Life of Father Hecker Part 40

Since Father Hecker's death I have never failed a single day to invoke him in my prayers, and to his intercession I attribute many graces obtained, some of them very important.

III

Father Hecker had a marvellous openness of heart. I heard him relate several times the story of his life, his conversion, his joining the Redemptorists, his case before the Roman Congregations, and the founding of the Paulist community. I can still recall the banks of the Lake of Geneva at the Villa Bartoloni, where Father Hecker, walking with a friend and myself, told us of his leaving the Redemptorist order. It was the way in which he talked of so delicate a matter that enabled me to appreciate that the man was a saint. He liked to repeat, while on this subject, what Cardinal Deschamps had said of him: "Here is a man who has been able to leave our Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer without committing even a venial sin."

In my opinion, Father Hecker was, after Pere Lacordaire, the most remarkable sacred orator of the century. This does not apply to his writings, for his ideas lost much of their force in the process of getting into print. Like all natural orators his chief quality was a power of drawing and persuading, which, to use an expression often applied to Pere Lacordaire, had something magnetic about it. He had a prodigious gift of showing his Protestant or infidel hearers that their own hearts and their own reason aspired by instinct towards the Catholic truth which he was teaching them. In that way he drew his hearers to discover the truth in their own minds instead of receiving it by force of argument or any extrinsic authority. To acquire this power he had made a great study of the Gospel, and, sustained by Divine grace, he went about the exposition of the truth as Jesus Christ did. One of the most original aspects of his mind was that he joined the practical sense of the American to the taste and apt.i.tude of the European for speculation. He had not been able to make a complete course of studies because he had spent several years in commercial life, but he had great natural gifts for metaphysics, theology, and above all mysticism.

Unlike the English converts of the Oxford school, he had reached Catholicity by way of liberal Protestantism, which he had renounced because it could not satisfy the religious aspirations of his nature.

It would be interesting to study his case in connection with those of Newman and Manning, for it shows that souls are led to Catholicity by all roads, even the most opposite, and that minds most inclined to rationalize can be drawn to the Church as easily as those of a conservative or traditional temperament.

IV

But I wish to dwell especially on what preoccupied Father Hecker's mind and formed the fundamental theme of his eloquent words. We were just on the morrow of the Vatican Council, of the defeat of France by Prussia, and in the first agonies of the Culturkampf in Germany and Italy. Now, if one remembers that Father Hecker was of an American family originally from the town of Elberfeld, Prussia, he can better understand the gravity of the problem which weighed upon his mind, as upon that of so many others. Must we admit, it was asked, that the Council of the Vatican has affixed its seal upon the decadence of Catholicity, binding the Church to the failing fortunes of the Latin races? Must Protestantism finally triumph with the Saxon races? And here Father Hecker's faith did not halt an instant, but grasped the difficulty in all its terrible magnitude. His solution may be questioned by some, but I believe that no one will dispute that the mind which conceived it was of the first order.

Father Hecker remarked, as did many others, that, starting from the sixteenth century, the Church, although ever exerting a considerable influence, no longer appeared at the head of the world's activity.

This was in contrast with what she had done in the era of the conversion of the Roman Empire, during that of the invasion of the barbarians, and amid the immense religious movement which characterized the apogee of the Middle Ages. Father Hecker discovered the cause of this lessening influence in the fact that since the sixteenth century the Church had been compelled to stand upon the defensive. This had greatly paralyzed her power of initiation and her liberty. As a consequence of the Protestant heresy, which threatened the utter destruction of the principle of authority, the Church had been forced to concentrate on that side of her fortress all her means of defence. In order to protect herself from the excesses of the principle of individuality and free inquiry, she had been obliged to resort to a mult.i.tude of restrictive measures, which were conceived in a very different spirit from that which animated her in previous centuries. In the sixteenth century the Church placed before everything else the idea of authority. She sacrificed the development of personality to fostering the a.s.sociation of men whose wills were absolutely merged by discipline in one powerful body. It can be seen at a glance how intimately and profoundly the spirit of the dominant religious orders of the later era differs from that of the great orders of the Middle Ages, in respect to the expansion of nature and the development of individuality. The needs of the sixteenth century were altogether different from those of the ages preceding it, and to meet those needs G.o.d inspired St. Ignatius with the idea of a different type of Christian character. The result was the triumphant repulse of Protestantism from all the southern nations. But the victory was gained at the price of real sacrifices; the Catholics of the recent centuries have not displayed the puissant individuality of those of the Middle Ages, the types of which are St. Bernard, St.

Gregory VII., Innocent III., St. Thomas Aquinas. The Divine Spirit often exacts the sacrifice of certain human qualities for the preservation of the faith; and it is in this sense that we should interpret the mysterious words of Jesus Christ, that it is better to lose an eye and an arm and not fall into h.e.l.l, than to save an eye and an arm and be lost eternally.

The Council of the Vatican, Father Hecker maintained, by giving to the principle of authority its dogmatic completion, has placed it above all attacks, and consequently has brought to a close the historical period in which it was necessary to devote all efforts to its defence. A new period now opens to the Church. She has been engaged during three centuries in perfecting her external organism, and securing to authority the place it should have in working out her divine life; she will now undertake quite another part of her providential mission. It is now to be the individuality, the personality of souls, their free and vigorous initiative under the direct guidance of the Holy Spirit dwelling within them, which shall become the distinctive Catholic form of acting in these times. And this will all be done under the control of her divine supreme authority in the external order preventing error, eccentricity, and rashness.

The Latin races were fitted by nature to be the princ.i.p.al instruments of the Holy Spirit during the period just pa.s.sed. In the new one the Anglo-Saxon and Teutonic races, of a nature strongly individual and independent, will take their turn as instruments of Divine Providence. This is not saying that the development of the Church is the result of the natural apt.i.tudes of races, but that G.o.d, who has created these apt.i.tudes, takes them one after the other, and at the hours He chooses, and causes them to serve as instruments for carrying out His designs. It was thus, from the fourth to the seventh century, that He made use of the metaphysical subtilty implanted by Him in the Greek genius, issuing in all those great definitions which have fixed not only the substance but the verbal form of Catholic dogma. Hence the first general councils were all held in the East.

Father Hecker cherished hopes for the conversion of the Teutonic and Anglo-Saxon races. Doubtless G.o.d could convert them suddenly, but considering the way heretofore followed that conversion will be brought about insensibly and by the two following instrumentalities: On the one hand, the new development of individuality in souls within the Church will create a sympathetic attraction towards her on the part of Protestants, who will discover affinities with her of which they were wholly unaware. On the other hand, the more the Protestant races expand, the more they will find the dwarfed Christianity which they profess falling short of their aspirations, and by that means they will be inclined towards Catholicity. It is not a little remarkable that Father Hecker expressed himself thus during the last years of the pontificate of Pius IX., at a moment when such ideas seemed to be least in favor in high Catholic circles. But soon afterwards the pontificate of Leo XIII. began, and with it a movement in the spirit indicated by the American priest, and in a manner so strikingly in accord with his views that Father Hecker seemed to have been enlightened from above in his presages of the future.

Father Hecker developed a grand theological synthesis of what he called the exterior and interior mission of the Holy Spirit in the Church. He has explained it in a pamphlet; but how much more impressive it was when he expounded it in person! We had the privilege of hearing him do so in a long conversation with the most celebrated Protestant minister of French-speaking countries, the ill.u.s.trious philosopher and orator, Ernest Naville. Father Hecker said that the antipathy of Protestants for the Church arose from the fact that they imagined that Catholicity reduced all religion to obedience to external authority. Protestants, on the other hand, pretend to place all religion in the interior life, directly generated in souls by the Holy Spirit, and it is for this reason that Catholicity impresses them as a tyrannical usurpation and a stupid formalism. In this they are deceived, as a close acquaintance with Catholics and with such writings as those of St. Francis de Sales and St. Teresa soon proves to them. So, also, when they fancy that the authority of the Church is not necessary to the preservation of the action of the Holy Spirit in the soul. As a matter of fact, the innumerable divisions of Protestants among themselves plainly show that the interior action of the Holy Ghost does not extend to making each individual infallible. To safeguard souls against deception, scepticism or illuminism, there is need of another action of the Holy Spirit which shall be conservative of the interior life. That other action is exterior, and is exercised by means of the authority of the Church. The Holy Spirit cannot be brought into contradiction with Himself. By His action in the exterior authority of the Church He can never interfere in the least degree with the fulness or the spontaneity of His own interior action in souls.

The exterior action is one of control and of verification, to hinder souls from being lost in the depths of illusion and in the deceits of pride. But besides this, humility, obedience, self-abnegation, virtues dear by excellence to the heart of Jesus Christ, are impossible without due submission to the external authority. When one believes only in himself, he obeys only himself, and hence has never practised complete renunciation nor complete humility.

Father Hecker also maintained that the direction of souls in confession should be made to strengthen and develop individual life.

We do not need blood-letting, he said, as if we suffered from plethora, but rather we need a course of tonics, sea-baths, and the invigorating air of the mountains. We should not hold our penitents in leading-strings, but should teach them to live a self-reliant life under the direction of the Holy Spirit. Souls tempered by that process would render the Church a thousand times more service than they do now.

No doubt such souls may sometimes run the risk of pride and of temptation to revolt. But in such cases the Church is so provided with power by the dogma of infallibility, as proclaimed by the Vatican Council, as to be able to counteract this danger without serious loss, as was proved in the case of Dollinger and the Old Catholics.

The Holy Spirit, preparing for a great development of individual life, has made provision beforehand that the Church should be armed with power sufficient to repress all waywardness, and this was done by the Vatican Council. Some had feared that the definition of infallibility would introduce an extravagant use of authority, and lead to a diminution of reasonable liberty and individuality in the Church even greater than before. But the very contrary has been the result.

With reference to the interior life, I can affirm that Father Hecker's was full and rich. Having spent the greater part of his life in a devouring activity, at its close he lived as a true contemplative. He was a genuine mystic. We heard him discourse with marvellous beauty on the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Eucharist, expounding these great truths in a way not only to enrapture one with their splendor, but utterly to refute deism, pantheism, and materialism. The latter error, he said, owed its introduction partly to the fact that Protestantism had refused to the senses their legitimate place in divine worship, this excessive spiritualizing having brought about a reaction.

V

Father Hecker often spoke of the future reserved for Catholicity in the United States, saying that it was there that the union of the Church with democracy would first take place. In that nation the prejudice against the Church is not so strong as in Europe, and her position is free from the embarra.s.sments of traditional difficulties.

Catholicity is there valued for its immediate effect upon human nature, and the rancor born of historical recollections is not in such full control of men's minds; hence conversions are more easily made. Furthermore, Father Hecker believed that it would finally be discovered that the Protestant spirit is contrary to the political spirit of the American Republic. America has based her Const.i.tution on the fact that man is born free, reasonable, and capable of self-government. The Protestant Reformers, on the contrary, never ceased to teach that original sin deprived man of his free will and made him incapable of performing virtuous acts; and if Protestants seek to escape from this whirlpool of fatalism, they fall into infidelity. The day will come when Americans will admit that if they are to be at once religious and reasonable, they must become Catholics. Therefore, whether it be acknowledged or not, every development of political liberty in the United States contributes to the advance of Catholicity. The Const.i.tution of the United States has formulated the political principles most conformable to the Canons of the Council of Trent.