Isaac Hecker: An American Catholic

by David J. O'Brien

This is the first full length comprehensive biography of Isaac Hecker--mystic, priest, journalist, and missionary--and the most important person in 19th-century U.S. Catholicism. +

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0809103974
• ISBN13: 9780809103973
• Release Date: January 1992
• Publisher: Paulist Press
• Length: 480 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

A thorough biography of this Servant of God who may be a saint

Isaac Hecker, founder of the Paulist Fathers, is now being considered for canonization. He had a fascinating start with the New England Transcendentalists and was mentored by the famous intellect Orestes Brownson, who was over a decade his senior. Hecker's diary reveals that he had a clear vocation to the priesthood, and he and Brownson moved toward the Catholic Church at about the same time. Hecker was still in his 20s when he was received into the Church and joined the Redemptorists. Very soon thereafter, he discerned his vocation to found the Paulists, the first American Catholic order, to conduct missions throughout America. This book covers in detail his experience with the hierarchy of the Church, as well as his reaction to Vatican I and the declaration of papal infallibility. His ideas, while controversial in their day, have become part of the mainstream of the Church since Vatican II. Recommended.