Life of Father Hecker

by Walter Elliott

The Latin races were fitted by nature to be the principal instruments of the Holy Spirit during the period just passed. 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 aptitudes of races, but that God, who has created these aptitudes, 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 God 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 illustrious 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 Döllinger 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 embarrassments 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 Constitution 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 Constitution of the United States has formulated the political principles most conformable to the Canons of the Council of Trent.