BROWNSON, ORESTES AUGUSTUS. - American Catholic philosopher and apologist, b. at Stockbridge, 9 Sept. 1803, d. at Detroit, 17 Apr. 1876. Formerly a Protestant pastor, he converted to the Catholic faith in 1844.
As early as 1838 he founded The Boston Quarterly Review (which merged toward the end of 1842 with the U. S. Democratic Review, and reappeared independently in Jan. 1844 under the title Brownson's Quarterly Review), in which a great many of his literary, philosophical, and political studies and articles appeared. Besides the writings preceding 1844, among which noteworthy, for its almost Catholic inspiration, was The Mediatorial Life of
Jesus (Boston 1842), he published The Spirit Rapper (ibid. 1854), The Convert (New York 1857), The American Republic (ibid. 1865). He also contributed actively to various Catholic journals. His fervent apologetic activity on behalf of Catholicism, besides receiving the approval and praise of the bishops of the United States, was accorded the august recognition of Pius IX in a letter addressed to him in 1854. In philosophy B. belongs to the current known as “transcendentalism” and, without claiming to construct a philosophical system of his own, through a personal elaboration not lacking points of analogy with Gioberti’s thought, he arrived at the fundamental positions of Christian thought.