AN ODIOUS CONVERT
Coleman, Mcalister
An Odious Convert ORESTES BROWNSON, by Theodore Maynard. The Macmillan Company. New York. $3. Reviewed by McAlisrer Coleman DESPITE the author's heroic struggles to make out Brownson's as "the...
...She . , . treats poverty as a blessing, not as a misfortune...
...All Catholics will read this book as a matter of course...
...And it should be read, too, by those Protestants who are under the impression that Catholicism in America consists of buying expensive church properties from the contributions of the poor, supporting the Franco regime in Spain, and the Mayor Hague regime in Jersey City, fighting birth control, banning books in Boston, and cheering for the Notre Dame football teams...
...Reviewed by McAlisrer Coleman DESPITE the author's heroic struggles to make out Brownson's as "the largest and most luminous mind produced by Catholicism in America," his subject remains for the greater part of the book a perversely contentious, contradictory, bellowing bore...
...His The Story of American Catholicism is standard by now, and in this latest book he gives us more of the conscientious research, the side-long humor, and the intimate knowledge of the significant American scenery which made his history so readable...
...Maynard's fault that his hero turns out to be something of a second-rater with more noise than light in him...
...He has given us a full-length portrait of Orestes Brownson with the warts left in...
...As to Brownson's radicalism, though Mr...
...Maynard, in this reviewer's opinion, has no valid evidence...
...The Rev...
...and it is no less to her honor that she has never attempted to remove poverty...
...He hated the Abolitionists, saw nothing in Emancipation other than a new weapon to use against Secession, and indeed at one time he condoned slavery, explaining to the slaves that their sufferings would do them spiritual good...
...Theocracy rather than democracy was his idea of good government and the pay-off on the man's latterday "radicalism" which the author has the honesty to print is that: "It is to the honor of the church that she has always had a special regard and tenderness for the poor...
...But what real radical would have so much as sniffed at such a job in the first place...
...Brownson, born in Vermont in 1803, flipped from preaching in Universalist churches to Unitarian pulpits, flopped in an attempt to form a church of his own, and was finally caught up in the nets of Catholicism when he was 41 years old...
...Certainly it is not Mr...
...Theodore Maynard is the current Catholic literary show-piece...
...Like most converts, whether it be in the fields of politics, religion, or alcoholism, Brownson made himself odious to both his former pals and his new-found associates by proclaiming the hoariest of Catholic dogmas as though they were recent finds of the Vermont philosopher, and hurling them in the disgusted faces of his erstwhile Protestant friends...
...Determined as he is to present a profound and original philosopher, Mr...
...For it is Brownson's participation in the thundering debates on abolition, Transcendentalism, the new workingmen's movements, and Brownson's relations with the intellectual leaders at the time of New England's flowering which will most interest the non-Catholic reader...
...Isaak Hecker, who went with Brownson on the road to Rome, remarked of Orestes' overwhelming and ferocious dialectics,' "He defeats but never will convince an opponent...
...He took a cushy political job from Van Buren, a man whom he later denounced and still later praised, and he receives great credit from his biographer for jeopardizing his job by writing "radical" pamphlets...
...Maynard lays great stress on this, it seems to hinge mainly on Brownson's articles denouncing the industrial system of his times...
Vol. 8 • May 1944 • No. 20
