Next Sun., Jan.
25, all of our neighboring parishes will be celebrating the Third Sunday of
Ordinary Time. But not here at St. Austin (or at the UCC)! It is not that we
have any particular dislike or hard feelings towards the Third Sunday of
Ordinary Time. Rather, it falls on the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul the
Apostle, Jan. 25, and as this parish has been staffed by the Paulist Fathers
for over a century, we will divert slightly from the liturgical season and
instead celebrate the Paulists’ patronal feast.
Perhaps it would
be good to give a thumbnail review of the Paulists and our history, because
next Sunday not only will we celebrate the Conversion of St. Paul, we will also
be asking for your support of the Paulists in the Annual Paulist Appeal. You will be receiving an email from me about
this in the next few days (if we have your current email address!).
The Paulists are
a group of Catholic priests. There are some in the Church who would question if
we really are Catholic, but we are. We have the proud distinction of being the
first order of priests founded in the United States. We were founded to covert
the United States to Catholicism.
Fr. Isaac Hecker
is our founder. He grew up in Manhattan, New York City. His family owned a
bakery, and they were Methodists, but rather lukewarm ones. Isaac was always a
seeker and of a religious bent. He got very involved in reform politics in the
1830s but eventually became disenchanted with politics. He then moved into
philosophy and some of the “new age” movements of the day, spending time with
the New England Transcendentalists at communes like Brook Farm. Eventually
Isaac found this approach unsatisfying as well. He then began searching
religions. After studying many different Christian denominations, he became
convinced that Catholicism was the true form of Christ’s Church. Interestingly,
it was the Doctrine of the Communion of Saints that tipped him from
Episcopalian to Roman Catholic. He was re-baptized (an abomination we would not
commit today) and then joined the Catholic religious order called the
Redemptorists.
After ordination
as a priest in London, Isaac returned to the U.S. and was assigned to one of
the Redemptorist mission bands. Redemptorists were and still are famous as
preachers, and they would go around giving parish missions. Preaching
dramatically and forcefully, they would fire up the withering faith of the
Catholics across the land, urging them to Confession and to reform their lives.
Isaac and his
friends noted that not only Catholics would come to these parish missions. Before
movies, TV, radio or just about any entertainment, a lot of non-Catholics would
show up for the mission to check it out and hear some good preaching. Inspired
by this, Isaac Hecker and four of his Redemptorist friends, who also had grown
up in the U.S. as Protestants and later converted to Catholicism, wanted to
start giving missions directed at Protestants. Their goal was to share with
their fellow Americans what treasures they themselves has found in the Catholic
Church, and invite them also to convert to Catholicism. They hoped to make
America Catholic.
At the time, the
Redemptorist superiors were overwhelmed by hordes of Catholic immigrants coming
into the United States. They had more work than they could already handle, and
many thought all those Protestants were going to hell anyway, so it would be a
waste of time and effort to try to convert them. The superiors told Isaac and
his friends “NO.” Better to stay with what we know.
Fortunately,
Isaac’s older brother George was really fond of Isaac, and George had made a
lot of dough – in both senses of the word – in the flour and baking business, so
George bankrolled a trip for Isaac to Rome to appeal over the head of his local
Redemptorist superiors to the big wigs in Rome. The Roman superiors did not
like the idea of an upstart from the U.S. telling them what to do any more than
the American superiors did, and they threw Isaac out of the Redemptorists.
But Isaac had
been canny enough to go with a pile of testimonial letters from U.S. Bishops
who did really like the idea of an
outreach to Protestants, so he could not be so easily dismissed. The head of
the Church’s mission office (the U.S. was then mission territory), Cardinal
Barnabo, was a political foe of the Cardinal who was head of the Congregation
for Religious (under which the Redemptorists were goverened), and so he
intervened. After several months of enjoying the sights of Rome (all the while
funded by George), with Cardinal Barnabo working on his behalf, Isaac Hecker
eventually got to see the Pope. Pope Pius IX said, in typical Roman fashion,
“Look, there is more than enough work for everybody. You Redemptorists go do
your thing, you Americans go do your thing, everybody be happy.” And so Isaac
Hecker and his four friends founded the Paulist Fathers.
Today we
Paulists try to take our inspiration from Isaac Hecker, and share the Catholic
faith with those who do not have it, especially seekers and those with no
church home. We also try to reach out to Catholics no longer active in the
Church and to build bridges of understanding and fraternity with Christians of
other denominations in order to heal the wounds in the Body of Christ. It is a
challenging mission but a very fulfilling one. I hope that you will join us in
it!
God bless,
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