Father Isaac Hecker

The Catholic Church has preserved unity without encroachment on individual liberty and has preserved individual liberty without the loss of perfect unity. Unity without individual liberty is impossible as individual liberty is without unity. When the tendency is to consolidation, the effect of this is immobility, slavery, death; when to separation we have obstruction, lawlessness, and wild fanaticism. It is only in Catholicism, unity and individuality in divine unity, that progress, liberty, and life is secured and perpetuated. (Diary July 14, 1844)