He never went to Rome, but Rome certainly heard of him. Orestes Augustus Brownson weathered several marathon conversions in his well-traveled life, resting in Catholicism. From a young age, the Stockbridge, Vt., native battled through religious ideas, testing them at every turn. A firm believer that “the laboring classes” were the true stewards of America’s soul, Brownson deployed European philosophy to reshape options for faith. But, unlike his contemporaries Horace Bushnell and Harriet Beecher Stowe, Brownson (1803-1876) skipped over glossy travel guides and vignettes of Vatican art. Rather, as editor of the Boston Quarterly Review, Brownson used his lay pulpit Read more