E
Elaine_s_Cross
Guest
My take on the article is that Mr Brownson was saying the problem with the USA was Protestants acting like Protestants and Catholics not acting like Catholics. The heresy of Americanism is involved in this article. Evidently it still exists as IMO our adventurism in Iraq and the general mood of the country show or at least showed before many began to tire of the Iraq adventure.
INTRODUCTION TO THE LAST SERIES.
Brownson’s Quarterly Review, January, 1873.
WHEN, at the conclusion of the volume for 1864, I sus-pended the publication of Brownson’s Quarterly Review, my Catholic loyalty was widely distrusted; and in many Catholic, as well as non-Catholic circles, I was regarded as on the point of abandoning the church and returning to some form of Protestantism or infidelity. The distrust was unmerited, and though I have written enough during the last six or seven years in the Catholic World and the New York Tablet to dissi-pate it, and to prove the sincerity of my Catholic faith, and devotion to the Holy See; yet as my articles in those period-icals have been published without my name, very few, except those who never distrusted me, know that they are mine. Up to this time, hardly a Catholic organ in the country has even attempted any vindication of my Catholic reputation; and for the public at large the cloud that hung over me in 1864 hangs, I apprehend, over me still, so far as I am not forgotten, or thought of as already dead and buried.
I am not willing that my name should go down to poster-ity with the slightest suspicion resting on it of disloyalty to the church; not, indeed, that I care mnch for it on my own personal account, but for the sake of the Catholic cause, which I hold dearer than life, and which I would not have suffer the least detriment through me or my ill reputation; and also for the sake of my surviving children, to whom I can leave no inheritance, but that of an untarnished name. It was al-most the last wish expressed to me by my late wife, whose judgment I never found at fault, that I should revive my Re-view, if only for a single year, and prove to the world that my faith has never wavered; that I am still an humble but de-voted son of the church; and that I am, as I always pro-fessed to be, an uncompromising Catholic and a thorough-go-ing papist. These considerations have weighed with me; and, combined with the conviction, well or ill founded, that I have a few more words to say, not inappropriate to the times, -and which I can say only in a periodical under my own con-trol; and the urgent request of a large number of clerical friends, have finally, after much hesitation and many misgiv-ings, induced me to revive the Review, and to appear once more before the public in my own name and character as a Catholic reviewer.
I have no palinode to sing; I enter on no explanations of the causes of the opposition I encountered from some of my own brethren: such explanations would be mistimed and mis-placed, and could edify nobody. I willingly admit that I made many mistakes; but I regard as the greatest of all the mistakes into which I fell during the last three or four years that I published my Review, that of holding back the stronger points of the Catholic faith, on which I had previously in-sisted; of laboring to present Catholicity in a form as little repulsive to my non-Catholic countrymen as possible; and of insisting on only the minimum of Catholicity, or what had been expressly defined by the Holy See or a general council.
I am not likely to fall into that mistake again. My exper-iment was not very successful; and, besides, the syllabus and the decrees of the eouncil of the Vatican, published since, would protect me from it, if nothing else would. I have no ambition to be regarded as a liberal Catholic. A liberal Catholic I am not, never was, save in appearance for a brief moment, and never can be. I have no element of liberal Catholicity in my nature or in my convictions, and the times, if I read them aright, demand Catholicity in its strength, not in its weakness; in its supernatural authority and power, not as reduced to pure rationalism or mere human sentimentality.
What is most needed in these times-perhaps in all times–is the truth that condemns, point-blank, the spirit of the age, and gives no quarter to its dominant errors: and nothing can be more fatal than to seek to effect a compromise with them, or to form an alliance with what is called liberalism,-a po-lite name for sedition, rebellion, and revolutionism.
For the complete article go to:
orestesbrownson.com/index.php?id=127
INTRODUCTION TO THE LAST SERIES.
Brownson’s Quarterly Review, January, 1873.
WHEN, at the conclusion of the volume for 1864, I sus-pended the publication of Brownson’s Quarterly Review, my Catholic loyalty was widely distrusted; and in many Catholic, as well as non-Catholic circles, I was regarded as on the point of abandoning the church and returning to some form of Protestantism or infidelity. The distrust was unmerited, and though I have written enough during the last six or seven years in the Catholic World and the New York Tablet to dissi-pate it, and to prove the sincerity of my Catholic faith, and devotion to the Holy See; yet as my articles in those period-icals have been published without my name, very few, except those who never distrusted me, know that they are mine. Up to this time, hardly a Catholic organ in the country has even attempted any vindication of my Catholic reputation; and for the public at large the cloud that hung over me in 1864 hangs, I apprehend, over me still, so far as I am not forgotten, or thought of as already dead and buried.
I am not willing that my name should go down to poster-ity with the slightest suspicion resting on it of disloyalty to the church; not, indeed, that I care mnch for it on my own personal account, but for the sake of the Catholic cause, which I hold dearer than life, and which I would not have suffer the least detriment through me or my ill reputation; and also for the sake of my surviving children, to whom I can leave no inheritance, but that of an untarnished name. It was al-most the last wish expressed to me by my late wife, whose judgment I never found at fault, that I should revive my Re-view, if only for a single year, and prove to the world that my faith has never wavered; that I am still an humble but de-voted son of the church; and that I am, as I always pro-fessed to be, an uncompromising Catholic and a thorough-go-ing papist. These considerations have weighed with me; and, combined with the conviction, well or ill founded, that I have a few more words to say, not inappropriate to the times, -and which I can say only in a periodical under my own con-trol; and the urgent request of a large number of clerical friends, have finally, after much hesitation and many misgiv-ings, induced me to revive the Review, and to appear once more before the public in my own name and character as a Catholic reviewer.
I have no palinode to sing; I enter on no explanations of the causes of the opposition I encountered from some of my own brethren: such explanations would be mistimed and mis-placed, and could edify nobody. I willingly admit that I made many mistakes; but I regard as the greatest of all the mistakes into which I fell during the last three or four years that I published my Review, that of holding back the stronger points of the Catholic faith, on which I had previously in-sisted; of laboring to present Catholicity in a form as little repulsive to my non-Catholic countrymen as possible; and of insisting on only the minimum of Catholicity, or what had been expressly defined by the Holy See or a general council.
I am not likely to fall into that mistake again. My exper-iment was not very successful; and, besides, the syllabus and the decrees of the eouncil of the Vatican, published since, would protect me from it, if nothing else would. I have no ambition to be regarded as a liberal Catholic. A liberal Catholic I am not, never was, save in appearance for a brief moment, and never can be. I have no element of liberal Catholicity in my nature or in my convictions, and the times, if I read them aright, demand Catholicity in its strength, not in its weakness; in its supernatural authority and power, not as reduced to pure rationalism or mere human sentimentality.
What is most needed in these times-perhaps in all times–is the truth that condemns, point-blank, the spirit of the age, and gives no quarter to its dominant errors: and nothing can be more fatal than to seek to effect a compromise with them, or to form an alliance with what is called liberalism,-a po-lite name for sedition, rebellion, and revolutionism.
For the complete article go to:
orestesbrownson.com/index.php?id=127