traditions in which he had lived since entering the novitiate at St. Trond.  His ideas of perfection in its relation to states of life underwent a change.  Therefore he said, Let us wait for the unmistakable will of God before we bind ourselves with vows amidst a free people.  He never depreciated the evident value of these obligations; indeed, he seldom was heard to speak of them.  But he knew from close observation the truth of the words of the Jesuit Avancinus: 

“The net (St. Matthew 13:44) is the Catholic Church, or, to take a narrower view, it means the station in which you are placed.  As in a net all kinds of fish are to be found, so in our position, as in all others, there are good and bad Christians. . . .  Should yours be a sacred calling, you are not, on that account, either the better or the more secure; your sanctity and your salvation depend on yourself, not on your calling.” (Meditations, Fourteenth Friday after Pentecost)

It never entered into the minds of the Fathers to question the doctrine and practice of the Church concerning vows.  But personal experience proves the lesson of history, that what religion needs is not so much holy states of life as holy men and Women.

Looking back into the past, Father Hecker saw St. Philip Neri, to whom he had a great devotion and for whose spiritual doctrine he had a high admiration.  The following is from an exponent of that doctrine, and is much in point: 

“Although our Fathers and lay brothers [Oratorians] make no vow of obedience, as do religious, they are, nevertheless, no way inferior in the perfection of this virtue to those who profess it in the cloister with solemn vows.  They supply the want of vows with love, with voluntary promptitude, and perfection in obeying every wish of the superior.  And it is a thing for which we must indeed thank God, that without the obligation of obeying under pain of sin, without fear of restraint or other punishment (except that of expulsion in case of contumacy), all the subjects are prompt in this obedience, even in things most humiliating and severe, according to the terms of the rule.  All take pleasure in meeting the wishes of the superior, etc.” (The Excellences of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri, p. 136.  London:  Burns & Oates.)

Father Hecker did not dream that by relinquishing the vows he and his companions in the Paulist community had cast away a single incentive to virtue capable of moving such men as they, or had even failed to secure any of the insignia adorning the great host of men and women in the Catholic Church whose entire being has been given up to the divine service.  “The true Paulist,” said he once, “should be fit and ready to take the solemn vows at any moment.”  He felt strongly the truth of the following words of the Jesuit Lallemant: