Abstract
Chapter 9 considers the revival of the Brownson Quarterly Review in 1873, which Brownson uses to perpetuate a sectarian war against Protestants. Cortés points out the irony of Brownson’s sectarianism in the midst of a flourishing ecumenical movement. The chapter then examines the aged Brownson’s criticism of Archbishop Hughes, the Catholic press and rank and file, as well as his close friends. Such criticism is attributed to Brownson’s irascible temperament and not to sectarianism. Cortés ends the chapter by noting Brownson’s death in 1876.
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Notes
- 1.
For a succinct description of this movement, see Philip D. Jordan, ‘The Evangelical Alliance and American Presbyterians, 1867–1873,’ Presbyterian Historical Society 51 (1973): 309–326.
- 2.
[Orestes Brownson], ‘Church Union,’ New York Tablet 10 (January 19, 1867): 9.
- 3.
In fact, the Church Union movement rigorously excluded Catholics.
- 4.
[Orestes Brownson], ‘Church Union,’ New York Tablet 10 (January 26, 1867): 9. Within a generation, integrationists like Bishop John J. Keane would proudly represent the Catholic Church at the World’s Parliament of Religions over the successors of Brownson’s sectarian vision. See James F. Cleary, ‘Catholic Participation in the World’s Parliament of Religions, Chicago, 1893,’ The Catholic Historical Review 55 (1970): 585–609. By this point, the Church was part of a larger national and global effort to bridge confessional divides. For the United States, see Egal Feldman, ‘American Ecumenism: Chicago’s World’s Parliament of Religions of 1893,’ Journal of Church and State 9 (1967): 180–199; for a global picture, see Amy Kittelstrom, ‘The International Social Turn: Unity and Brotherhood at the World’s Parliament of Religions, Chicago, 1893,’ Religion and American Culture 19 (2009): 243–274.
- 5.
Orestes Brownson, New Views of Christianity, Society, and the Church,’ in Henry F. Brownson, ed., The Works of Orestes A. Brownson (Detroit: Thorndike Nourse, 1883), 55.
- 6.
While almost all Protestants also believed that salvation was the prerogative of their denomination, Brownson was not persuaded by this doctrine until he became a Catholic.
- 7.
[Orestes Brownson], ‘The Liberal Christian,’ New York Tablet 10 (April 20, 1867): 9.
- 8.
Orestes Brownson, Brownson Quarterly Review (January 1873): 2, RBSC.
- 9.
Orestes Brownson, Brownson Quarterly Review (October 1874): 460, RBSC.
- 10.
Orestes Brownson, Brownson Quarterly Review (October 1875): 469, RBSC. Brownson’s return to conservatism in old age touches on an old social science question concerning the relationship between aging and religion. Sociologist David Moberg found that ‘generally, older people have more conservative religious perspectives than younger adults…’ and that the former ‘are more certain of their religious beliefs.’ (183) David O. Moberg, ‘Religion in the Later Years,’ in A.M. Hoffman, ed., The Daily Needs and Interests of Older Persons (Springfield: Charles C. Thomas, 1970). Other researchers deny a unilateral pattern of increased religiosity brought on by age, and concede only that older individuals ‘become certain of the existence of life beyond death.’ (7) Rodney Stark, ‘Age and Faith: A Changing Outlook or an Old Process?’ Sociological Analysis 29 (1968).
- 11.
Compare the Brownson Quarterly Review of July 1849 with October 1873.
- 12.
Orestes Brownson, Brownson Quarterly Review (October 1874): 467, RBSC.
- 13.
Orestes Brownson, Brownson Quarterly Review (October 1875): 443, RBSC.
- 14.
Ibid., 449.
- 15.
Quoted in Theodore Maynard, Orestes Brownson: Yankee, Radical, Catholic (New York: Macmillan Co., 1943), 340.
- 16.
Orestes Brownson, Brownson Quarterly Review (April 1873): 163, RBSC.
- 17.
Ibid., 194.
- 18.
Ibid., 193.
- 19.
Lewis R. Rambo, Understanding Religious Conversion (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), 31.
- 20.
Orestes Brownson, ‘The Difference Between Us,’ New York Tablet 13 (October 9, 1869): 9.
- 21.
See Jordan, ‘Evangelical Alliance,’ 309–326.
- 22.
Orestes Brownson, Brownson Quarterly Review (January 1873): 30, RBSC. Unlike Schaff, Brownson did not soften his views toward sectarianism in his later years. See Stephen R. Graham, Cosmos in the Chaos: Philip Schaff’s Interpretation of Nineteenth-Century American Religion (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1995), 30ff.
- 23.
Orestes Brownson, Brownson Quarterly Review (January 1874): 84, RBSC.
- 24.
Ibid., 85.
- 25.
Orestes Brownson, Brownson Quarterly Review (October 1874): 457, RBSC.
- 26.
Orestes Brownson, Brownson Quarterly Review (October 1875): 445–446, RBSC.
- 27.
One should not confuse the alleged anti-intellectualism of American Catholics with their general attitude regarding education. See Timothy L. Smith, ‘Immigrant Social Aspirations and American Education, 1880–1930,’ American Quarterly 21 (1969): 523–543. Nevertheless, Catholic intellectuals in the twentieth century have continued Brownson’s criticism regarding the anemic condition of American Catholic thought. See John Tracy Ellis, ‘American Catholics and the Intellectual Life,’ Thought 30 (1955): 1–42.
- 28.
See Patrick W. Carey, Orestes A. Brownson: American Religious Weathervane (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Co., 2004), 321ff.
- 29.
Quoted in Lynn Gordon Hughes, ‘The Making and Unmaking of an American Universalist: The Early Life of Orestes A. Brownson, 1803–1829,’ (Ph.D. diss., Brown University, 2007), 11.
- 30.
Andrew M. Greeley, The Catholic Experience: An Interpretation of the History of American Catholicism (New York: Doubleday & Co., 1967), 134.
- 31.
Quoted in Russell E. Miller, The Larger Hope: The First Century of the Universalist Church in America, 1770–1870, Vol. 1 (Boston: Unitarian Universalist Association, 1979), 184.
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Cortés, Á. (2017). ‘An Uncompromising Catholic and a Thoroughgoing Papist’: End of a Long Journey. In: Sectarianism and Orestes Brownson in the American Religious Marketplace. Histories of the Sacred and Secular, 1700-2000. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51877-0_9
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