Sermon at Immaculate Conception Church, Boston, December 1876

HOW WISDOM MAY BE FOUND.
Sermon by the Rev. Augustine P. Hewit, C. S.P.
Before the Boston Catholic Union, at the Church of the Immaculate Conception.
Boston Daily Globe, December 1, 1876

At the Church of the Immaculate Conception, yesterday morning, solemn mass was celebrated in the presence of a large and distinguished congregation, including the members of the Boston Catholic Union, for whose benefit the services were especially held. An interesting sermon was preached by the Rev. Augustine P. Hewit, C. S. P., of New York. His text was founded in the words from the Book of Ecclesiastes: “Search for wisdom and she shall be made known to thee.” The speaker said he had no hesitation in saying that these words of counsel perfectly agree with the promptings of man’s rational nature. It is a Roman philosopher who says: “Nature gives to man a mental constitution inclined to search after hidden things.” To this search there are no limits. It reaches from the foundation to the top of all subjects of knowledge or speculation.

The Greeks called the seekers for wisdom lovers of true wisdom; but in time the word sophist lost its early significance and came to designate one of the army of false claimants which soon arose and attempted to palm off the counterfeit for the true. These sophists have had a lineal succession from the day of Socrates to the present time, when they are more numerous than in any previous age. They showed their true nature by giving the hemlock to the greatest of pagan philosophers, and today, in their abandonment of all true wisdom, they are instilling a more deadly poison into the minds and hearts of the people. Under the specious names of liberalism and rationalism, these men revive old and obdurate errors, and whenever they are able, enforce their false system by cruelty and persecution. The leaders openly avow as their political maxim, “Force is the only right.”

The logical development of their theories makes man a slave to the State, denies to the soul a Divine origin, and necessitates universal skepticism regarding all truth, all good and all being. By their abjuration of Divine authority, all protection for the rights of the individual man, from the tyranny of a despot or of a majority, has been thrown away. Recovery from the mental, moral and even physical decadence which is to be noted among the deluded followers of these modern sophists is possible in only one way.

Men must return to their allegiance to wisdom, which can follow only reverence for God and submission to His laws. For this of guiding men aright God has specially ordained the Catholic Church, that masterpiece of the Divine handiwork. It was instituted to teach wisdom to man— to train him to discriminate between the true and the false, and to lead him to attain the highest good in obedience to moral law. Its work is as large as the field wherein man searches for wisdom. It makes known to him not only the first but the final cause of things, and points out the practical duty of man in his various relations to the family, society and the State. It teaches men not only right thinking but right acting, and aims to develop and ennoble the whole man. What a dignity invests man, whose origin the Catholic religion teaches us is from God; and whose soul is raised above all physical and material things by the special creative act of God. The soul’s object in this view cannot be attained in this short life, which is but a probation for eternity. The man who is taught thus to reverence himself is bound to reverence all men. Liberty is a God-given right to him as a rational being, who feels that he is bound by a moral obligation enforced by his Creator.

The right use of liberty binds all men to respect and maintain it both for themselves and others. And it is founded on Divine law, so when guided by law, liberty is the defense and the foundation of all private and public peace, order and well-being. The Catholic Church recognizes the need of men for liberty guided by Divine law; and it is part of her work to give men a right education. Truth, to be of weight must be taught by somebody having authority; and the Church, in her teaching, ever enforces the fact that the child trained under her instruction is far wiser than Plato or Aristotle, since they have been given the true wisdom of God. The Catholic Cburch, in the attainment of her grand ideal, the training of all men unto righteousness, is hindered by the apathy of man or the revolt of man’s free will against her laws.

The preacher noted the progress which the Roman Catholic Church has made in New England within the past century as showing the possibility of the ideal Christian Republic on these shores, where men in their revolt against authority have most boldly maintained the gloomy doctrines of materialism. The sons have repudiated the doctrines of their Puritan fathers, with the truths inherited from Catholic ancestors as well as the many errors of heresy. Many attempts have been made to extirpate the poison instilled by false doctrines, but Protestantism in its various forms is vanishing, and the outer darkness of paganism seems returning to shroud the world. But the Catholic Church is still here, maintaining Christian worship, a reverence for God’s word and the supremacy of moral law; and the force of truth is perpetual. The words of Pius IX may be remembered, when the next Centennial Thanksgiving comes, as the words of the great sage and prophet who stemmed the flood of incoming Paganism.

There are many who think that the dawn of a Catholic century, like the fourth or the thirteenth has begun. Let us hope that it may be so, and that the work of the Catholic Church in this land, so dear to the hearts of the ancient people who in all ages have been faithful to the truth, and who have done so much to spread the true faith here, may be blessed to the people of this Republic. May the spire of this Cathedral of this New England province, like the tower of St. Botolph’s Church in old Boston, be a beacon light to all who are tossed to and fro on the seas of doubt to the haven of salvation in God’s holy Church.

NOTE
Father Augustine F. Hewit, C.S.P. (1820-1897) was born in Connecticut, the son of a prominent Congregationalist minister. During the 1840’s, he joined the Episcopal Church and began studies for the priesthood, but the conversion of Blessed John Henry Newman led him to become a Catholic as well. In 1847, he was ordained a priest in Charleston, South Carolina, and two years later he joined the Redemptorists, a religious order dedicated to parish work and preaching missions around the country. (The mission was basically a weeklong parish retreat conducted by a visiting priest.)

In 1858, Father Hewit was one of the founding members of the Paulists (“C.S.P.” stands for “Congregation of St. Paul”), the first male religious community founded in the United States. At the start, it was composed entirely of converts like himself, and their goal was to work for the conversion of America. As the above sermon somewhat indicates, Hewit had a bit of a scholarly bent. He drafted the Paulists’ constitution and also wrote several books defending the Catholic Church. When Father Isaac Hecker, the founder, died in 1888, Father Hewit succeeded him as Superior General of the Paulists (today they’re known as President). He was also actively involved with The Catholic University of America during its early years, and taught Church History there. He died on July 3, 1897.

Little information is available on the Boston Catholic Union, but it’s important to note that it doesn’t refer to a labor union. Rather, it was an organization of Catholic laymen who came together for social and religious purposes in the days before organizations like the Knights of Columbus existed. There were many such organizations called “unions” throughout the country for Catholics, but they no longer exist today.