When Pius IX. called together the Council of the Vatican Father Hecker was urged by friends, among them several bishops, to go to Rome for the occasion.  The late Bishop Rosecrans, of Columbus, Ohio, not being able to attend himself, appointed Father Hecker his Procurator, or proxy.  Before his departure he preached a sermon on the Council in the Paulist Church, which was printed in The Catholic World for December, 1869.  He devoted the greater part of it to quieting the wild forebodings of timid Catholics and combating the prognostics of outright anti-Catholics.  He concluded by asking the people to pray that the hopes of a new and brighter era for religion, to date from this great event, might be fulfilled; for it was commonly believed and expressly intended that the entire state of the Church should be considered and legislated upon at the Council.  The breaking out of the Franco-Prussian war, as is well known, together with the seizure of Rome by the Piedmontese, frustrated these hopes as to all but the very first part of the work laid out for the Council.

Father Hecker arrived in Rome on the 26th of November, 1869.  When the preliminary business of organization had been finished it was announced that the procurators of absent bishops would not be admitted to the Council, as the number of prelates present in person was exceedingly large.  But, he writes home: 

“The Archbishop of Baltimore has made me his theologian of his own accord.  This gives me the privilege of reading all the documents of the Council, of knowing all that takes place in it, its discussions, etc.  As his theologian I take part in the meetings and deliberations of the American hierarchy, which is, as it were, a permanent council concerning the interests of the Church in the United States, in which I feel a strong and special interest.”

Father Hecker had ever been a firm believer in the doctrine of papal infallibility, as was the case with all American Catholics, prelates, priests, and people.  Shortly before leaving for the Council we heard him say:  “I have always heard the voice of Rome as that of truth itself.”  This he also showed very plainly in his farewell sermon.  Speaking of the dread of undue papal influence over the bishops in the Council, he exclaimed:  “All I have to say is, that if the Roman Court prevail [in the deliberations of the Council], it is the Holy Ghost who prevails through the Roman Court.”  But the tone of the controversy on the subject of papal infallibility, which soon deafened the world, was too sharp for his nerves, and he abstained from mingling in it.  As a matter of fact he determined to get away from Rome early in the spring of 1870.  If the reader would know what we deem to have been Father Hecker’s frame of mind about the proceedings of the Council we refer him to Bishop J. L. Spalding’s excellent life of his uncle, the then Archbishop of Baltimore, whose views of both doctrine and policy were, as far as we can judge, shared by Father Hecker, who was his intimate and beloved friend.