men 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.

________________________

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:

"It is for this we are created: that we may give a new and individual
expression of the absolute in our own peculiar character. As soon as
the new is but the re-expression of the old, God ceases to live. Ever
the mystery is revealed in each new birth; so must it be to eternity.
The Eternal-Absolute is ever creating new forms of expressing itself."

What the new order of things was to be in the spiritual life could be
learned, Father Hecker held, by observing men's strivings after
natural good