Orestes A. Brownson

This incisive new book offers a critical analysis of the political thought of the nineteenth-century American philosopher, journalist, and social critic Orestes Brownson. Gregory S. Butler examines Brownson's work by drawing on the theoretical perspective of the political philosopher Eric Voegelin. According to Voegelin, every civilization seeks to interpret itself through the creation and utilization of symbols and myths, or what he defines as the representation of a "transcendent order". Butler, through Brownson's works, identifies the symbols that aid both in expressing the meaning of the American experiment and in illustrating the current debate about the failures of the human experience in a secular society. Butler became interested in Brownson through a series of studies in ethics and morality in American politics. He found his own views compatible with those of Brownson, who not only disputed the prevalent theory that morality has no place in politics but argued that morality is an integral part of the political process. Extensively utilizing Brownson's lesser-known writings, Butler examines, in chronological order, the phases of Brownson's personal and spiritual development, thereby assessing the importance and contemporary relevance of his thought. He gives special attention to Brownson's belief that the moral interpretation assigned to American political symbols - Liberty, Equality, the Rights of Man - are derived from the American understanding of the nature and destiny of the human soul. Brownson eventually came to believe that humankind can only progress by finding inspiration in the divine and that the American political order must be based in the Christian, especially theRoman Catholic, moral tradition. Butler's work offers at once the most complete picture of Orestes Brownson's political thought along with a distinctive view of American history and politics from a Voegelinian perspective.

As American Catholics and other Americans move into the twenty-first century it might be helpful to re-assess American Catholic religious and social thought during the past two centuries. Have American Catholics produced any creative theological responses to the issues and forces that confronted them over the past two centuries? Have they added anything worthwhile to the classical European formulations? Have they developed some of their own traditions that need critiques in our own day? In his introduction to this collection of original writings, Patrick Carey argues that American Catholics, from John Carroll to John Courtney Murray, have exhibited a fresh, vigorous ability to engage the great religious and social questions of their time in creative continuity with their inherited tradition and sometimes in capitulation to the culture in which they lived. Whether they were responding to the Enlightenment or to the Romantic mood, to the slavery and capitalism, to Modernism, to Neo-Scholasticism, or to twentieth-century problems of social justice, Catholic Americans have produced a stimulating theological commentary that is worth re-examining. This book has been designed to make that tradition on American Catholic thought more accessible. Included are the writings of leading figures: John England, Orestes Brownson, Isaac Hecker, Martin John Spalding, John Ireland, John Hughes, Dorothy Day, Virgil Michel, and others. Introduced by a major interpretive essay that traces the development of Catholic religious and social thinking in American, this work provides an outstanding resource to students of American Catholicism and American history.

Selecting journals that speak for a very large number of topics addressed by the conservative press, this volume profiles selected conservative journals published since 1787. The conservative press has scarcely spoken with a single voice, whether the topics treated or even the time inhabited are the same or different. Yet, these journals testify to the persistent vigor and importance of conservatism. Together they provide a focused survey of the history of American conservative thought from the late 18th Century to the late 19th Century.