Not so Isaac Thomas Hecker.

Whether consciously or unconsciously I do not know, and it matters not, he looked on America as the fairest conquest for divine truth, and he girded himself with arms shaped and tempered to the American pattern.

I think that it may be said that the American current, so plain for the last quarter of a century in the flow of Catholic affairs, is, largely at least, to be traced back to Father Hecker and his early co-workers.

It used to be said of them in reproach that they were the "Yankee" Catholic Church; the reproach was their praise.
Father Hecker understood and loved the country and its institutions.
He saw nothing in them to be deprecated or changed; he had no longing for the flesh-pots and bread-stuffs of empires and monarchies.

His favorite topic in book and lecture was, that the Constitution of the United States requires, as its necessary basis, the truths of Catholic teaching regarding man's natural state, as opposed to the errors of Luther and Calvin.