Father Hecker was once asked: "Which would you prefer: to have a rule and manner of life adapted to a large number of men, embracing many of a uniform type, men good enough for average work, intended to include and seeking to retain persons of mediocre spirit, and having a dim understanding of our peculiar institute? or would you prefer the rule to be made only for a select body, composed of such men as ——and ——, and the like?'" [Answer:] "I should prefer the rule to be made for the smaller and more select body of men. Religious vocations are not common, but special. It is a fatal mistake for religious to take the place of secular priests."
No one can be misled by what he has read in the foregoing pages into the notion that Father Hecker had any other aim than the entire consecration of liberty and intelligence to the influence of the Holy Spirit. To know Father Hecker well was to be more deeply impressed with his longing for the reign of the Spirit of God in men's souls than even with his love of human liberty. In his esteem the worth of the latter was altogether in proportion to its aptitude for the former. His love of liberty was that of a means to an end—the perfect oblation of the inner man to God. He aimed at individuality because of his belief in the action of the Holy Ghost in the individual soul. Such action, he was quick to maintain, is given to every Christian, but it is to be looked for in a high degree in those who are called by a special vocation to assist independent characters to find the spirit of God within them; or, if already known, to obey His direction implicitly. Paulists after Father Hecker's heart would be men whom experience and study had rendered fit instruments for disseminating the knowledge of the ways of God the Holy Ghost in men's hearts; for instructing the faithful how to distinguish the voice of God in the soul from the vagaries of the imagination or the emotions of passion, and able to stimulate a ready and generous response to every call of God from within.
It is because of this indwelling of the Holy Spirit in every regenerate soul that Father Hecker so vigorously maintained that the freedom of the individual is a golden opportunity for the Catbolic apostolate, according to the text "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." Freedom, he affirmed, was in absolute consonance with Catholic doctrine. But he furthermore insisted that it has become the world-wide aspiration of men by interposition of Divine Providence and with a view to their higher sanctification; and however grossly abused, it is yet a direct suggestion to an apostolate whose prospects are in the highest degree promising. And this is the answer to the question which reasonable persons may well ask, namely: Why should the new institution differ so radically from the old ones, which were certainly works of God? Because the change of men's lives in the entire secular and natural order is in the direction of personal liberty and independence, and this change is a radical one. "The Eternal-Absolute is ever creating new forms of expressing itself." If, indeed, men's aspirations for liberty and intelligence be all from the powers of darkness, then let every longing for freedom be repressed and condemned, crushed by authority in the state, anathematized by the Church. But if men are yearning to be free, however blindly, because God by their freedom would make them holier, then let us hail the new order as a blessing; and let those who love freedom and are worthy of it use its privileges to advance themselves and their brethren nearer to immediate union with the Holy Spirit.
It has been seen that the important question whether the end of the new community would be better attained with the usual religious vows or without them was decided in the negative. They were not definitely rejected in the beginning; but starting without them, the Fathers were willing to allow experience to show whether or not they should be resumed. The lapse of time but confirmed the view that the voluntary agreement and the bond of fraternal charity were, under the circumstances, preferable as securities for stability and incentives to holiness.
There can be little doubt that Father Hecker's ideas on this feature of the religious state had been greatly modified between the writing of the Questions of the Soul and the end of the struggle in Rome. Much is said in that book of community life in the Catholic Church, and generally as rendered stable and its spirit of sacrifice made complete by the vows; and in the statement given in Rome to his five chosen advisers, he says that one reason for writing the volume named was to induce young men to enter the religious orders as the only means of perfection—meaning orders under vows. But when he was released from his own obligations and was confronted with the choice of means for following his vocation, the horizon broadened away until he could see beyond the institutions and traditions in which he had lived since entering the novitiate at St. Trond. His ideas of perfection in its relation to states of life underwent a change. Therefore he said, Let us wait for the unmistakable will of God before we bind ourselves with vows amidst a free people. He never depreciated the evident value of these obligations; indeed, he seldom was heard to speak of them. But he knew from close observation the truth of the words of the Jesuit Avancinus:
"The net (St. Matthew 13:44) is the Catholic Church, or, to take a narrower view, it means the station in which you are placed. As in a net all kinds of fish are to be found, so in our position, as in all others, there are good and bad Christians. . . . Should yours be a sacred calling, you are not, on that account, either the better or the more secure; your sanctity and your salvation depend on yourself, not on your calling." (Meditations, Fourteenth Friday after Pentecost)
It never entered into the minds of the Fathers to question the doctrine and practice of the Church concerning vows. But personal experience proves the lesson of history, that what religion needs is not so much holy states of life as holy men and Women.
Looking back into the past, Father Hecker saw St. Philip Neri, to whom he had a great devotion and for whose spiritual doctrine he had a high admiration. The following is from an exponent of that doctrine, and is much in point:
"Although our Fathers and lay brothers [Oratorians] make no vow of obedience, as do religious, they are, nevertheless, no way inferior in the perfection of this virtue to those who profess it in the cloister with solemn vows. They supply the want of vows with love, with voluntary promptitude, and perfection in obeying every wish of the superior. And it is a thing for which we must indeed thank God, that without the obligation of obeying under pain of sin, without fear of restraint or other punishment (except that of expulsion in case of contumacy), all the subjects are prompt in this obedience, even in things most humiliating and severe, according to the terms of the rule. All take pleasure in meeting the wishes of the superior, etc." (The Excellences of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri, p. 136. London: Burns & Oates.)
Father Hecker did not dream that by relinquishing the vows he and his companions in the Paulist community had cast away a single incentive to virtue capable of moving such men as they, or had even failed to secure any of the insignia adorning the great host of men and women in the Catholic Church whose entire being has been given up to the divine service. "The true Paulist," said he once, "should be fit and ready to take the solemn vows at any moment." He felt strongly the truth of the following words of the Jesuit Lallemant: