HECKER, ISAAC THOMAS. — Preacher, publicist, founder of the Paulists, born to German emigrants in New York on 18 December 1819, died there on 22 December 1888. H. received no religious education, since his father professed no religion and his mother had changed from Lutheranism to Methodism. At the age of 11 he worked in a baker’s shop. Studious, he read a great deal. Received into the Church by Dr. Mc Closkey (later a cardinal) in January 1844, he entered the Redemptorist novitiate at St. Trond (Belgium) in September 1845. Of an impulsive nature, at the student house in Wittem (Holland) he manifested strange mystical phenomena. Ordained a priest at Clapham (London) on 23 October 1849 by the apostolic vicar Wiseman, the future cardinal, he returned to America in January 1850, where he carried out an intense and fruitful apostolate. In New York, his gifts as a preacher won him wide influence among Catholics and non-Catholics.
The Redemptorists, who had settled in America in 1832, were then principally concerned with German-speaking emigrants; H., together with several confrères of American origin, wished to found a purely American house. For this purpose he made a journey to Rome (August 1857) to confer with the superior general, who expelled him (29 August) from the Congregation because H. had undertaken the journey at his own expense and without permission. H. appealed to the Holy See; the Sacred Congregation of Bishops and Regulars, by a decree of 6 March 1858, released H. and his four companions from their vows, expressly permitting them to devote themselves to missionary work in their homeland under the direction of the bishops. Thus, in 1859, there arose in the State of New York the Missionary Society of St. Paul the Apostle, commonly called the “Paulists,” which, like H. himself, always remained on excellent terms with the Redemptorists. H. was elected superior and remained so until 1871.
He promoted the apostolate of the press and founded the Society for Catholic Publications, The Catholic World. He wrote three works, including The Church and the Age. At the same time, he was a fervent American and an inflexible Catholic. Some attempted to defame him when Leo XIII, taking as his occasion the preface to F. Klein’s French version (1897) of the Life of H., published by W. Elliott (2nd ed., New York 1894), circulated his Testem benevolentiae (22 January 1899), which condemned “Americanism” (v.), the heresy that adapts Catholic doctrine to the modern American way of life and, in practice, exalts natural virtue above the supernatural. H.’s absolute orthodoxy and fidelity to the Holy See were broadly defended by the American bishops and by many others.
(from W. Elliott, Le p. H., Paris 1897)
HECKER, ISAAC THOMAS — Portrait, with autograph signature.