Augustine Francis Hewit was an American Catholic priest and writer. He established the Missionary Society of St. Paul the Apostle in New York.
Background
Augustine Hewit was born on November 27, 1820, at Fairfield, Connecticut, United States, the son of Rev. Nathaniel and Rebecca (Hillhouse) Hewit, and was christened Nathaniel Augustus. His father was founder of Hartford Theological Seminary and minister of the Congregational Church.
Education
Augustine prepared for college at Phillips (Andover) Academy and graduated from Amherst College in 1839. In 1840 he entered the Theological Institute of Connecticut at East Windsor, and in 1842 he was licensed to preach in the Congregational Church. Later Hewit studied theology under the direction of Dr. Patrick N. Lynch, afterward bishop of Charleston.
Career
Calvinistic Protestantism was not attractive to him. Augustine Hewit entered the Episcopal Church almost as soon as he was licensed as a preacher in his father’s denomination. He was ordained a deacon in October 1843 and served in the Episcopal Church until early in 1846. Having developed symptoms of consumption in the summer of 1845, he spent the following winter on a plantation near Edenton, North Carolina, serving as chaplain for the slaves.
The conversion of Newman in 1845 caused Hewit to examine critically the validity of the Anglican episcopacy and to conclude that apostolic succession resided only in the Roman Catholic Church. On Easter Sunday, 1846, he took his first communion in a Catholic church. He was ordained a priest of the Catholic Church on March 25, 1847, the first anniversary of his communion, and took the name Augustine Francis. He at once became vice-principal of Charleston Collegiate Institute, and at the same time aided Bishop Reynolds in preparing the writings of Bishop England for publication. This work took him to Philadelphia and Baltimore. There the Redemptorist congregation attracted him, and in 1849 he joined the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer in Baltimore and became associated with Fathers Hecker, Baker, Deshon, and Walworth, all of whom had been Protestants like himself.
Hewit made his religious profession on November 28, 1850, and engaged in the missionary work of the order until 1858. In the latter year he was released from his vows, along with Father Hecker and others of his associates, and together they formed the Missionary Society of St. Paul the Apostle in New York. Hewit wrote the constitution of the new order and was active in establishing and managing the Catholic World, serving from 1869 to 1874 as editor of the periodical. He taught theology and philosophy to the novitiates in the Paulist seminary in New York and in 1888 succeeded Father Hecker as superior of the order. He immediately pledged the Paulist community to support the Catholic University of America, in Washington, D. C. , and in 1889 secured the establishment of the College of St. Thomas Aquinas at that university.
Views
Quotations:
“I was attracted to the Episcopalian form of Protestantism from childhood, and to no other. ”