Orestes Brownson
A New England writer who passed through several creeds before entering the Catholic Church in 1844.
The record
- Born
- September 16, 1803, Stockbridge, Vermont
- Received
- into the Catholic Church, October 20, 1844, Boston
- By
- Bishop Benedict Joseph Fenwick
- Became
- editor of Brownson's Quarterly Review
- Died
- April 17, 1876, Detroit
Orestes Brownson was a New England writer and preacher who passed in turn through Presbyterianism, Universalism, and Unitarianism, and moved in the circle of the Transcendentalists, before entering the Catholic Church. He told the story in The Convert; or, Leaves from My Experience, published in 1857. He describes the point at which he concluded he could go nowhere but Rome.
I had made up my mind that the Church was my last plank of safety, that it was communion with the Church or death. I must be a Catholic, and yet could not and would not be one blindly. I had gone it blind once, and had lost all, and would not do so again.Orestes Brownson, The Convert; or, Leaves from My Experience (1857)
He went to the Bishop of Boston, Benedict Joseph Fenwick, to ask for instruction.
avowed my wish to become a Catholic, and begged him to be so kind as to introduce me to some one who would take the trouble to instruct me, and prepare me for reception, if found worthy, into the communion of the Church.Orestes Brownson, The Convert (1857)
Brownson was received into the Catholic Church at Boston on 20 October 1844. He spent the next thirty years as an editor and controversialist, chiefly in Brownson’s Quarterly Review. He was born in Stockbridge, Vermont, in 1803 and died at Detroit in 1876.