Isaac Hecker and the First Vatican Council, Including Hecker's

"The author does a creditable job of demonstrating the congruence of Hecker's American messianism and millennialism with his emphasis on the Holy Spirit's immanence to the individual soul." - Church History

"The importance of Hecker to the history of the developing Catholic experience in the U.S. of the 19th century cannot be denied. [Portier] has done us a service by relating Hecker's participation in the First Vatican Council; even more, he has given us a new glimpse into [Hecker's] personal struggle with his vision of American Catholicity." - Theological Studies

"From Hecker's correspondence and a pocket diary made available to scholars in the late 1970s, Portier has reconstructed as well as anyone can, perhaps, Hecker's role at the Council and his subsequent reaction to it." - Catholic Historical Review