Besides furnishing a very explicit answer to a question which may occur to some minds, as to why a man who always took such a hopeful view of human nature as Isaac Hecker did, should not have been repelled from Catholicity by the doctrine of original sin, it adds some further particulars to the meagre array of facts in our possession: "Suppose," he was asked, "that the deliverances of the Council of Trent on original sin, and the theories of Bellarmine on that doctrine, had been offered you during your transition period: what would you have thought of them ?" "I would have received them readily enough.

Why, the book I took to Concord to study was the Catechism of the Council of Trent, which has the strongest kind of statement of that doctrine.

Bellarmine's formula of _nudus_ and _nudatus_ would have opened my eyes amazingly to a solution of the whole difficulty."* [* Reference is here made to a very famous saying of Bellarmine's in explanation of a prevalent teaching on original sin.

According to that teaching, if Adam had been originally constituted in a state of pure nature, devoid of supernatural gifts and graces, his spiritual condition might be described as naked--_nudus._ On the other hand, man as now born is _nudatus,_ stripped of those gifts and graces, suffering the penal privation of them on account of Adam's sin.
"The corruption of nature," says Bellarmine, "does not come from the want of any natural gift, or from the accession of any evil quality, but simply from the loss of a supernatural gift on account of Adam's sin."] The Catechism of the Council of Trent, to which Father Hecker so often refers, was the very best book he could have had for learning just what Catholicity is in doctrine and practice.

It is unique in Catholic literature, being the only authoritative expression of the Church, in extended form, on matters of pastoral theology.