\u2013 Russell Shaw, OSV News<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In late spring or early summer of 1842, Isaac Hecker had a vision. At his side, it seems, stood \u201can angelic, pure, and beautiful being,\u201d whose presence filled him with \u201cheavenly joy.\u201d This life-changing experience prompted the young man, barely 22 years old, to seek a way of life that would somehow reflect it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although there is no record of Hecker having any other visions after that one, in a broader sense, the founder of the Paulist Fathers<\/a> He remained a visionary throughout his life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n His main goal was to convert Protestant America to Catholicism, something he believed was possible. After all, he said, in the United States, \u201cthe true religion will find the welcome it has sought in vain elsewhere.\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If he is ever canonized (the process began in 2008, and he currently holds the title of \u2018Servant of God\u2019), it is understandable that he would be designated the patron saint of the Americanist movement within U.S. Catholicism. <\/p>\n\n\n\n On an ideological level, no one\u2014neither before nor since\u2014has done more than my father Isaac Hecker<\/a> to promote the integration of Catholicism into the secular culture of the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He was born on December 18, 1819, in New York, the third child and youngest son of a family of German-American immigrants. The Heckers were bakers, a trade that Isaac also pursued. But from an early age, despite having little or no connection to the church, he showed an unusual interest in religion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Over time, this led him to the loosely religious movement of New England intellectuals known as Transcendentalism and to the experimental communities of Brook Farm and Fruitland. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Moving in these stimulating circles, the young man was initially influenced by Ralph Waldo Emerson, the most prominent American thinker of the early 19th century. However, over time, he became disillusioned with Emerson\u2019s beliefs, complaining that the great man \u201chad no idea what the church was.\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Around this time, he met and became friends with Orestes Brownson, a well-known writer and lecturer on religion and social issues, and a religious seeker like Hecker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Brownson, who was sixteen years his senior, guided him toward Catholicism. As early as April 1843, Hecker wrote in his diary: \u201cOnly the Catholic Church seems to satisfy my longings.\u201d On August 1, 1844, he was baptized by Bishop (later Cardinal) John McCloskey of New York. Brownson was baptized shortly thereafter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Feeling a calling to the priesthood, Hecker joined the Redemptorist Order and, after studying at a seminary in Belgium, was ordained a priest in October 1849 by Cardinal Nicholas Wiseman of Westminster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Upon his return to the United States, Father Hecker worked as a Redemptorist missionary. As his vision of a Catholic America grew and took shape, he also began to put his ideas into writing. The result was the book *Questions of the Soul*.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Published in 1855, the work was widely debated and earned its author a national reputation. Arguing that Protestantism did not meet the needs of seekers like himself, he wrote that the time was approaching when the Catholic Church would be seen as the only satisfactory answer. \u201cHecker advocated for nothing less than a Catholic America\u2014not for the sake of the Church, but for the sake of the nation and its people,\u201d according to biographer David O\u2019Brien.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Quickly capitalizing on the success of his book, Father Hecker published *Aspirations of Nature* two years later, a volume that outlined his vision for evangelization in the United States and the reasoning behind his conversion to Catholicism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Much to his chagrin, \u201cAspiraciones\u201d received far less attention than the previous one. The author found Orestes Brownson\u2019s review in his own magazine, the *Quarterly Review*, particularly disappointing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Brownson dismissed the idea that the United States was fertile ground for Catholic missionary work. He argued that the number of \u201csincere seekers\u201d was much smaller than Hecker assumed, and that, in fact, \u201cthere was scarcely a trait of the American character\u2026 that was not more or less hostile to Catholicism.\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Meanwhile, Hecker grew increasingly dissatisfied with the Redemptorists, whom he considered more interested in conducting parish missions for German immigrants than in converting intellectuals like his former friends at Brook Farm. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In August 1857, he made an unauthorized trip to Rome to present his case to the superior of the Order. However, as a result, he was expelled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the trip was by no means a failure. During his stay in Rome, he met Pope Pius IX and secured his support for his ambitious evangelization project. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Upon returning to the United States the following year, he and four other former Redemptorists joined forces to found a new order: the Congregation of the Missionary Priests of St. Paul the Apostle, better known as the Paulist Fathers<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In the years that followed, Father Hecker was very busy, constantly traveling to give lectures to a predominantly non-Catholic audience. On one such trip, he traveled 7,200 kilometers and spoke to some 30,000 people\u2014a considerable number in the days before radio, television, and social media. \u201cHe is modernizing the system and preparing to power it with steam,\u201d remarked one writer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 1865, he launched the magazine *The Catholic World*, which would be published for more than a century. The following year, he founded the publishing house Paulist Press.<\/p>\n\n\n\n During the First Vatican Council (1869\u20131870), Father Hecker secured a position on the periphery as a representative of the bishop of Columbus, Ohio, who did not attend. At first, he sided with the group that opposed issuing a formal definition of the doctrine of papal infallibility at that time, but after the Council defined the dogma anyway, he welcomed it and even saw it as a potential boost for evangelization in the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In early 1870, he sent his friend Brownson an extraordinary letter from Rome that elicited an equally extraordinary response. Rarely have the terms of the debate over the situation of the Church in the United States been set forth as clearly as in Father Hecker\u2019s letter and Brownson\u2019s reply.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Father Hecker wrote with his characteristic enthusiasm about the warm reception he had received from Europeans who envied the American-style separation of church and state. This confirmed something he had long believed: American democracy was \u201cextending the influence of the Church, adding a new reason for gratitude for its services, and showing, in a new light, the absolute necessity of religion for civil society and good government.\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Brownson was not convinced. Although he supported the American system as \u201cthe only legally viable option,\u201d he said, he believed it was fundamentally at odds with Catholicism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBoth Catholics and the rest of the population are imbued with the spirit of the country\u2026 freedom from all restrictions, boundless license. We are so far from converting the country that we cannot even stand firm.\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Shortly after the First Vatican Council, Father Hecker\u2019s health deteriorated. He spent his final years in a state of partial incapacity, becoming increasingly isolated within the community he had founded. Worn down by illness and dashed hopes, he passed away on December 21, 1888, after blessing the Paulists with whom he lived.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Inevitably, the name of Father Isaac Hecker is linked to what is known today as \u201cAmericanism.\u201d The story, which is quite complex, can be summarized as follows: in 1896, the book *Life of Isaac Thomas Hecker*, written by a man from S\u00e3o Paulo named Walter Elliott, was published in French, with a lengthy introduction by a liberal French priest who extolled Father Hecker\u2019s virtues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Meanwhile, Rome was concerned about trends in liberal Catholic thought in Europe, which it associated with the Church in the United States and with the founder of the Paulists. In 1899, Pope Leo XIII published a document\u2014addressed nominally to the head of the American hierarchy, Cardinal James Gibbons of Baltimore\u2014in which he specifically condemned the ideas he summarized under the heading \u201cAmericanism.\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Historians who support the Americanization of U.S. Catholicism tend to downplay the papal criticism and dismiss the Americanization as a \u201cphantom heresy.\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n However, Pope Leo XIII\u2019s document contains a surprisingly prescient warning against attitudes common in American Catholicism today. Among these is the arbitrary selection of Church doctrines, often referred to as \u201c\u00e0 la carte Catholicism.\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Even so, it\u2019s natural to wonder to what extent all of this has to do with Father Isaac Hecker. Today, just as during his lifetime, he is known above all as a passionate visionary and a staunch optimist who wanted Catholics to integrate into mainstream American society in order to convert it. If that has not yet fully happened, it can hardly be Hecker\u2019s fault.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2013<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2013 Russell Shaw, a longtime journalist and writer, authored more than 20 books, including three novels. He passed away in January 2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2013 Editor's note: This article is part of a series that explores the lives of prominent American Catholics<\/a> in celebration of the 250th anniversary of the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\nA grand dream: the conversion of Protestant America to Catholicism<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Sponsor of the Americanist Movement\u2019<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Friendship with Orestes Brownson. Baptism, priesthood, missionary work <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMatters of the Soul.\u201d A Catholic America<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Evangelistic Zeal<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Foundation of the Paulist Fathers<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Publications. First Vatican Council. Papal Infallibility<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Religion and Society <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Entangled in the heresy of \u201cAmericanism\u201d<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Catholicism \u00e0 la carte?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
What does that have to do with Hecker?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n