Orestes Brownson

He [Dr. Patrick Carey] has authored numerous studies on American Catholic thought and its leading thinkers, including a seven-volume critical edition of the earliest scattered writings of Orestes Brownson. “A very interesting creature,” he says of Brownson, “but also the strongest intellectual in 19th-century Catholic American history.” In 2004, his biography of Brownson won a first-place Catholic Press Award. --Marquette magazine, Catholicism’s influence, Spring 2009

Is it peculiarly tragic or perhaps not-so-peculiarly tragic that Christopher Hitchens ends up an apologist for, among others, Karl Rove, latter-day practitioner of the peculiarly Southern version of smash-and-trash politics honed by his mentor Lee Atwater and other such worthies? I'm not sure if Tom Watson or Orestes Brownson is the best precursor for the arc. --Josh Marshall, Talking Points Memo 07.18.05 -- 5:54PM

What would Orestes Brownson do? interview by Joshua Glenn of Patrick W. Carey, Boston Globe, December 26, 2004

Why Orestes Brownson believed the U.S. needed the Church by Peter Lawler, Zenit, November 7, 2003

In the legal realm, Philip Hamburger’s massive and important study Separation of Church and State traces the roots of the Nativist critique of Catholicism in establishing the strict separationist view in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The adoption of this secularizing interpretation of the First Amendment by the overwhelming majority of contemporary legal scholars and judges has rendered most American Catholics today hostile to the view of religion advocated by Brownson—and, indeed, completely unaware that there might be a legitimate alternative to the prevailing American secularism. --Jude P. Dougherty, Orestes Brownson on Catholicism and Republicanism, Modern Age, Fall 2003

Orestes Brownson and the Truth About America by Peter Augustine Lawler, First Things, December 2002

Political Atheism: Dred Scott, Roger Brooke Taney, and Orestes Brownson, by Dr. Patrick Carey, The Catholic Historical Review, April, 2002 (via Joseph A. Komonchak at dotCommonweal)

Shaping Catholic Education, by Mark Sullivan: In new book, SOE's Power examines Orestes Brownson's impact on the Church in 19th century America, Boston College Chronicle, April 24, 1997

Brownson's Quest for Social Justice, by Edward Day, C.SS.R., The American Ecclesiastical Review, August 1954, at EWTN

That Sturdy but Erratic Reformer, Orestes Brownson, by Henry Steele Commager; review of Orestes A. Brownson, A Pilgrim's Progress, by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The New York Times, April 23, 1939

The Dial, from Magazines, Annuals, and Gift-books, 1783–1850, in Vol. XVI. Early National Literature, Part II; Later National Literature, Part I, The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21)