#isaachecker

 I used the following texts: Isaac Hecker, An American Saint by Boniface Hanley O.F.M., and Isaac Hecker and his Friends by Joseph McSorley, 

I am so happy that, by the grace of God, I found this wonderful group of people, the Paulists, and, by extension, their founder Father Isaac Hecker. There have been so many saints in history that I’ve admired, but with which I have identified more.

First let’s start with the mission. My own mission in life, and I think it’s actually everybody’s purpose in life, is to love others as strongly as I can. More specifically what I want to do is be a conduit of God’s love for people. Meaning I want to be a manifestation of God’s love for people, I want to use all the tools at my disposal to connect people back to the love of God. I wanna connect them to that divine spark that God has put in all of us. This is not strictly speaking a religious endeavor motivated more by the personal love that I have for God than I am for any particular religion as an institution. That is why I’m always looking to reach to Catholics AND non Catholics, or even lapsed Catholics, and if I do something which is able to get someone else closer to God in a non Catholic way than that is fine with me. So long as I am able to effectively communicate the power of God’s love to people, nothing else matters. The same seems to be true of Fr. Isaac Hecker because “the motivation behind his efforts was always the drive to teach everyone the beauty and truth of the Catholic faith” (Hanley, Introduction). The “beauty and truth” of the Catholic faith can, at least in part, be shown outside of the boundaries of Catholic theology. Because ultimately it is centered the power of Christ’s love and that can be communicated to people in a variety of ways. Not that theology isn’t important, it isn’t the only way to talk about the beauty and truth of the Catholic faith.

Which leads me to another point of connection with this amazing man. I am a social worker by trade. Currently I work as a behavioral therapist for people with developmental and emotional issues. The reason I got into this field was to find a way to serve and love people in tangible ways that were essential to people’s lives. I wanted to find a way to show people that are loved. Now that doesn’t mean that God’s love cannot be communicated to people through traditionally religious channels. I think publications like Catholic World are extremely effective in this regard. I to this day have never felt the power of God’s love more strongly than when I’m meditating in front of the Blessed Sacrament. But the point is that you have to reach people wherever they are and communicate that love in a way that they will be able to understand and accept. That is the job description and often times it means reaching beyond purely religious settings. 

Father Hecker had a similar mentality. So, when he saw that the immigrants were being exploited, and that the poor were being extorted, he wasn’t afraid of moving beyond the religious into the political sphere. He was a Methodist at the time, but he didn’t care that a significant number of those immigrants were Irish Catholics. He wanted to show those people, tangibly, that he cared for them and would come to their defense. So he and his brothers, for a time, devoted their energies to promoting the cause of the Locofocos, a faction within the Democratic party that fought against anti-immigration sentiments and monopolies. Isaac and his brothers put their money where the mouths were and “poured an enormous amount of energy into the political campaign of 1837. They purchased a ‘handpowered’ printing press [which they used to publish and distribute] leaflets, publicly [challenge] the banks and [distribute] party literature” (Hanley, 6). Eventually, the politicking made Isaac realize that politics wasn’t for him, but this episode remains an important one because it shows his willingness to use all the tools at his disposal to reach people. He didn’t stay within the confines of the Methodist church then, just like he wouldn’t do it when he joined the Catholic Church later. When he founded the magazine Catholic World he was criticized for using a “secular” instrament to spread the message. But he thought it was important for the message of God’s love to reach ordinary people in whatever way it could, and I feel the same way regarding my blog. It’s about bringing the love of God to people in ways that can be understood by people of all ages and creeds. It is important to note also that Fr. Hecker helped people in spiritual as well as a material sense, which is what I want to do. I want serve people materially and spiritually. 

There are also ways in which I connect to him personally. I’ve always felt like a fish out of water. I’ve never really felt like I belonged anywhere. I’m surrounded by people who I know love me, but I’ve never really felt like I belonged in their world. I was born in California, but my parents are both immigrants from Syria, my mom is a Sufi-Muslim and my dad is Catholic. Although I was baptized as an infant, I didn’t have a traditional Catholic upbringing. I went to a Waldorf school where we prayed to Mother Earth and exhibited very pantheistic tendencies, my divorced when I was eight and my dad went to go live with a local community of Hindus before he rejoined the Church. It wasn’t until I was about ten that I received the sacraments of First Communion and Confirmation. I was twelve when I decided to really embrace being Catholic, and what I’ve realized since then is that God has given the gift of faith in a way that he hasn’t to others because since then my faith has been a pretty strong part of my life. 

Then in high school I realized, without anyone really telling me, that it would be important for me to wait until marriage to have sex (which I still have not had). I also don’t drink alcohol, because I don’t like the taste, or smoke. These weren’t stances that anyone had to talk me into taking, I could just see clearly what was right for me and what wasn’t. Which put me in a different space than most of my peers. 

I say all of this in order to emphasize just how out of place I’ve felt my entire life. I grew up among the hippies of the San Francisco Area, and my decision to embrace Catholicism put me in a very odd spot. I grew up in an environment that was inherently skeptical of organized religions-especially Christianity. So while my decision was always accepted, it was never really embraced or understood. People loved me, but I always felt like an outsider. Then when I went to the University of Dallas, I encountered the opposite problem. Because I had experienced so much diversity as a child (culturally, spiritually, linguistically etc) it put me in a different than my classmates who were mostly cradle Catholics. As a result of my upbringing, I had the ability to see the truth and connect the dots between a variety of faiths, cultures and lifestyles. This made me much less conservative than my contemporaries, which in turn lead some of them to accuse me of being “not Catholic enough”. So I was “too Catholic” for people from my “old home” and “not Catholic enough” for people from my “new home”. Again I knew people from both places loved me, but I didn’t feel like I really belonged in either world. Add to all that the fact that I didn’t drink, smoke or have sex and it’s created an interesting cocktail. I don’t mind being the only one at a party drinking water, but it definitely changes the way that some people at the party interact with me. Then you have to add the fact that I wanted to become a priest to all of that. The people who know I want to be a priest tend to either deify me or demonize me at least initially. They treat either as a saint or a psychologically repressed invalid, even though I don’t see myself as either. I’m not a saint and I’m not sick. To me I’ve always just been me. I’ve always felt like I am whatever God made me to be and that one day it will all make sense. 

This is very similar to the way Issac Hecker felt about himself. He didn’t have a particularly religious upbringing and spent most of his life searching for a spiritual life that suited him (he actually initially rejected Catholicism and only decided to revisit it years later). Then he eventually finds and joins the Redemptorists, and for the first time he must have felt like he was finally home. He really liked the emphasis that the Redemptorists had on evangelization and wanted to find a way customize what they did to make it fit the American audience. So it shocked him when he found out how resistant the community was to the idea of establishing a fully-functioning English speaking Redemptorist community in the USA. Then he goes to the mother house in Rome to state his case and, because of the shady way in which the superiors chose to interpret their constitution, he is immediately expelled from the congregation without a hearing. It’s only after then presents his case before Pope Pius IX gets papal approval that he is able to start a new order which became the Paulists. Writing about himself years Fr Isaac said: “In Youth and early manhood. . . I was preserved from certain sins in a way that was peculiar. I was conscious that God was preserving me innocent with a view to some future providence” (Hanley, 10). I feel, and have always felt, the same way about myself: that God has created me in a very specific way, and although I don’t know why God has created me this way, I believe that it will make sense to me at some point. I have learned, in some sense, to stop trying to understand and analyze everything and just accept when the Holy Spirit is pushing me somewhere: “It is useless for me to speculate on my future. . . . Put dependence on the Spirit which leads me. . . . Be faithful to it and work [while leaving the rest] to God” (Hanley, 11). 

Now I’m going to take a step back and take a look at the two Americas. In his America “fear and dislike of Catholics [was] deepening and spreading” (McSorley, 9).The fear was that the tenants of Catholicism were somehow opposed to the American ideals, and this fear came from both sides. Both thought that the other side had nothing positive to offer

On the “American” side Americans thought that an American Catholic’s allegiance to the Pope was, at least potentially, treasonous. That if the Pope did not endorse a the government’s actions it meant that the Catholic would start an insurrection. They also worried that the monarchical style of the Church would clash with the ideals of democracy. What these, and others like them, point to is the idea that Catholicism was an antiquated way of thinking that had nothing positive to offer. What Fr Isaac strived to do, and what the Paulists continue to do today, was take those Catholic principles and show them to Americans in a way that Americans could accept. Even the founding of a Catholic magazine reflected a uniquely American way of dealing with this problem. 

On the other hand, were the Catholic strongholds, mainly in Europe, who believed that the American values would shoot through the church like a virus and contaminate everything. There was a worry for example that American individualism would make it harder for them to accept seemingly arbitrary rulings given from the Church hierarchy. In fact, Father Hecker was accused of that by the Redemptorists when he sought to present his case about opening an English speaking house in America. Obviously Pope Pius IX disagreed and the Church as a whole has moved towards a “Paulist model” in the sense of integrating itself with local communities. Things like the Norvus Ordo are a result of this movement. So obviously the “American spirit” did not kill the Church. 

Now let’s fast forward to today. The reaction I get from people today is strikingly similar. There is a beauty in the Catholic Church, a beauty illuminates people’s lives and lift them up. At least I think so. However, when I talk to other people about spreading that love that I see in the Church to others, I inevitably get told that I’m wasting my time. That I’m on a quixotic quest because those beautiful things that I think I see, and which may have been real at some point, aren’t there anymore. The Church is just a relic, like a scar that just wont go away or an anchor that is preventing the ship from moving forward. Yet I know that it isn’t true and that the Church still has a lot to offer, and I know how to present that gift in a way that others are likely to accept. The Church is still alive. 

Then there is the other end of the spectrum where people hear about the type of ministry that I want to do and how I want to reach out to non Catholics and the marginalized. They say that by doing that I will somehow water down and contaminate Christian doctrine. Which is ridiculous. First of all, Christ himself ministered to the marginalized and commanded us to love one another. Secondly, even Christian doctrine that seems fundamental didn’t just fall out of the sky fully formed. Church history is a history full of doctrines that get introduced, developed, modified, accepted and rejected, and not always in that order, and you know what? The Church is still here. It is here because Christ promised us that “the Gates of Heal will not prevail against it” and he is true to his word (Mt 16:18). So there is nothing I or anyone else can do to destroy it. Beyond all that, finding new ways to spread the love of Christ doesn’t cheapen in any way; in fact, that is what he ordered us to do. He told us to “love one another other as [he has loved us]” (Jn 13:34). We should always be looking to find new ways to spread the love of God to others.