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

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

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 path that most of his fellow Catholics had chosen. Yet by one of history’s quirks, Brownson today is buried in the crypt of the campus church at Notre Dame — fla…