Life of Father Hecker

by Walter Elliott

He believed in types as he believed in pulpits. He believed that the printing-office was necessary to the convent. To him the Apostolate of the Press meant the largest amount of truth to the greatest number of people. By its means a small band of powerful men could reach an entire nation and elevate its religious life.

This being understood, one is not surprised at the extent of his plans for this Apostolate. He was never able to carry them out fully. Not till some years after the founding of the community could he make a fair beginning, although the first volume of the Paulist Sermons appeared in 1861. Delays were inevitable from the difficulties incident to the opening of the house and church in Fifty-ninth Street, and these were aggravated by the war, which for over four years bred such intense excitement as to interfere with any strong general interest in matters other than political. But the very month it ended, in April, 1865, Father Hecker started The Catholic World. Its purpose was to speak for religion in high-grade periodical literature. The year following he founded The Catholic Publication Society, with the purpose of directing the entire resources of the Press into a missionary apostolate. In 1870 he began The Young Catholic. In literary merit and in illustrations it equalled any of the juvenile publications of that period, and was the pioneer of all the Catholic journals in the United States intended for children. And finally, in 1871, he projected the establishment of a first-class Catholic daily, securing within a year subscriptions for more than half the money necessary for the purpose, when the work was arrested by the final breaking down of his health.

The Catholic World was considered a hazardous venture. At the time it was proposed, such modest attempts at Catholic monthlies as had struggled into life had long ceased to exist. The public for such a magazine seemed to be small. The priesthood had little leisure for reading, being hardly sufficient in number for their most essential duties; the educated laymen were not numerous, nor remarkable for activity of mind in matters of religion; nearly the entire Church of America was foreign by birth or parentage, and belonged to the toiling masses of the people: "not many rich, not many noble." And, Father Hecker was asked, whom are you going to get to write for the magazine? How many Catholic literary men and women do you know of? Prudence, therefore, stood sponsor to courage. The cautious policy of an eclectic was adopted, and for more than a year the magazine, with the exception of its book reviews, was made up of selections and translations from foreign periodicals. The late John R. G. Hassard, who had already succeeded as a journalist, was chosen by Father Hecker as his assistant in the editorial work. Efforts were at once made to secure original articles; but before the magazine was filled by them three or four years were spent in urgent soliciting, in very elaborate sub-editing of MSS., and in reliance on the steady assistance of the pens of the Paulist Fathers. As a compensation, The Catholic World has introduced to the public many of our best writers, and first and last has brought our ablest minds on both sides of the water into contact with the most intelligent Catholics in the United States. All through its career it has represented Catholic truth before the American public in such wise as to command respect, and has brought about the conversion of many of its non-Catholic readers. Since its beginning it has been forced to hold its own against the claims of not unwelcome rivals, and against the almost overwhelming attractions of the great illustrated secular monthlies, to say nothing of the vicissitudes of the business world; and it has succeeded in doing so, Father Hecker's purpose in establishing it has been realized, for it has ever been a first-rate Catholic monthly of general literature, holding an equal place with similar publications in the world of letters. He was its editor-in-chief till the time of his death, except during three years of illness and absence in Europe. He conducted it so as to occupy much of the field open to the Apostolate of the Press, giving solid doctrine in form of controversy, and discussing such religious truths as were of current interest. He kept its readers informed of the changeful moods of non-Catholic thought, and furnished them with short studies of instructive eras and personages in history. These graver topics have been floated along by contributions of a lighter kind, by good fiction and conscientious literary criticism. Meantime, the social problems which had perplexed Father Hecker himself in his early life, have caught the attention of the slower minds of average men, or rather have been thrust upon them; and their consideration, ever in his own sympathetic spirit, now forms a prominent feature of The Catholic World.

The Young Catholic was an enterprise dear to his heart. His interest in it was constant and minute, and some of the articles most popular with its young constituency were from his own pen. It has always been edited by Mrs. George V. Hecker, assisted by a small circle of zealous and enlightened writers. It has held its way, but has had to encounter the not unusual fate of bold pioneers. It created its own rivals by demonstrating the possibilities of juvenile Catholic journalism, calling into existence more than a score of claimants for the support which it alone at first solicited. The lowest estimate of juvenile publications of a purely secular tone yearly sold in America carries the figure far into the millions. Some of these, and it is well to know that they are the most widely sold, are first-rate in a literary point of view and employ the best artists for the pictures. To say that they are secular but feebly expresses the totally unmoral influence they for the most part exert. They are the extension of the unreligious school into the homes of the people. When Father Hecker and Mrs. George V. Hecker and their associates began The Young Catholic, this vast mirage of the desert of life had but glimmered upon the distant horizon; they saw it coming and they did their best to point Catholic youth away from it and lead it to the real oasis of God, with its grateful shade, its delicious fruits, and its ever-flowing springs of the waters of life.

As already said, The Catholic Publication Society was begun a year after The Catholic World was started, its aim being to turn to the good of religion, and especially to the conversion of non-Catholics, all the uses the press is capable of. It was a missionary work in the broadest sense seeking to enlist not only the clergy but especially the laity in an organized Apostolate of the Press, to enlighten the faith of Catholics and to spread it among their Protestant fellow-citizens. Its first work was to be the issuing of tracts and pamphlets telling the plain truth about the Catholic religion. Local societies, to be established throughout the country, were to buy these publications at a price less than cost, and distribute them gratis to all classes likely to be benefited. To catch the eye of the American people, to affect their hearts, to supply their religious wants with Catholic truth, were objects kept in view in preparing the tracts. Although some of them were addressed to Catholics, enforcing important religious duties, nearly all of them were controversial. More than seventy different tracts were printed first and last, and many hundreds of thousands, indeed several millions, of them distributed in all parts of the country, public, charitable, and penal institutions being, of course, fair field for this work. They were all very brief, few of them covering more than four small-sized pages. "Three pages of truth have before now overturned a life-time of error," said Father Hecker. The tract Is it Honest? though only four pages of large type, or about twelve hundred words, created a sensation everywhere, and was answered by a Protestant minister with over fifty pages of printed matter, or about fifteen times more than the tract itself. One hundred thousand copies of this tract were distributed in New York City alone. It is printed herewith as a specimen, both as to style and matter, of what one may call the aggressive-defensive tactics in Catholic controversy:

IS IT HONEST To say that the Catholic Church prohibits the use of the Bible— When anybody who chooses can buy as many as he likes at any Catholic bookstore, and can see on the first page of any one of them the approbation of the Bishops of the Catholic Church, with the Pope at their head, encouraging Catholics to read the Bible, in these words: "The faithful should be excited to the reading of the Holy Scriptures," and that not only for the Catholics of the United States, but also for those of the whole world besides?

IS IT HONEST To say that Catholics believe that man by his own power can forgive sin—When the priest is regarded by the Catholic Church only as the agent of our Lord Jesus Christ, acting by the power delegated to him, according to these words, "Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them; and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained?" (St. John 20:23).

IS IT HONEST To repeat over and over again that Catholics pay the priest to pardon their sins—When such a thing is unheard of anywhere in the Catholic Church—When any transaction of the kind is stigmatized as a grievous sin, and ranked along with murder, adultery, blasphemy, etc., in every catechism and work on Catholic theology?

IS IT HONEST To persist in saying that Catholics believe their sins are forgiven merely by the confession of them to the priest, without a true sorrow for them, or a true purpose to quit them—When every child finds the contrary distinctly and clearly stated in the catechism, which he is obliged to learn before he can be admitted to the sacraments? Any honest man can verify this statement by examining any Catholic catechism.

IS IT HONEST To assert that the Catholic Church grants any indulgence or permission to commit sin—When an "indulgence," according to her universally received doctrine, was never dreamed of by Catholics to imply, in any case whatever, any permission to commit the least sin; and when an indulgence has no application whatever to sin until after sin has been repented of and pardoned?