Orestes Brownson: A spiritual seeker turned prominent Catholic intellectual ‘bomb-thrower’

Orestes Brownson: A spiritual seeker turned prominent Catholic intellectual ‘bomb-thrower’

Editor’s note: This is part of a series exploring the lives of Great American Catholics ahead of the United States’ 250th anniversary celebration. (OSV News) — At the very least, Orestes Brownson would have regarded it as odd. At the worst, he might have gotten hopping mad. By the end of his life, Brownson, who was the most distinguished American Catholic public intellectual of the 19th century, had become a ferocious critic of the Americanist p…