Isaac Hecker
Isaac Hecker, C.S.P. | |
|---|---|
| Orders | |
| Ordination | 1849 by Nicholas Wiseman |
| Rank | Priest |
| Personal details | |
| Born | December 18, 1819 |
| Died | December 22, 1888 (aged 69) New York, N.Y., United States |
| Denomination | Roman Catholic |
| Parents | John Hecker & Caroline Freund |
| Occupation | Roman Catholic priest, missionary, religious founder |
| Signature | |
| Sainthood | |
| Venerated in | Roman Catholic Church (United States) |
| Title as Saint | Priest & founder |
| Shrines | St. Paul the Apostle Church, New York, N.Y., United States |
Isaac Thomas Hecker, C.S.P., (December 18, 1819 – December 22, 1888) was a noted American convert to the Catholic Church who became a Catholic priest and founder of the Paulist Fathers, a North American religious society of men.
Hecker originally entered the Redemptorists, by whom he was ordained a priest in 1849. After a dramatic expulsion from that religious congregation, 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 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.
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. 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. Hecker's work was likened to that of 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."
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.