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 shipwreck, 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 God 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 certitude 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 document 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 attitude 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 kinship 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, God 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 God. 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 God'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 God 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 God 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 circumstances 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.