Strange Ancestor: Orestes A. Brownson

"Range freely over all doctrines, analyze them all, and what you find in them which accords with human nature, as you find it in your own experience, or in the records of the race, hold fast and cherish. . . ."

-Orestes A. Brownson

Writing of another Catholic, Brownson inadvertently described himself: "We acknowledge his ability and his learning, we love and honor the man; but somehow or other, we can hardly read a page of his writings, no matter on what subject, without having our patience tried, or our irascibility excited, and we want to fight him, metaphorically, not literally." His biographer Thomas Maynard says of Brownson, ". . .the fact is that he was a bigot, and every bigot plumes himself upon his refusal to temporize or compromise." Toward the end of his life, even Brownson admitted that "he was satisfied that he might have effected his purpose just as well without giving offense."

Who was this man, who in successive incarnations as a mild Congregationalist, a fiery Presbyterian, an unbeliever, a Universalist preacher, an independent preacher, a Unitarian preacher, a Transcendentalist, and finally and most adamantly a Roman Catholic, managed to provoke to anger almost everyone in each of these fellowships? Who was this odd philosopher who ran quite unsuccessfully for the U. S. Senate in 1862? What kind of Catholic would make enemies of most of the Irish people, insult the Jesuit order as un-American, and criticize not only archbishops, but the Pope himself? What kind of convert claims to know more about his new-found religion than its own theologians and priests? What kind of northern American patriot (and he was very patriotic) would criticize Abraham Lincoln as "thickheaded, ignorant, tricky, and obstinate as a mule"? What Catholic journalist would dare to write that John Henry (later Cardinal) Newman was not a real Catholic? What believer in America and its political institutions would suggest that the best form of government is a theocracy? What misogynist would unexpectedly find himself as one of the chief supporters of the notorious feminist reformer Fanny Wright? Perhaps that will give you a flavor for the man.

Brownson was born in the religious hotbed of Stockbridge, Vermont, in 1803. The White River valley of Vermont seems to have been a fertile spawning ground for religious eccentrics and heretics. Nearby is the town of Royalston, famous as the birthplace of Mormon founder Joseph Smith. And just down the road is Barnard, with its lovely old Universalist Church, where Hosea Ballou, the most famous Universalist theologian, got his start as a preacher.

In a movement often described as "a way and not a stopping place" and as "a fellowship of spiritual seekers," Orestes Brownson may be the quintessential Unitarian Universalist seeker. He was eccentric, changeable, and opinionated; he could be downright cruel to his opponents, possessed as he was of a sharp wit and a facile pen. He was most famous during his lifetime as a journalist, and after his conversion as an apologist for Catholicism in America. (Remember that during the mid-19th century being a Catholic in America was not very popular. Anti-Catholic sentiment, not to mention violence, was common. And as most Catholics were immigrants, nationality also played into the hands of those who hated and distrusted Catholics. Does any of this, in Muslim tones, have a familiar ring?)

Brownson was as usual the exception: a born American who converted to Catholicism.

Though almost totally self-educated, he nearly attained professorships in philosophy at Harvard and in Dublin, Ireland; only his personality really prevented him from obtaining those posts.

The central obsession of Brownson’s life, of course, was religion. After leaving the Congregationalism of his childhood, he began his religious pilgrimage in the strongly Calvinist Presbyterian Church, but soon became disillusioned with Calvinist doctrines of predestination, original sin, and total depravity. It was then that he came under the influence of two of Universalism’s guiding lights, Elhanan Winchester and Hosea Ballou, who, as mentioned, was preaching right in Brownson’s neighborhood.

In 1826, Brownson was ordained a Universalist preacher, later serving churches in Vermont, New Hampshire, and New York state. However, he was not destined to remain satisfied with the Universalists for long, for throughout his life he remained tinged by the Calvinist doctrines he had imbibed during his early religious experience in Vermont. Universalism came to seem too easy: it didn’t take seriously enough for Brownson the problem of evil and its retribution. So it was not long before he became disillusioned again, this time proclaiming himself an unbeliever.

For a while he continued to serve a church in Ithaca, New York as an independent preacher. Then he discovered the Unitarians (he was one of the original Unitarian Universalists!). Later in life, he was to say of his time as a Unitarian, ". . .the Unitarians, they did me no harm, but were, in my fallen state, the occasion of much good." The Unitarians, he felt, took more seriously the problems of evil and salvation than did the Universalists. And besides, the Unitarians boasted of Dr. William Ellery Channing, who became one of Brownson’s inspirations. Though he would later criticize some of Channing’s liberal Christian theology, Channing never came in for the more vicious attacks of Brownson’s pen.

As a Unitarian minister, he served the church in Walpole, New Hampshire. It was during this time that he became acquainted with the younger Unitarian ministers whose names, including our own Thomas Wentworth Higginson’s, we now associate with the Transcendentalist movement. Brownson also made a positive impression on Thoreau. He respected Emerson, and vice versa, but lacking poetic sensibility he was incapable of appreciating Emerson’s writings.

He is credited by George Ripley, the founder of Brook Farm, as being the chief inspiration for that Transcendentalist utopian experiment, although Brownson never stayed there, and his occasional and belligerent visits were not welcomed by all of the Brook Farmers. Ripley once wrote to him from Brook Farm, "If I had never known you, I should never have been engaged in this enterprise. I consider it as the incarnation of those transcendental truths which we have held in common, and which you have done much to make me love." Ironically, Brownson soon would totally repudiate those "transcendental truths."

Others among the Transcendentalists did not feel so positively about the argumentative Brownson. Frederic Henry Hedge, the leading spirit of the Transcendental Club, which featured such illustrious figures as Emerson, Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, and Theodore Parker, wrote that "Brownson met with us once or twice, but became unbearable, and was not afterwards invited."

Among the Brook Farmers, Brownson’s closest friend was Isaac Hecker, who was to precede him into the Catholic Church, and who would ultimately become famous as the founder of the Paulists. Even Hecker would later come in for Brownson’s criticism, however; few were spared.

Though Brownson has always been accused of being a religious gadfly because of his frequent changes of loyalty, he was to remain a Catholic from his conversion in 1845 until his death 31 years later. The Catholic Church, he decided, was the only true church. From being a religious liberal, Brownson went on to become more conservative even than most of his Catholic contemporaries. He was almost more Catholic than the Catholics. Historian Van Wyck Brooks characterized him as "too Catholic for the Yankees and too Yankee for the Catholics."

Because he could never rid himself of the remnants of his Calvinist beginnings, he has sometimes been called a "Puritan Romanist." And one can still find traces of his transcendentalist period even after he became a Catholic. He is probably best described as an eclectic, taking bits and pieces from his religious journey with him into Catholicism. He always sought the integration of all knowledge, and Catholicism offered him a system grand enough to accommodate it. It’s a miracle that he was never censured by the Church, though it nearly happened on several occasions. Brownson, of course, was always able to capitalize on those close calls.

His self-assessment was, "Err we may, inaccurate in our expression we sometimes may be, but we hope we know enough not to follow our errors so far as to get out of orthodox communion."

Though his biographer asserts that Brownson had faith in humanity, it doesn’t really accord with his attitude about democracy, which he distrusted, feeling that the people could never be authoritative enough to govern well. He would have preferred to live under a theocracy: "If democracy commits the government to the people to be taken care of," he wrote, "religion is to take care that they take proper care of the government." His claims that the Catholic Church was most suited to the American temperament, as you might expect, didn’t fly in the majority Protestant America of his day. But he was just as apt to criticize the Catholics.

Of the American people he wrote, "A more cruel, barbarous, and vindictive people than our own, when their passions are excited, it would perhaps be hard to find among civilized nations. We are vain boasters, and boast always of the virtues we lack." Again, "We love our country, but we blush for the immorality of our country men. . . . The active mass of our people, those who influence public affairs, and give tone and character to the country, we believe to be utterly destitute of all sense of religion and morality, and capable of any iniquity. . . ."

He also criticized the American economic system. His biographer tells us that Brownson "never ceased to reiterate that capitalism was the prime material evil of the modern world." Brownson’s gospel was always a social rather than a supernatural one. Politics and religion were closely related in his mind; his statements concerning church and state were often muddled. Yet, his book The American Republic was considered by Woodrow Wilson to be one of the best books ever written about the United States Constitution.

His comments about capitalism and private property were prescient: "Making good," according to Brownson’s ethos, had become confused with being good, and he felt that Americans as much as other people need to preserve the ideal of poverty. "The men of wealth," he complained, ". . .are the men who exert the worst influence on government in every country, for they always strive to use it as an instrument for advancing their private interests. They act on the beautiful maxim, ‘Let government take care of the rich, and the rich will take care of the poor,’ instead of the far safer maxim, ‘Let government take care of the weak, the strong can take care of themselves.’" In light of the current discussions about Social Security, does this sound familiar?

He was concerned about the undue influence of property ownership: "Universal suffrage is better than restricted suffrage, but even universal suffrage is too weak to prevent private property from having an undue political influence." He wrote, "If all men are equal before God, if God be no respecter of persons, then he must have designed the earth to be possessed by them in equal portions; and if, as democracy asserts, all men have equal rights, then it follows that all have a right to equal portions. That is to say, according to both Christianity and Democracy, every man has a right of property to a portion of the whole, equal to that of every other man." As you might expect, these proto-socialistic sentiments were about as popular when Brownson wrote them as they are today.

But for every enlightened opinion he expressed, he seems to have vented two that were painfully off the mark. Of Lincoln he wrote, "He is ignorant, weak, wrongheaded, precisely the sort of man to ruin in times of crisis the liberties of a nation." "When such a man a Abraham Lincoln can become president, who may not hope one day also to be president?"

Nor were his attitudes towards Blacks and Native Americans admirable: he hoped they would vanish entirely from American soil, though he added, "by Providence, not oppression." He didn’t become an abolitionist until he recognized that abolition might help the cause of preserving the Union: slavery was always a secondary concern. He simply had no sympathy for the freed slaves. And although he was more vocal against slavery than most Catholics of his time, who feared competition with newly freed Blacks, there is little in Brownson’s attitude worthy of emulation.

On the other hand, he could show himself enlightened on other topics. He had a positive view toward science, was not threatened by Darwin’s evolutionary theories, and encouraged Catholics in scientific study. And he always held a high doctrine of the church’s role in society: "The church must enlarge its ideal, and propose, not the progress of isolated individuals--but the progress of men [and women] in their union with humanity."

Brownson died in 1876, aged 73, in the fold of the Catholic Church which he had spent most of his journalistic career defending, even if it was not always obvious to Catholics that that was what he was doing. He is perhaps our best argument for the need, whatever our religious proclivities, to come down somewhere spiritually--almost anywhere, but preferably here!--recognizing that anywhere we settle will be ultimately imperfect. Interesting though the search often can be, still it is good to find a stopping place where we can finally commit ourselves and be at home. As this strange religious ancestor once wrote,

Beware of exclusiveness. Beware of denying. Seek always to comprehend. Know that the human mind never embraces unmixed falsehood, and cannot believe a pure absurdity. Range freely over all doctrines, analyze them all, and what you find in them which accords with human nature, as you find it in your own experience, or in the records of the race, hold fast and cherish. . . .

The Rev. Harold E. Babcock