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Article: The Towers of Babylon.(Correspondence)(Letter to the Editor)
- Article from:
- First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life
- Article date:
- March 1, 2006
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2006 Institute on Religion and Public Life. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Omitted among the authorities on the relationship between the Church and America cited by Father Richard John Neuhaus in his fine essay "Our American Babylon" (December 2005) is Isaac Thomas Hecker. The mission of Father Hecker, founder of the Paulists, America's first Catholic religious society of men, can perhaps best be summarized by the words inscribed on his tombstone: "In the union of Catholic faith and American civilization ... a future for the Church brighter than any past." He believed that a "new awakening" of intense responding to the Holy Spirit would bring about such a union.
As a young New Yorker dubbed by colleagues "Earnest the Seeker," Isaac ...