime to obey Father Walworth, their former superior of the missions. They journeyed to Watertown, fearful lest the faculties for giving the Papal blessing and the mission indulgences should not arrive there in time. But late on Sat.u.r.day night, April 19, they were received, much to the joy of the Fathers.

Here occurred a noteworthy coincidence. Watertown was at that time in the diocese of Albany, of which Bishop McCloskey was then the ordinary. He had received Father Hecker into the Church and had been his first guide in the spiritual life, and now he was the first to publicly welcome his brethren at the beginning of their new career.

The following is from a letter of his to Father Walworth in answer to one announcing the recent changes:

"I am happy to hear that your difficulties have at length received their solution, and in a manner, I presume, as satisfactory as you could well expect. The future must now in great measure depend upon yourselves. You will, of course, have difficulties to surmount and prejudices to encounter, but I trust that with G.o.d's blessing your new community when once organized will continue from day to day to gain increased stability and strength, and be enabled to carry out successfully all its laudable aims for the good of our holy religion.

The faculties already given you in this diocese you will not consider as being withdrawn by the act of your separation from the Redemptorist order, and there is nothing that I know of to interfere with your proposed mission in Watertown."

During the mission at St. Bridget's--that is, in the first half of the month of May--Father Hecker arrived in New York and measures were at once taken for the practical organization of the new community.

Nothing was done hurriedly; a fair and full consideration of all questions from every point of view, which lasted until early in the month of July, enabled each one clearly to understand his new relation in its every aspect. Father Walworth not being entirely in agreement with the others, withdrew to the diocese of Albany and took charge of a parish; he returned again in 1861, remaining with the community till 1865, when his health becoming quite shattered, he reluctantly decided to withdraw altogether. It need hardly be said that the relations between him and the community have always been most cordial. Meantime the others, Fathers Hecker, Hewit, Deshon, and Baker, organized by electing the first-named the Superior, and drew up and signed what was termed a Programme of Rule. This was submitted to Archbishop Hughes and by him approved and signed on July 7, 1858.

The Apostle of the Gentiles was chosen as patron, and the name selected was, The Missionary Priests of St. Paul the Apostle, which has been popularized into Paulists. The habit agreed upon was in form somewhat like that of the students of the Propaganda in Rome, black throughout, with a narrow linen collar and b.u.t.toned across the breast, being held at the waist by a cincture.

The Programme of Rule adopts an order of spiritual exercises similar to that observed by the Fathers while Redemptorists. A perpetual voluntary agreement takes the place of the vows as the security of stability, the members affirming that they are fully determined to promote their sanctification by leading a life in all essential respects similar to that led in the religious orders. Besides the chast.i.ty imposed upon them by the priesthood the other evangelical counsels of obedience and poverty are adopted and their observance enjoined upon the members, together with the daily and periodical exercises of community life. As to the external vocation, the missions are named as the basis of general apostolic labors, and parish work also, though in a subordinate degree. The entire doc.u.ment looks forward to a complete Rule to be drawn up and submitted to the Holy See at a future day, for which it actually furnished the outlines some twenty years afterwards. The approval of the Programme of a Rule by the Archbishop of New York gave the Fathers the canonical status antic.i.p.ated by the decree _Nuper nonnulli._ This was confirmed by an official permission of the Holy See to the Archbishop of New York to establish the Paulist Inst.i.tute in his diocese, with the consent of his suffragans, which was asked for and obtained.

A little more than a fortnight after these events Father Hecker wrote as follows to a friend:

"Before leaving Rome our Holy Father Pius IX. gave us his special blessing for the commencement of our new organization, promised us any privileges we might need to carry on our missionary labors, and held out the hope of his sanction, in proper time, of the rules which we might make. In my last visit to his Eminence Cardinal Barnabo he gave me advice how to organize, what steps were to be taken from time to time, and expressed a most lively interest in our undertaking. The same did Monsignor Bedini. On my return we organized as advised, wrote out an outline of our new inst.i.tution and submitted it to the ordinary of this diocese, the initiatory step of all such undertakings. He gave it his cordial approbation, and said that he found no word to alter, to add, or improve. Thus we are so far regularly canonically inst.i.tuted.

"Our aim is to lead a strict religious life in community, starting with the voluntary principle; leaving the question of vows to further experience, counsel, and indications of Divine Providence. Our princ.i.p.al work is the missions, such as we have hitherto given, but we are not excluded from other apostolic labors as the wants of the Church may demand or develop. . . . We begin early this fall our campaign of missions, and we never had before us so fine a list. One thing I may say, and I trust without boasting, we are of one mind and heart, resolved to labor and die for Jesus Christ, for the good of His holy Church, for the advancement of the Catholic faith. We have the encouragement of a number of bishops, and also, we trust, the prayers, sympathy, and a.s.sistance of the faithful. We shall have to face obstacles, opposition from friends and foes; but if we are the right kind of men and have the virtues which such a position as ours demands, our trials will only strengthen us and make us the better Christians. Every good work must expect opposition from pious men, and our minds are made up to that."

After St. Bridget's mission the little community found itself homeless, and it remained so till the spring of the year 1859. But during part of this period Mr. George Hecker, taking his family to the country, gave up his whole house to the Fathers, servants and all, making provision for the supply of every want in the most generous manner. For the greater portion of the time, however, especially between missions in the winter and spring of 1858-9, the Fathers depended for temporary shelter upon the hospitality of friends among the clergy and laity, even lodging for a short while in a respectable boarding-house in Thirteenth street, at a convenient distance from several churches and chapels where Ma.s.s could be said daily.

But in the spring of 1858 arrangements had been made with Archbishop Hughes for establis.h.i.+ng a house and parish in New York. The present site of St. Paul's Church and convent, then in the midst of a suburban wilderness, was chosen, and, by dint of hasty collections from private friends and with the help of a very large gift from Mr.

George Hecker, money enough was paid down to obtain the deeds.

Sixtieth Street was not quite opened at the time, and this part of Ninth Avenue existed only on paper; but by energetic efforts made by all the Fathers and their friends, and by personal appeals in every direction, especially in the down-town parishes in which they had given missions, sufficient funds were raised to clear the ground and lay the foundations of a building which was to include both convent and church. Early in the summer of 1858 circulars asking a.s.sistance had been sent out to the clergy of the United States, and by this means also a considerable amount was secured, the very first answer with a handsome donation coming from Father Early, President of Georgetown College. In the spring of 1859 the Fathers rented a frame house on Sixtieth Street, just west of Broadway, fitted up a little chapel in it, and lived there in community till the new house was finished.

The corner-stone of the new structure was laid by Archbishop Hughes on Trinity Sunday, June 19, 1859, in the presence of an immense concourse of people. During that summer and fall every effort was made to keep the builders at work. The task was no easy one. The times were hard, the country still suffering from the effects of the financial crisis of 1857, the financial depression being aggravated by the ominous outlook in the political world. But the house was finally completed, and was blessed by Father Hecker on the 24th of November, the feast of St. John of the Cross, one of his very special patrons. This was within a few weeks of his fortieth birthday. On the 27th of the same month, the first Sunday of Advent, the chapel was blessed and Solemn Ma.s.s was celebrated in it. Thereafter the Fathers had to act as parish priests as well as missionaries. A few weeks before this the first recruit joined the little band in the person of Father Robert Beverly Tillotson, a convert, who, though an American, had been for some time a member of Dr. Newman's Oratory. He was a charming preacher and a n.o.ble character, much beloved by all the fathers, and especially by Father Hecker. He died, deeply mourned, in the summer of 1868, having given the community nine years of most valuable service. He came just in time to set free three of the Fathers for missionary duty, the other two remaining in care of the parish. This was at first small enough in numbers, though in territory it reached from Fifty-second Street to very near Manhattanville. The accession of Father Alfred Young, of the diocese of Newark, and the return of Father Walworth considerably relieved the pressure, though the rapid growth of the parish and the widening scope of the community's labors kept every one busy enough.

The newly-founded Paulist community was heartily welcomed by both clergy and people. Missions were given in various parts of the country, applications being often declined for want of time and missionaries. Several prelates, among whom were the Archbishops of Baltimore and Cincinnati, wrote to Father Hecker offering to establish the community in their dioceses; Bishop Bayley, of Newark, also wished to secure the Fathers, and he was especially urgent in his request. One has but to know the intensely conservative spirit of the Catholic hierarchy and clergy to appreciate how stainless must have been the record of the Fathers to elicit such testimonials of good-will just after they had fought a hard battle on the ground of authority and obedience. As to the Catholic laity, the following extract from a letter of the poet George H. Miles, whose early death some years after was so deeply lamented, shows how they regarded the new community. It was written from Baltimore under date of August 13, 1858:

"MY VERY DEAR FATHER HECKER: . . . Since we last parted you have been to me one of those grand, good memories we take to heart and cherish.

I have loved you better than you could believe, for I felt that in the extremity of sorrow or temptation you were the man and the priest I would have recourse to, could my own wish be granted. You are not wrong in considering me a friend; that is, if much love may atone for little power to befriend. . . . _Providentially,_ it now appears, you men have always had an individual force that detached you completely from your _confreres._ To me and to the mult.i.tudes you were never Redemptorists, never Liguorians, but Hecker, Walworth, Hewit, Deshon, Baker. I mean to utter nothing disrespectful to the society which has blessed this nation in training and developing you and your new body of preachers, but I maintain that you stood so completely apart from that society, so absolutely individualized, that, etc."

The three years following Father Hecker's return from Rome were exceedingly active ones. The missions were maintained, money collected for the purchase of the property and the building of the convent at the corner of Fifty-ninth Street and Ninth Avenue, and, after the opening of the new church in November, 1859, the regular duties of a city parish were added.

"I am hard at work," writes Father Hecker to a friend, in the very midst of these labors, "in soliciting subscriptions for our convent and temporary church. I have worked hard in my life, but this is about the hardest. However, it goes. I had, a couple of weeks ago, a donation of $200 from a Protestant. Yesterday a subscription of $90 from another. _Sursum Corda_ and go ahead, is my cry!" And, indeed, he was full of courage and conscience in the future, all his letters breathing a cheerful spirit.

Before giving Father Hecker's principles for community life, which we will do in the next chapter, it may be well to say a few words more about the att.i.tude in which he and his companions had been placed, by the action of the Holy See, toward the Catholic idea of authority.

Just as he was about to sail for America he wrote to his brother George: "I return from Rome with my enthusiasm unchilled and my resolution to labor for the conversion of our people intensified and strengthened. I feel that the knowledge and experience which I have acquired are most necessary for the American Fathers in their present delicate position." And in truth his stay in Rome had prepared him for the new responsibilities in store for him. His sufferings there had purified his motives, his humiliations and his anguish had taught him the need of reliance, total and loving, on Divine Providence. He had studied authority in its chief seat, and he had done so with the depth of impression which a man on trial for his life experiences of the power of the advocates and the dignity of the judges. The result of that trial was of infinite benefit. The test of genuine liberty is its consonance with lawful authority, and in Father Hecker's case the newest liberty had been roughly arraigned before the most venerable authority known among men, tried by fire, and sent forth with Rome's broad seal of approval.

Without doubt the chief endeavor of authority should be to win the allegiance of free and aspiring spirits; but, on the other hand, no one should be so firmly convinced of the rights of the external order of G.o.d as the man who is called to minister to the aspirations of human liberty.

No man ought to be so vividly conscious of the prerogatives of authority as he who lays claim to a vocation to extol the worth of liberty. It was, therefore, fitting that Father Hecker should learn his lesson of the prerogatives of the visible Church from that teacher who has no master among men. At the same time Rome sent forth in the person of Father Hecker a living and powerful argument addressed to this Republic, that the Catholic Church is worthy of the heartiest allegiance of our citizens.

This providential aspect of the case should not be forgotten. When Father Hecker had been expelled from the Redemptorists it might have been thought that he was done for, and that if he had ever had a mission it had suffered total s.h.i.+pwreck, whether deserved or not. But in reality the very reverse was the truth. The disgrace of expulsion, the sudden horror of being thus cast out, a calamity which set him forth to all Catholics as a ruined priest, had but served to bring him into the notice of the supreme authority of the Church. And when in this G.o.d had wrought all His work His servant was purified within and mightily strengthened without. In his inmost soul he was conscious of his divine mission with a deeper cert.i.tude than ever before; and as he began his apostolate he bore on his arm the buckler of Rome, against which all the darts of enemies, if any should arise, would strike harmless and fall to the ground.

It was fitting that the Paulist community, appealing to the men and women of to-day with the credentials as well of their own individual independence as of the good will of the Pope and the Bishops, should be launched into existence from the very deck of Peter's bark, and furnished with all the testimonials of ecclesiastical authority short of canonical sanction. This was the more proper because, in a few years after the beginning of the community, European revolutionists were to be scourged with the Syllabus, whose every word agonized the souls of unworthy advocates of liberty. That Pontifical doc.u.ment has created a literature of its own in comment and explanation, some tying more knots in every lash and others mitigating its severity or palliating the errors it smote with such pitiless rigor. But the best interpretation of the Syllabus is the Paulist community. It is a body of free men whose origin was the joint result of the personal workings of the Holy Spirit in the soul of a man who loved civil and political freedom with a mighty love, and the decision of the highest court of Catholicity declaring him worthy of trust as an exponent of the Christian faith. If the Syllabus shows what the Church thinks of those who in the guise of freemen are conspirators against religion and public order, the approval of the Paulist community shows the Church's att.i.tude towards men worthy to be free.

Nor was Rome's course chosen without weighing the consequences, without a full estimate of the public significance of the act. Father Hecker's adversaries fixed upon him every stigma of radicalism and rebellion possible in a good but deluded priest. For seven long months they poured into ears which instinctively feared revolt in the name of liberty, every accusation his doings and sayings could be made to give color to, in order to prove that he and the American Fathers were tainted with false liberalism. And he seemed to lend himself to their purpose. His guileless tongue spoke to the cardinals, prelates, and professors of Rome about nothing so much as freedom, and its kins.h.i.+p with Catholicity. He seemed to have no refuge but the disclosure of the very secrets of his soul. During those months of incessant accusation and defence Father Hecker talked Rome's high dignitaries into full knowledge of himself, until they saw the cause mirrored in the man and gave approval to both. Some, like Barnabo, were actuated by the quick sympathy of free natures; others, like Pius IX., arrived at a decision by the slower processes of the removal of prejudice from an honest mind, and the careful comparing of Father Hecker's principles with the fundamental truths of religion.

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CHAPTER XXVI

FATHER HECKER'S IDEA OF A RELIGIOUS COMMUNITY

THE beginnings of the Paulist community having been sketched, it is now in order to state the principles with which Father Hecker, guided no less by supernatural intuition than by enlightened reason, intended it should be inspired; and this shall be done as nearly as possible in his own words. The following sentences, found in one of his diaries and quoted some chapters back, embody what may be deemed his ultimate principle:

"It is for this we are created: that we may give a new and individual expression of the absolute in our own peculiar character. As soon as the new is but the re-expression of the old, G.o.d ceases to live. Ever the mystery is revealed in each new birth; so must it be to eternity.

The Eternal-Absolute is ever creating new forms of expressing itself."

What the new order of things was to be in the spiritual life could be learned, Father Hecker held, by observing men's strivings after natural good. The tendencies which shape men's efforts to secure happiness in this world, in so far as they are innocent, indicated to him what choice of means should be made to propagate the knowledge and love of G.o.d. According to this, the most successful worker for a people's sanctification will be kindred to them by conviction and by sympathy in all that concerns their political and social life. Men's aspirations in the natural order point out the highway of G.o.d's representatives. As these aspirations change from era to era, so do the main lines of religious effort change, the highways of one age becoming the byways of another. It is true that no method for the elevation of human nature to divine union, which the Church has sanctioned, ever becomes quite obsolete, but the merest glance at the differences between the spiritual characteristics of the martyrs, the hermits, the monks, the friars, shows that one form of the Christian virtues succeeds another in general possession of men's souls. The new spirit, without crowding the old one off its beaten track, follows men to the new ways whither the providence of G.o.d in the natural order has led them. "First the natural man," says St. Paul, "and then the spiritual." Different types of spirituality are brought forward by Almighty G.o.d to sanctify men in new conditions of life.

Among the foremost of these are religious communities of men and women. Hence their duty to adjust themselves, as far as faith and discipline permit, to the circ.u.mstances of the times. The power of a religious community for good will be measured by its ability to elevate the natural to the supernatural without shocking it or thwarting it.

Now, every one knows that this age differs materially from past ones.

It differs by a wider spread of education and an uncontrollable longing after liberty, civil, political, and personal.

Father Hecker was penetrated with the belief that the intelligence and liberty, whose well-ordered enjoyment he had witnessed in America, and which he loved so deeply himself, were divine invitations to the apostolate of the Holy Spirit. He was profoundly impressed with the certainty of the development, the extension, and the permanence of these political and social changes; and he knew that they demanded of men a personal independence of character far in advance of previous generations. And he knew, also, that for the sanctification of such men the aids of religion, though not changed in themselves, must be applied in a different spirit. Discipline and uniformity, though never to be dispensed with, must yield the first places to more interior virtues. The dominant influence must be docility to the guidance of the Holy Spirit dwelling within every regenerate soul. Applying this, towards the end of his life, to religious communities, Father Hecker wrote: "The controlling thought of my mind for many years has been that a body of free men who love G.o.d with all their might, and yet know how to cling together, could conquer this modern world of ours." The sentence may be taken as a brief description of the Paulist community as he would have it. And it is easily seen why free men loving G.o.d with all their hearts are suited to conquer this modern world; because men are determined to be free.