Orestes Brownson, Saint Bonnet, and Cardinal Newman

Social Restoration and the Development of Doctrine Theory

It goes without saying that the majority of Americans have never heard the name Orestes Augustus Brownson (1803-’76). The online Encyclopedia Britannica in its article on John Cardinal Henry Newman does not once mention Brownson, which shows us that the editors of Britannica know very little about Newman, and even far less about Brownson. He was a nineteenth century Vermonter, born and raised in the Green Mountains of Vermont. He was the co-founder of Notre Dame, having convinced Fr. Edward Sorin, C.S.C., to build the now-famous college in St. Joseph County, Indiana. You will find him buried in the Brownson Chapel at Notre Dame; a chapel which, unfortunately, is a modern monstrosity, unworthy of Brownson’s name. Brownson converted to Catholicism in 1844 and would eventually earn the title by Pius IX, “American Defender of the Faith.” Brownson assumed editorship of the Boston Quarterly Review changing its name to Brownson’s Quarterly Review, which ran from 1844-1876. The entire Review (32 volumes) runs some 17,000 pages. If one wants a comprehensive reading of Brownson’s life, we suggest his autobiography, “The Convert,” found on the Orestes Brownson Website.

Upon becoming a traditional Catholic in the early 1990’s, I was immediately enthralled with Brownson’s writings, starting the Brownson website in 2003, www.orestesbrownson.org. In terms of output, Brownson joins a short list of famous converts - Joseph Hilaire Belloc (d.1953; *he wrote nearly 150 books), and Gilbert K. Chesterton (d. 1936; *his average output was a staggering ten thousand words per day according to the Chesterton Society).

Brownson: Saint-Bonnet on Social Restoration

As the title suggests, Brownson gives us a view of the correct understanding of the social order of society, discussing such issues at “paganism,” “socialism,” property,” “revolution,” etc. Midway through the article he gives a logical analysis- a continuous syllogism- as we call it in Logic, which is a true masterpiece of Brownsonian logic:

Capital founds man, the freeman as distinguished from the slave, man founds the family, families found the aristocracy, and the aristocracy found and direct society, while capital itself is founded by virtue, and virtue by religion. To destroy religion is to destroy virtue, to destroy virtue is to destroy capital, to destroy capital is to destroy liberty or the freeman, to destroy the freeman is to destroy families, to destroy families is to destroy the aristocracy, to destroy the aristocracy is to destroy government, and to destroy government is to destroy society, and to destroy society is to drive men back to the savage state…Consequently, to attack religion, virtue, capital, individual freedom, family, aristocracy, or authority, is to attack civilization, nay, man himself.¹

Brownson, always being the master logician, made this distinction because so many philosophers and social theorists either fail to follow sound principles, or following sound principles, fail to arrive at just conclusions. He is more precise in making the distinction between the idiot and the lunatic:

The human race may be now and then afflicted with lunacy, but it is never an idiot.  An idiot is one who has just premises, but cannot draw from them just conclusions, that is, one who cannot reason; a lunatic is one who has false premises, but who is, nevertheless, able to draw logical conclusions from them.    His insanity is precisely in his inability to seize and hold true premises.²

Brownson combats the erroneous theory that mankind began in a savage state, which is the predominant theory of socialists, evolutionists, and almost all freethinkers worldwide. “Heathenism,” they would say, “prepared the way for Christianity.” And this Christianity, they assert, had to find its identity while sifting itself through “fetishism, polytheism, and monotheism,” only to find itself reposing in a “grand syncretism of all preceding religions.” The main problem facing society today is that Catholicism, as it is seen through the lens of the Post-Vatican II revolution (1962-present), is nearly unrecognizable from the other pagan, syncretistic religions. The Catholic Church in 1851, when Brownson penned this article, would have been essentially recognizable as the same Catholic Church of 1951; but the Catholic Church of 1951, the Church of Pius XII, is alien when compared to the Church of 2023, the Church of Pope Francis, the Church of Modernism, the Church which seems to be buffeted with spittle and crowned with thorns.

Brownson calls to account John Cardinal Newman, the author of the Essay on Development, and says that Newman does in the supernatural order what the philosopher Saint-Bonnet does in the natural order. Newman published his “Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine” in 1845, one year after Brownson’s conversion to Catholicism. Brownson, from the first, was on the offensive against Newman, and somewhat scathingly said of him:

…and the illustrious author of the Essay on Development only applies to the supernatural order, to the formation of Christian doctrine, the principles which the author of the Vestiges of Creation applies to the natural order, or to the formation of the universe, and his well-intended justification of his conversion is after all only an ingenious but undesigned attempt to harmonize unchangeable Christian doctrine with the modern heathen doctrine of progress. So all-pervading is this heathen doctrine, that very few of us are able entirely to escape it; and men whose faith and piety are unquestionable give utterance to principles which need only to be developed to be pantheism or nihilism.³ *

Brownson, while respecting Cardinal Newman, nonetheless saw the error of the cardinal’s reasoning. Newman had “unconsciously mistaken development and growth of heresy for development and growth of Christian doctrine.” Of all men Brownson alone was up to the challenge to put Cardinal Newman in his place. Most Catholic authorities, whether ecclesiastic or laymen, were intimated by Newman, mainly because of his voluminous nature, coupled with his position in the Church. Brownson feared no one, because a lion rarely backs down from a fight. Brownson was 6’3”, 240 lbs., but this did not make him fearsome. He was ruthless in debate. More to the point we quote Brownson at some length, so as to understand the precise error in which Newman found himself, unbeknownst to himself:

He was led into his error by the false philosophy of the age, which asserts that the   mind apprehends truth only under subjective forms, and by his Protestantism, which misapprehends the real character of those new definitions and further explications of the faith opposed by the Church to novel heresies and errors as they arise.   Confounding the simple belief of the truth with the intellectual process of comprehending it, he fell into the mistake of supposing that heresy has always an honest origin, that it always springs from the necessary and laudable effort of the mind, an effort which every true believer must make, to ascertain and comprehend the truth, and that it always presupposes the faith on the point it contradicts was previously unknown even to the pastors of the Church ; — a sad mistake, for the Church has never hesitated as to the faith to be opposed to the novel heresy, which proves that she knew it prior to the heresy, and the heresy never originates in ignorance of the faith or in an honest endeavor to ascertain it, but in the desire to establish a favorite theory, or to follow one's own private judgment.⁴ 

to be continued

1. “Saint-Bonnet on Social Restoration,” Brownson’s Quarterly Review for Oct., 1851. p. 472.

2. ibid. pg. 453.

3. ibid. pg. 459. *The true authorship of the Vestiges of Creation was not discovered until 1884, eight years after Brownson’s death.

4. ibid. pg. 463.