Father Hecker gave his view of the bearing of the Vatican Council on the future of religion in a letter which will be found below.  It concerns what we have already spoken of at some length and what we shall again refer to, namely, the relation between the inner and outer action of the Holy Ghost as factors in the soul’s sanctification.  We heard Father Hecker several times affirm that he received special illumination from God on this subject while in Rome during the Council, and that something like the very words in which properly to express himself were then given to him.  It was written in the summer of 1872, but we quote it here before bidding adieu to Rome and accompanying him in his short pilgrimage among the great shrines of Italy: 

“These two months past I have been driven away from home to one place and another by poor health. . . .  The definition of the Vatican Council completes and fixes for ever the external authority of the Church against the heresies and errors of the last three centuries. . . .  None but the declared enemies of the Church and misdirected Catholics can fail to see in this the directing influence of the Holy Ghost.

“The Vatican Council has placed the Church in battle array, unmasked the concealed batteries of her enemies; the conflict will be on a fair and open field, and it will be decisive.  The recent hostility of the governments of Europe, and especially of Italy, against the Church, has shown the wisdom of the Vatican Council in preparing the Church to meet the crisis.  The definition leaves no longer any doubt in regard to the authority of the Chief of the Church.

“For my part I sincerely thank the Jesuits for their influence in bringing it about, even though that were as great as some people would have us believe. . . .  This had to be done before the Church could resume her normal course of action.  What is that?  Why, the divine external authority of the Church completed, fixed beyond all controversy, her attention and that of all her children can now be turned more directly to the divine and interior authority of the Holy Ghost in the soul.  The whole Church giving her attention to the interior inspirations of the Holy Spirit, will give birth to her renewal, and enable her to reconquer her place and true position in Europe and the whole world.  For we must never forget that the immediate means of Christian perfection is the interior direction of the Holy Spirit, while the test of our being directed by the Holy Spirit and not by our fancies and prejudices, is our filial obedience to the divine external authority of the Church.

“If for three centuries the most influential schools in the Church gave a preponderance in their teaching and spiritual direction to those virtues which are in direct relation to the external authority of the Church, it must be remembered that the heresies of that period all aimed at the destruction of this authority.  The character of this teaching, therefore, was a necessity.  There was no other way of preserving the children of the Church from the danger of this infection.  If the effect of this teaching made Catholics childlike, less manly and active than others, this was under the circumstances inevitable.