hold in his hands the natural, which Americans extolled and cherished and trusted in, and by properly directing its legitimate tendencies and growth to lead it to the term of its own instincts and aspirations—­Catholic truth and Catholic grace.  Protestantism is no longer more than a name, a memory.  The American has fallen back upon himself, scorning the negations and the doctrinal cruelties of Protestantism as utterly contrary to himself, as utterly unnatural; and now comes the opportunity of the Catholic Church to show that she is from the God who created nature, by opening before this people her treasures, amid which the soul revels in rational liberty and intelligence, and enjoys the gratification of its best and purest moral instincts.  These convictions are the keynote of Father Hecker’s controversial discourses and writings, notably of two books, Aspirations of Nature and Questions of the Soul. He assumed that the American people are naturally Catholic, and he labored with this proposition constantly before his mind.  It is the assumption upon which all must labor who sincerely desire to make America Catholic.

He laid stress on the natural and social virtues.  The American people hold these in highest esteem.  They are the virtues that are most apparent, and are seemingly the most needed for the building up and the preservation of an earthly commonwealth.  Truthfulness, honesty in business dealings, loyalty to law and social order, temperance, respect for the rights of others, and the like virtues are prescribed by reason before the voice of revelation is heard, and the absence of specifically supernatural virtues has led the non-Catholic to place paramount importance upon them.  It will be a difficult task to persuade the American that a church which will not enforce those primary virtues can enforce others which she herself declares to be higher and more arduous, and as he has implicit confidence in the destiny of his country to produce a high order of social existence, his first test of a religion will be its powers in this direction.  This is according to Catholic teaching.  Christ came not to destroy, but to perfect what was in man, and the graces and truths of revelation lead most securely to the elevation of the life that is, no less than to the gaining of the life to come.  It is a fact, however, that in other times and other countries the Church has been impeded in her social work, and certain things or customs of those times and countries, transplanted upon American soil and allowed to grow here under a Catholic name, will do her no honor among Americans.  The human mind, among the best of us, inclines to narrow limitations, and certain Catholics, aware of the comparatively greater importance of the supernatural, partially overlook the natural.