The republic, he taught, presupposes the Church's doctrine, and the Church ought to love a polity which is the offspring of her own spirit.

He understood and loved the people of America.

He recognized in them splendid natural qualities.

Was he not right?
Not minimizing in the least the dreadful evil of the absence of the supernatural, I am not afraid to give as my belief that there is among Americans as high an appreciation and as lively a realization of natural truth and goodness as has been seen in any people, and it seems as if Almighty God, intending a great age and a great people, has put here in America a singular development of nature's powers and gifts, both in man and out of man--with the further will, I have the faith, of crowning all with the glory of the supernatural.

Father Hecker perceived this, and his mission was to hold in his hands the natural, which Americans extolled and cherished and trusted in, and by properly directing its legitimate tendencies and growth to lead it to the term of its own instincts and aspirations--Catholic truth and Catholic grace.