Editing Isaac Hecker

{{Short description|American Catholic clergyman (1819–1888)}}
{{Infobox Christian leader
| type = priest
| honorific-prefix = [[Servant of God]]
| name = Isaac Hecker
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| image = Father Isaac Hecker.jpg
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| church = [[Roman Catholic Church]]
| archdiocese = [[Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York|New York]]
| province = New York
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| see = New York
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<!---------- Orders ---------->
| ordination = 1849
| ordained_by = [[Nicholas Wiseman]]
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| rank = [[Priest]]
<!---------- Personal details ---------->
| birth_name = Isaac Thomas Hecker
| birth_date = {{birth date|1819|12|18}}
| birth_place = [[New York City]], [[New York (state)|New York]], [[United States]]
| death_date = {{death date and age|1888|12|22|1819|12|18}}
| death_place = [[New York City]], [[New York (state)|New York]], [[United States]]
| nationality = [[United States|American]]
| religion = [[Roman Catholic]]
| residence =
| parents = John Hecker and Caroline Freund
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| occupation = Roman Catholic priest, missionary
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| signature = Appletons' Hecker Isaac Thomas signature.jpg
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'''Isaac Thomas Hecker''' (December 18, 1819 – December 22, 1888) was an American [[Roman Catholic|Catholic]] [[priest]] and founder of the [[Paulist Fathers]], a [[North American]] religious society of men.

Hecker was originally ordained a [[Redemptorist]] priest in 1849. With the blessing of Pope Pius IX, he founded the Missionary Society of St. Paul the Apostle, now known as the Paulist Fathers, in New York on July 7, 1858. The Society was established to evangelize both believers and non-believers to convert [[United States|America]] to the Catholic Church. Hecker sought to [[evangelize]] Americans using the popular means of his day, primarily preaching, the public lecture circuit, and the printing press. One of his more enduring publications is ''The [[Catholic World]],'' which he created in 1865.{{sfn|Fox|1911}}

Hecker's spirituality mainly centered on cultivating the action of the [[Holy Spirit]] within the soul as well as the necessity of being attuned to how the Lord prompts one in great and small moments in life. Hecker believed that the Catholic faith and American political culture of small government, property rights, civil society and liberal democracy were not opposed but could be reconciled.<ref>[https://www.acton.org/isaac-thomas-hecker Isaac Thomas Hecker]. Religion and Liberty, 1994 issue. [[Acton Institute]]</ref> The ideas of individual freedom, community, service, and authority were fundamental to Hecker when conceiving how the Paulists would be governed and administered.

Hecker was a friend and colleague of [[classic liberal]] thinker [[Lord Acton]] in the cause of [[liberal Catholicism]]—opposed to [[ultramontanism]] politics in the church.<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=yTcyEAAAQBAJ&dq=isaac+hecker+lord+acton&pg=PA194 Lord Acton by Roland Hill], pg 194. 1999</ref> Hecker's work was likened to that of [[Cardinal (Catholicism)|Cardinal]] [[John Henry Newman]], by the Cardinal himself. In a letter written to [[Augustine Hewit]] on the occasion of Hecker's death, Newman wrote: "I have ever felt that there was a sort of unity in our lives, that we had both begun a work of the same kind, he in America and I in England."<ref name="smith">[http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07186a.htm Smith, Michael Paul. "Isaac Thomas Hecker." The Catholic Encyclopedia] Vol. 7. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1910. 4 Oct. 2015</ref>

Hecker's cause for sainthood was opened January 25, 2008, in the mother church of the Paulist Fathers on 59th St, New York City. He was thereafter named a [[Servant of God]].

==Early life==
Isaac Hecker was born in [[New York City]] on December 18, 1819, the third son and youngest child of German immigrants, John and Caroline (Freund) Hecker. When barely twelve years of age, he had to go to work and pushed a baker's cart for his elder brothers who had a bakery on Rutgers Street. He studied at every possible opportunity, becoming immersed in [[Immanuel Kant|Kant]]'s ''[[Critique of Pure Reason]]'' and, while still a young man, took part in certain politico-social movements which aimed at the elevation of the working man.<ref name=BONI>[http://www.paulist.org/heckerbio Hanley, OFM, Boniface. ''The Story of Isaac Hecker: Missionary to North America'', Paulist Fathers] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151006010948/http://www.paulist.org/heckerbio |date=2015-10-06 }}</ref>

==Brook Farm movement==
It was at this juncture that he met [[Orestes Brownson]], who exercised a marked influence over him.<ref name=smith/> Isaac was deeply religious, a characteristic for which he gave much credit to his prayerful mother, and remained so amid all the reading and agitating in which he engaged. Having grown into young manhood, he joined the [[Brook Farm]] movement, and he tarried in that colony some six months.

==Conversion to Catholicism and ordination as a priest==
[[File:Hecker2Cut.png|thumb|left|200px|Hecker, circa 1860]]
Shortly after leaving the Brook Farm in 1844, Hecker was baptized into the Roman Catholic Church by Bishop [[John McCloskey]] of New York. One year later, he was entered in the novitiate of the [[Redemptorists]] in [[Belgium]], and there he cultivated to a high degree the spirit of lofty mystical piety which marked him through life.<ref name="BONI"/>

Ordained a priest in [[London]] by then [[Nicholas Patrick Stephen Wiseman|Bishop Nicholas Wiseman]] in 1849, he spent a year as a parish priest and chaplain with the small Redemptorist community at [[St Mary's Roman Catholic Church, Clapham|Our Immaculate Lady of Victories]] in Clapham.<ref>[https://stmarys-clapham.org.uk/news-and-events/history-of-st-marys-parish/ "History of St. Mary's Parish," St. Mary's RC Church, Clapham]</ref> He returned to New York in March 1851 and worked until 1857 as a Redemptorist missionary. With all his [[mysticism]], Isaac Hecker had the wide-awake mind of the typical American. He perceived that the Catholic Church's missionary activity in the United States must remain to a large extent ineffective unless it adopted methods suited to the country and the age. In this, he had the sympathy of four fellow Redemptorists, who like himself were of American birth and converts from [[Protestantism]].<ref name="BONI"/>

Acting as their agent, and with his local superiors' consent, Hecker went to [[Rome]] to beg of the Rector Major of his Order that a Redemptorist novitiate might be opened in the United States, in order thus to attract American youths to the missionary life. In furtherance of this request, he took with him the strong approval of some American hierarchy members. The Rector Major, instead of listening to Hecker, expelled him from the Order for having made the journey to Rome without sufficient authorization.<ref name="BONI"/>

Hecker, determined to fight the expulsion, remained in Rome. He approached Cardinal [[Alessandro Barnabò]], prefect of the Propaganda, the [[Congregation (Roman Curia)|Congregation]] of the [[Roman Curia]] with supervisory responsibility for the church in the United States. Cardinal Barnabo, made aware by American bishops of Hecker's outstanding missionary work and personal holiness, arranged an interview with [[Pope Pius IX]]. The pontiff dispensed Hecker and his four companions from their vows as Redemptorists.<ref name=smith/>

==Founding of the Paulist Fathers==
[[Image:Hecker3.jpg|thumb|right|Hecker in 1887]]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."<ref name="BONI"/>

The outcome was that Hecker, [[George Deshon]], [[Augustine Hewit]], [[Francis Asbury Baker|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.<ref name=shaw/>

Hecker returned to America from Rome and gathered his American friends Hewit, Baker, and Deshon to plan their congregation. Archbishop [[John Hughes (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 retreats for non-Catholics.<ref name=BONI/>

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, 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."<ref name=BONI/> Another writer quipped, "He is putting American machinery into the ancient ark and is getting ready to run her by steam."<ref name=shaw/>

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) to disseminate Catholic doctrine on a large scale, primarily for non-Catholics. In 1870, he established ''The Young Catholic'', a magazine for young boys and girls.<ref name=BONI/>

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 [[Francis of Assisi]]. "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.<ref name=BONI/>

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 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.<ref name=BONI/>

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."<ref name=BONI/>

In 1875, the American Paulists invited 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.<ref name=BONI/> During these declining years, he also expanded his vision to the entire world, mainly Europe, where the prestige of the Roman Catholic Church was in decline. At the [[First Vatican Council]], in 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 always 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.<ref name=BONI/>

==Hecker and Americanism==
[[Image:Leo XIII.jpg|thumb|[[Pope Leo XIII]]]]

The name of Hecker is closely associated with [[Americanism (heresy)|Americanism]]. As part of this controversy, Hecker was accused by the French cleric {{ill|Charles Maignen|fr}} of subjectivism and [[crypto-Protestant]]ism.<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=NwjwhUDwHwEC&dq=%22Maignen%27s+accusations+of+subjectivism%22&pg=PA16 Hecker Studies: Essays on the Thought of Isaac Hecker] edited by John Farina, 1983, published by The Missionary Society of St. Paul</ref> During the [[French Third Republic]] (which began in 1870), the power and influence of French Catholicism steadily declined. The French government passed laws bearing more and more stringently on the church, and most French citizens did not object. Indeed, they began to look toward legislators and not to the clergy for guidance.{{sfn|Fox|1911}}

Observing this and encouraged by the action of [[Pope Leo XIII]], who in 1892 called on French Catholics loyally to accept the Republic, several young French priests determined that because the church had held itself aloof from modern philosophies and practices, people had turned away from it. They also noted that Catholicism was not making much use of modern means of propaganda, such as social movements or the organization of clubs. In short, the church had not adapted to modern needs. They agitated for social and philanthropic projects, a closer relationship between priests and parishioners, and general cultivation of personal initiative, both in clergy and laity. Not unnaturally, they looked for inspiration to America.{{sfn|Fox|1911}}

The French reformers took him as a kind of patron saint. His biography, written in English by Paulist priest Walter Elliott in 1891, was translated into French six years later. A long introduction by a liberal French priest made exaggerated claims for Hecker. Trends in liberal Catholic thought in Europe became associated with the church in the United States and particularly with Hecker.<ref name=shaw/> Inspired by Hecker's life and character, the activist French priests undertook the task of persuading their fellow-priests to accept the political system, and then to break out of their isolation, put themselves in touch with the intellectual life of the country, and take an active part in the work of social amelioration. In 1897 the movement received an impetus O'Connell, former Rector of the [[Pontifical North American College]] in Rome, spoke on behalf of Hecker's ideas at the Catholic Congress in [[Fribourg|Friburg]].{{sfn|Fox|1911}}

Conservative Catholics took alarm at what they considered to be symptoms of pernicious modernism or Liberalism. They thought the "Allons au peuple" catchphrase had a ring of heresy, breaking down the divinely established distinction between the priest and the layman and giving lay people too much power in church affairs. The insistence upon individual initiative was judged to be incompatible with the fundamentals of Catholicism. Moreover, the conservatives were, almost to a man, anti-republicans who distrusted and disliked the democratic [[abbé]]s (clergy). It was for this reason that Hecker acquired the reputation of being called "The Yellow Dart." The conservatives complained to the Pope, and in 1898 Abbé Charles Maignen wrote a violent polemic against the new movement called ''Le Père Hecker, est-il un saint?'' ("Is Father Hecker a Saint?").{{sfn|Fox|1911}}

Many powerful Vatican authorities also detested the Americanist tendency. However, Pope [[Leo XIII]] was reluctant to chastise the American Catholics, whom he had often praised for their loyalty and faith. But he eventually made concessions to the pressures upon him, and in early February 1899 addressed to [[James Gibbons|Cardinal James Gibbons]] the papal brief ''[[Testem benevolentiae nostrae|Testem Benevolentiae]]''. This document condemned the following doctrines or tendencies:
# undue insistence on interior initiative in the spiritual life, as leading to disobedience,
# attacks on religious vows, and disparagement of the value of religious orders in the modern world,
# minimizing Catholic doctrine,
# minimizing the importance of spiritual direction.
The brief did not assert that Hecker and the Americans had held any unsound doctrine on the above points. Instead, it merely stated that if such opinions did exist, the Pope called upon the hierarchy to eradicate them. Cardinal Gibbons and many other prelates replied to Rome. With a near-unanimous voice, they declared that the incriminated opinions had no existence among American Catholics. Hecker had never countenanced the slightest departure from Catholic principles in their fullest and most strict application. The disturbance caused by the condemnation was slight; almost the entire laity and a considerable part of the clergy were unaware of this affair. However, the pope's brief did end up strengthening the position of the conservatives in France.{{sfn|Fox|1911}}

When the church in America was struggling with the question of whether the assimilation of Catholics, many of whom were immigrants, into American culture would compromise their Catholic faith, Hecker saw no contradiction between being American and being Catholic.<ref>[http://bustedhalo.com/features/isaac-hecker-living-by-the-holy-spirit Hoover CSP, Brett. "Isaac Hecker: Living by the Holy Spirit," ''Busted Halo'', July 27, 2012]</ref> According to Russell Shaw, "On the level of ideas, no one before or since has done more than Isaac Hecker did to promote Catholic assimilation into the secular culture of the United States."<ref name=shaw>{{Cite web |url=https://www.osv.com/OSVNewsweekly/Story/TabId/2672/ArtMID/13567/ArticleID/14341/Hecker-was-father-of-American-evangelization.aspx |title=Shaw, Russell. "Hecker was father of American evangelization", ''OSV Weekly'', March 26, 2014 |access-date=October 5, 2015 |archive-date=November 15, 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171115005117/https://www.osv.com/OSVNewsweekly/Story/TabId/2672/ArtMID/13567/ArticleID/14341/Hecker-was-father-of-American-evangelization.aspx |url-status=dead }}</ref>

==Cause for sainthood==
Cardinal [[Edward Egan]] of New York formally opened Hecker's cause for [[sainthood]] on January 25, 2008, at St. Paul the Apostle Catholic Church in New York City, mother church of the Paulist Fathers, at which time Hecker was given the title [[Servant of God]].<ref>[http://paulistnews.org/?p=54 The Paulist Fathers News] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080217205917/http://paulistnews.org/?p=54 |date=February 17, 2008 }}</ref> In 2023, the United Conference of Catholic Bishops voted to advance the cause of Hecker.<ref>{{Cite web |last=CNA |title=USCCB votes to advance canonization cause of American Catholic priest Isaac Hecker |url=https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/256020/us-bishops-vote-to-advance-the-cause-of-canonization-for-american-priest-isaac-hecker |access-date=2023-12-23 |website=Catholic News Agency |language=en}}</ref>
==Works==
* [https://archive.org/details/questionsofsoul00heck/page/n7/mode/2up ''Questions of the Soul''], New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1855.
* [https://archive.org/details/aspirationsofnat00heck_3/page/n5/mode/2up ''Aspirations of Nature''], New York: James B. Kirker, 1857.

==See also==
* [[Institute of Consecrated Life|Institutes of consecrated life]]

==Notes==
{{reflist}}

==References==
'''Attribution:'''
* {{EB1911|wstitle=Hecker, Isaac Thomas| first=James Joseph |last=Fox |volume=13 |pages=194–195}}
* {{Cite Appletons'|wstitle=Hecker, Isaac Thomas|year=1892}}

==Sources==
* Behnke, John J. ''Isaac Thomas Becker: Spiritual Pilgrim''. New York: Paulist Press.
* Farina, John. ''An American Experience of God''. New York: Paulist Press, 1981.
* Farina, John, ed. Isaac Hecker. ''The Early Diary: Romantic Religion in Ante-bellum America''. New York: Paulist Press, 1989.
* Farina, John. ''Hecker Studies: Essays on the Thought of Isaac Hecker''. New York: Paulist Press, 1983.
* Hecker, Isaac. ''The Paulist Vocation''. New York: Paulist Press, 2000.
* Holden, Vincent F. ''Yankee Paul: Isaac Thomas Hecker''. Milwaukee: Bruce Pub. Co, 1958.
* Hostetter, Larry. ''The Ecclesial Dimension of Personal and Social Reform in the Writings of Isaac Thomas Hecker. Roman Catholic Studies 15.'' Lewistone, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2001.
* O'Brien, David J. ''Isaac Hecker: An American Catholic''. New York: Paulist Press, 1992.
* McSorley, Joseph. ''Isaac Hecker and his Friends''. New York: Paulist Press, 1972.
* Robichaud, Paul. ''A Future Brighter Than Any Past.'' New York: Paulist Press. 2017.

==External links==
{{Commons category|Isaac Thomas Hecker}}
{{Gutenberg|no=18283|name=Life of Father Hecker}} by [[Walter Elliott (priest)|Walter Elliott]] (see also [https://web.archive.org/web/20160110073013/https://www.createspace.com/4543171 createspace.com])
* {{Cite AmCyc|wstitle=Hecker, Isaac Thomas |short=x}}
* ''[https://archive.org/details/brownsonheckerco0000brow The Brownson-Hecker Correspondence]'', Notre Dame studies in American Catholicism, Number 1 (1979).
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{{Subject bar |portal1= Biography |portal2= Catholicism |portal3= United States |portal4= Saints}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Hecker, Isaac}}
[[Category:1819 births]]
[[Category:1888 deaths]]
[[Category:19th-century American Roman Catholic priests]]
[[Category:19th-century venerated Christians]]
[[Category:American people of German descent]]
[[Category:American Servants of God]]
[[Category:Converts to Roman Catholicism from Methodism]]
[[Category:Liberal Catholicism]]
[[Category:Religious leaders from New York City]]
[[Category:People of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York]]
[[Category:Paulist Order]]