“The definition of the Vatican Council, thanks to the Jesuits, now gives us freedom to turn our attention in another direction, and to cultivating other virtues.  If one infidel was equal to two Catholics in courage and action in the past, in the future one Catholic, moved by the Holy Spirit, will be equal to half-a-dozen or a thousand infidels and heretics.

“The stupid Doellingerites do not see or understand that what they pretend to desire—­the renewal of the Church—­can only be accomplished by the reign of the Holy Spirit throughout the Church, and that this can only be brought about by a filial submission to her divine external authority.  Instead of their insane opposition to the definition of the Vatican Council and to the Jesuits, whose influence they have exaggerated beyond all measure, they ought to embrace both with enthusiasm, as opening the door to the renewal of the Church and a brighter and more glorious future. . . .  To my view there is no other way or hope for such a future.”

He left Rome and his many warm friends there early in the spring of 1870, and, as he thought, for the last time.  He was full of courage, he was conscious of not only perfect agreement with every credential of orthodoxy, but of interior impulses of a marvellously inspiring kind.  In a very familiar letter to his brother’s family he says that just before his departure, while standing in one of the great piazzas, looking at the concourse of representatives of all nations passing back and forth, gathered to take counsel with the Vicar of Christ for the well-being of the human race, he was so exhilarated that he could hardly refrain from calling out, "Three cheers for Paradise, and one for the United States!"

“I return with new hope and fresher energy,” he writes, “for that better future for the Church and humanity which is in store for both in the United States.  This is the conviction of all intelligent and hopeful minds in Europe.  They look to the other side of the Atlantic not only with great interest, but to catch the light which will solve the problems of Europe.  Our course is surely fraught with the interests, hopes, and happiness of the race.  I never felt so much like acquitting myself as a Christian and a man.  The convictions which have hitherto directed my course have been deepened, confirmed, and strengthened by recent experience here, and I return to my country a better Catholic and more an American than ever.”

That he might say Mass daily and at convenient hours while in Rome, crowded as it was at the time with bishops and priests, he obtained leave to do so in his own rooms.  He made little pilgrimages to the great shrines of the Holy City, especially those of the Apostles and the typical martyrs, not forgetting, of course, his favorite modern saints, Philip Neri and Ignatius Loyola.  The following are extracts from letters home telling of his celebration of St. Paul’s Conversion and of the martyrdom of St. Agnes.  The reader will remember that the “association of women” here mentioned was one of his earliest ideas, and one of the many whose realization Providence has given over, let us hope, to some souls especially favored by Father Hecker’s gifts: