It was fitting that the Paulist community, appealing to the men and women of to-day with the credentials as well of their own individual independence as of the good will of the Pope and the Bishops, should be launched into existence from the very deck of Peter’s bark, and furnished with all the testimonials of ecclesiastical authority short of canonical sanction.  This was the more proper because, in a few years after the beginning of the community, European revolutionists were to be scourged with the Syllabus, whose every word agonized the souls of unworthy advocates of liberty.  That Pontifical document has created a literature of its own in comment and explanation, some tying more knots in every lash and others mitigating its severity or palliating the errors it smote with such pitiless rigor.  But the best interpretation of the Syllabus is the Paulist community.  It is a body of free men whose origin was the joint result of the personal workings of the Holy Spirit in the soul of a man who loved civil and political freedom with a mighty love, and the decision of the highest court of Catholicity declaring him worthy of trust as an exponent of the Christian faith.  If the Syllabus shows what the Church thinks of those who in the guise of freemen are conspirators against religion and public order, the approval of the Paulist community shows the Church’s attitude towards men worthy to be free.

Nor was Rome’s course chosen without weighing the consequences, without a full estimate of the public significance of the act.  Father Hecker’s adversaries fixed upon him every stigma of radicalism and rebellion possible in a good but deluded priest.  For seven long months they poured into ears which instinctively feared revolt in the name of liberty, every accusation his doings and sayings could be made to give color to, in order to prove that he and the American Fathers were tainted with false liberalism.  And he seemed to lend himself to their purpose.  His guileless tongue spoke to the cardinals, prelates, and professors of Rome about nothing so much as freedom, and its kinship with Catholicity.  He seemed to have no refuge but the disclosure of the very secrets of his soul.  During those months of incessant accusation and defence Father Hecker talked Rome’s high dignitaries into full knowledge of himself, until they saw the cause mirrored in the man and gave approval to both.  Some, like Barnabo, were actuated by the quick sympathy of free natures; others, like Pius IX., arrived at a decision by the slower processes of the removal of prejudice from an honest mind, and the careful comparing of Father Hecker’s principles with the fundamental truths of religion.

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CHAPTER XXVI

FATHER HECKER’S IDEA OF A RELIGIOUS COMMUNITY

THE beginnings of the Paulist community having been sketched, it is now in order to state the principles with which Father Hecker, guided no less by supernatural intuition than by enlightened reason, intended it should be inspired; and this shall be done as nearly as possible in his own words.  The following sentences, found in one of his diaries and quoted some chapters back, embody what may be deemed his ultimate principle: