Isaac Hecker - Founding of The Paulist Fathers

Founding of The Paulist Fathers

During his months in Rome, Isaac had determined that the best way to serve the church in the United States was to establish a congregation of priests to labor for the conversion of his native land. Pope Pius approved his plan and encouraged him to take the steps necessary for its realization. 'To me the future looks bright, hopeful, full of promise,' he wrote home, 'and I feel confident in God's providence and assured of his grace in our regard.

The outcome of the trouble was that Hecker, George Deshon, Augustine Hewit, Francis Baker, and Clarence Walworth, all of whom were American Redemptorists, were permitted by Pope Pius IX in 1858 to form the separate religious community of the Paulists.

Hecker returned to America from Rome and gathered his American friends Father Augustine Hewit, Father Francis Baker and Father George Deshon, to plan their congregation. Archbishop John Hughes accepted the men into his New York archdiocese, giving them a parish on 59th Street for their home. The five men decided on calling themselves the 'Missionary Priests of St. Paul the Apostle.' The Priests, popularly known as the Paulists, conducted parish missions and the retreats to non-Catholics.

Between 1867 and 1869, Hecker, directly addressing Protestants from lecture platforms, delivered more than 56 lecture series, traveling from Boston to Missouri, from Chicago to Hartford. During one Western tour, he traveled more than 4,500 miles and spoke to more than 30,000 people, two-thirds of whom were non-Catholics. Hecker's first biographer, Father Walter Elliot, wrote: 'We can never forget how distinctly American was the impression of his personality. We heard the nation's greatest men then living... Father Hecker was so plainly a great man of this type, so evidently an outgrowth of our institutions, that he stamped American on every Catholic argument he proposed... Never was a man a more Catholic than Father Hecker, simply, calmly, joyfully, entirely Catholic.' Another writer quipped, 'He is putting American machinery into the ancient ark and is getting ready to run her by steam.'

In April 1865, adding the written word to his speaking campaign, Isaac launched 'The Catholic World,' a monthly magazine. A year later, he founded the Catholic Publication Society (now the Paulist Press) for the purpose of disseminating Catholic doctrine on a large scale, primarily for non-Catholics. In 1870, he established 'The Young Catholic,' a magazine for young boys and girls.

In 1869-70, Hecker attended the First Vatican Council as a theologian for Bishop James Gibbons of North Carolina. On the trip, he visited Assisi, home of St. Francis. 'Francis touched the chords of feeling and aspiration of the hearts of his time, and organized them for united action,' Hecker wrote in his journal.

Returning home in June 1870, the 55-year-old Hecker, full of enthusiasm, looked forward to resuming his American apostolate. But instead, he was stricken with painful, chronic leukemia. So rapidly did the disease progress that by 1871, he could not continue his work as Paulist director, pastor, lecturer and writer. Hecker had great difficulty accepting that the God whom he served would allow him to be cut down in mid-career. When he left for Europe to seek a cure, he told his Paulist brothers: "Look upon me as a dead man...God is trying me severely in soul and body, and I must have the courage to suffer crucifixion." He wandered from one European spa to another, worn in body and sorely tried in spirit, struggling to believe that God was as much at work in him now as he was on the lecture platform.

He spent the winter of 1873-74 aboard a boat on the Nile River; the sail benefited him immensely. 'This trip,' he wrote, 'has been in every respect much more to my benefit than my most sanguine expectations led me to hope. It seems to me almost like an inspiration.'

In 1875, the American Paulists invited Father Hecker to return to their midst. He came back and started to work once more, although on a limited basis. For 13 more years, he exerted his constantly diminishing strength to bring Catholicism to the hearts of his fellow Americans. During these declining years, he also expanded his vision to the entire world, particularly Europe, where the prestige of the Roman Catholic Church was in decline. At the First Vatican Council, an attempt to stem this decline, the church issued the doctrine of papal infallibility. Following the Council, Hecker wrote an essay describing the work of the Holy Spirit in the renewal of both church and state. Hecker's theology foreshadowed by 80 years the interest of the Second Vatican Council in the role of the Holy Spirit.

During his last years Hecker constantly struggled with the feeling that God had abandoned him and that his life was useless. But, as the terrible blood cancer destroyed his body, his spirit found new strength. He turned back the despair; he accepted his lot as God's will for him. The spirit within him brought him new peace and serenity. Isaac Hecker died December 22, 1888, at the Paulist House on 59th Street in Manhattan.