One of the most curious, fascinating, and interesting people of the 19th century, especially in the United States of America, must have been a fellow by the name of Orestes Augustus Brownson (1803 – 1876); for much more detailed information, the reader can consult various websites, books, or many other sources that cover him extensively. 

The limited purpose of this article is to examine mainly one aspect of this amazing writer, reformer, radical, social activist, thinker, etc. of the age spanning the time of the Louisiana Purchase and up to the centennial year of American history.   One might think that a vast number of United States history books would contain information and facts celebrating or documenting the entirety of his impressive life.  But, sadly, this is not the case.  And, the predominant reason will later be given.

At least some people, at a minimum, through admiring his intellectual and rhetorical abilities, have concluded that he may have, in fact, been the greatest writer of the 19th century; he, assuredly, was highly prolific in empirical terms of there being at least 18 standard volumes of his published writing, principally consisting of his many newspaper columns, essays, articles, etc.  He was never someone to back down from controversy, especially if he thought he had solid reasons for taking a stand on an issue.

This man certainly possessed one of the most unique minds of his or, perhaps, any century as to the extensive range, extent, and depth of his many tremendous intellectual abilities and accomplishments as to, e.g., having become highly conversant with the major thinkers and thinking of his age and, moreover, classical Western thought in general.

What will be almost exclusively commented upon, however, will be one significant aspect of the basic historical coverage of Brownson, by most American historians, meaning the vast majority of them who may give him some or much note as to his presented importance.  In almost all of the various accounts rendered in domestic history books, few take notice of him much past the year 1844 or, perhaps, 1845; prior to that date in time, many writers, scholars, and academicians, especially if they are not Roman Catholics, do substantially remark upon the many religious, social, political, educational, and other reform movements or groups that he was, at different times, associated with during an extremely restless and active life.

He, as various authors would endlessly recount, was always quite unsettled in major terms of trying to constantly seek out truth and right and certainty amidst the wide and subjective flux, ebb, and flow of human events; it was, meaning the journey or dramatic odyssey of his life, a part of the early intellectual springtime of the American republic itself.  

Wherever there were radical or new ideas to be found or radicalism or, as chance had it, extremism in thought, Brownson normally was there in terms of seeking out ideas, issues, concepts, opinions, etc. for going after these things in terms of testing them, seeing if they contained ultimate or partial truth, and, as usual, rejecting them for fully failing to intellectually, ethically, and morally satisfy him.  He had an intellectual restlessness, a compulsive curiosity, that could not be contained by the mutiplicitous causes, campaigns, enthusiasms, and involvements of the times in which he, to put it mildly, had very actively lived and thought and worked.

But, more than that, he was always greatly spiritually driven to try to truly find the ultimate height, the definitive summit, of all the greatest repositories of religious truth to be found in terms of wanting, decade by decade, a genuine and fulfilling religion; it would have to be a profound religion that could encompass and please an aggressive intelligence not satisfied with any mere second or third-rate ideas or concepts fit only for the passing moods of different historical eras, as with merely subjective fads or fashions in thought.  

Brownson therefore, greatly wanted to have a true faith that would intelligently endorse reason and not just blind emotionalism; it had to be, in addition, a creative and dynamic unity of substantive faith and reason combined, by which men could be liberated through such a religion, by not being made slaves of passions, raw emotions, or other subjective sources of unguarded sensuality that could often lead most easily men astray.

In 1844, he wrote of his own conversion experience in a book simply titled: “The Convert” by which he related those events of his past life that had lead him, logically he felt, to eventually decide to become a member of one of America’s then most hated religious minorities; he had become a Roman Catholic, a follower of what was regarded as a justly despised and hated foreign religion not suitable to the needs and expectations of a modern, progressive, Protestant America that had cast aside forever popish superstition and papist mental and moral slavery; further than this, however, Catholics were then lynched, driven out of towns, had their property and churches burned, and, in general, fairly well discriminated against, especially if they happened to be Irish immigrants.

Many of his old associates and friends were genuinely shocked and surprised, many were notably irritated, with his conversion; some thought he simply had finally gone crazy, due to his excesses in many areas of his past life.  His action was defiantly and definitely against the major realities and forces of the America of his era, to say the least.  

But, that odd defiance of conventionality and conventional cognition was, as other of his friends really knew, the very definition of Brownson, the man and the religious convert, who took his new religion absolutely seriously without a doubt.  At last, after all his many and complex and complicated, and long, hard, and greatly arduous wanderings, he then found what he had been truly looking for, driving after, all of his previous life: Catholicism.

This became the cognitive centrality of his thinking and absolute reference and core of all that he was to later attribute to the thought processes, opinions, writings, etc. that would come to appropriately define the complete reality of what it was to be fully Orestes Augustus Brownson. 

But, getting back to American history books is more to the larger matter at hand here; if one were to seek out such books, covering the years from 1850 to about the end of the 19th century, it would be very unusual to find Brownson in the indexes; most would, thus, not have his name in those indexes; of course, in general American history texts covering all of this nation’s history, his name may appear but almost always concerning only events about him prior to 1844 or, at most, 1845.  It might be asked why.

After that year, it is as if he had suddenly and without explanation dropped off the edge of the world or, perhaps, as if he simply had just fully dropped dead by 1845 or, perhaps, 1844.  What had happened to this tremendously dynamic figure who had loomed so large, within the nation’s broad political, social, economic, etc. scene, but now seems to have inexplicably disappeared from the historical records of this country, as if he had become, e.g., a seemingly “non-person” during the reign of a Joseph Stalin?

What is the truly main reason, though often unspoken, of course, as to why this man’s surely enormous achievements and remarkable accomplishments, which by no means all stopped in the 1840s, usually do not get covered at all into the 1850s, 1860s, or up to the early 1870s?  Why does important mention of this man seemingly, upon investigation, drop out of historical recognition or consciousness?   What is the fundamental cause for his observed fall through the Orwellian memory hole?   He became a Roman Catholic.

It is known that Peter Vierick, who had tried during his life to atone for his Nazi father, had, a few generations ago, called anti-Catholicism the anti-Semitism of the intellectuals; he, later, simply edited that thought, by reducing it to its most truthful essentials, in more plainly saying that anti-Catholicism is the anti-Catholicism of the intellectuals.  And, this notable bigotry, prejudice, and, yes, actual hatred, is still real, palpable, and virulent because too much of American society and culture genuinely condones it, either overtly or, more usually, covertly these days. 

So, here is given belated high praise to Orestes Augustus Brownson, who had become, many said, a “premature” Roman Catholic, as, e.g., Sydney Hook had been ironically (and sarcastically) denounced by many of his former Leftist friends as having once become a “premature anti-Communist” because of his proper rejection of the evil Communism represented.  

Brownson was a great, premature Catholic, one supposes, because he rigorously rejected moral and spiritual error, due to his evident love for Jesus Christ, attained best, though it ought need not to be said, through his ardent embrace and championing of Catholicism.  And, consequently, most American history books can be justifiably, rightly, damned for neglecting the fullness and force of his notable contributions to the story of this nation.