Why Henry Steele Commager Erased Orestes Brownson

 

A free society cherishes nonconformity. It knows that from the non-conformist, from the eccentric, have come many of the great ideas of freedom. Free society must fertilize the soil in which non-conformity and dissent and individualism can grow. permalink -Henry Steele Commager

Unless of course. . .

There is a peculiar fascination about this man who was a friend to Emerson and Thoreau, Ripley and Parker, and who broke with them all. It was his inconsistency which affronted his fellow reformers. He began as a Presbyterian, shifted to Universalism, fell from grace as an Owenite (compulsory public education), recovered respectability as a Unitarian, and plunged from there into the Catholic Church."  

Henry Steele Commager's Review of Arthur Schlesinger's biography Orestes Brownson: A Pilgrim's Progress (emphasis my own)

The granddaddy of progressive academic historians and biographer of Theodore Parker, Henry Steele Commager, paid his student's work on Orestes Browson very short shrift. Professor Commager commanded the high ground of American liberalism from his perch at Columbia University and consigned Arthur M. Schlesinger's subject and point of view to a place on the flat-lands. One year out of Harvard, young Schlesinger attempted to reconcile Brownson to the very mind-set and bigotries from which he departed -now called Progressivism. In order to do so, Schlesinger played down the "plunge" to the Catholic Church which Schlesinger knew to be the haven in the mind of main-line Protestant progressives who"associated Catholicism with censers and ornate masses and the scarlet whore of Rome or with drunken Irishmen beating their wives and selling their votes" (Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., in his A Pilgrim's Progress: Orestes A. Brownson)

Henry Steele Commager damned Schlesinger's subject and the theme with very faint praise - Brownson 'commands consideration.' In fact, Commager's 1939 New York Times review title A Sturdy, but Erratic Reformer serves as a caveat to the hopeful young author, as it paradoxes the subject and theme into oblivion, only equaled by the concluding payoff:

Mr. Schlesinger's study of Brownson is a masterly one. It has technical brilliance-a sure control of materials, an affective handling of background, a skillful use of colors an a certain bravura of execution. It has, in addition, sincerity and integrity, sympathetic understanding, and an astonishing maturity. It recreates for us Brownson as he seemed to his contemporaries and explains him as he appears to us. It hangs equally well in the transcendental or the Catholic gallery, reveals the influence of the romantic and of the modernistic schools alike. It not only rescues from undeserved oblivion a striking and authentic figure in our history, but announces a new and distinguished talent in the field of historical portraiture.

Thanks for playing, Kid! You got plenty of heart!  Henry Steel Commager's life work as thinker, teacher, writer and activist recognized no place at the table for an Orestes Brownson, nor anyone attempting to challenge the progressive evangelism rooted  in the19th Century religious  ultraism,*purged of scripture and dogma with Transcendentalism, activated through politics as reform and fully evolved as liberal progressivism. The New Deal was not enough -multicultral one-world contrarian Americanism free of most authority, or certainty is the goal.  All other considerations receive the contempt of this court of opinion.

Commanding consideration holds the same thimbleful of valorization as an eight grade basketball coach who tells the players and coach of a team he had just humiliated on the hard-wood that "Losers have potential."

Henry Steel Commager wrote sweepingly to justify the roots of American intellectual doctrine to practical political power.  American history in the hands of able and compelling young writers directed by like-minded academics could make education, religion sanitized of scripture and authority, politics and economics create Brook Farm Nation.  He did just that.

Schlesinger never seemed to buy in - his Vital Center, though it made the case for the New Deal, excoriated the Brook Farmers who believed that communism and Americanism must be merged.  Schlesinger warned about the dangers of multiculturalism in the 1980's - the American Melting Pot is now considered a racist doctrine.

I believe that Orestes Brownson understood the American soul better than William James, Horace Mann, John Dewey, William Lloyd Garrison, Theodore Parker and Jane Addams.  He understood that the American drive for liberty must always be tempered by the obligations of community. We can't always get what we want, nor should we. The sturdy Brownson was anything but erratic - he understood "the drive for freedom and the need for communion"  as Brownson biographer Patrick Carey presents in his 2006 epic Orestes Brownson: American Religious Weathervane. 

America is where it now finds itself thanks to intellectual high ground dominated by Henry Steele Commager for Thoreau, Parker, Garrison, James,, Dubois, Baldwin, and Dewey.  The Progressive American hegemony is being played out on the Fiscal Cliff of 2012.  

*  Most of these flights of religious ultraism were concentrated along a "psychic highway" that stretched from the backcountry of New England, across the undulating plains of western New York -- "The Burned-over District" -- into Ohio. Along this broad belt of land, observed Whitney Cross, the historian of enthusiastic religion in this area, there "congregated a people extraordinarily given to unusual beliefs, peculiarly devoted to crusades aimed at the perfections of mankind and the attainment of millennial happiness." ³ The source of religious ultraism -- evangelical revivalism -- was deeply embedded in the life of the times. Throughout this area small groups of "come outers," "New Lights," "Mercy Dancers," and other anti-Calvinist radicals did battle with the conservative Congregationalists and Presbyterians, while the constant agitation of such theological questions as free will, human ability, perfectionism, and millennialism, produced a climate in which fanaticism thrived. ⁴ 

The 

Orestes Brownson Against America's Convenient Faith and Lock-Step Secularism

Nowhere in the canon of American literature ( essay genre) will one find the brilliant and witty writings of Orestes Brownson.

In fact, Orestes Brownson has been made a non-person, via the Orwellian gradus of literary criticism - villify, ignore, erase. To place an essay by Browson within the period of American Romanticism/19th Century Transcendentalism/Abolitionist brackets, would seem as odd and cranky as requesting the viewing film (watching movies) as a substitute for reading, or teaching comic (graphic novels) book versions of the Last of the Mohicans, Blithedale Romance, or Moby Dick.

Brownson is not 'considered' a considered selection for the American canon of literature because Brownson became a Roman Catholic. Three of Brownson's colleagues and erstwhile friends have been canonized -Hawthorne, Emerson and Thoreau, according to the Modern Language Association rankings of the top twenty-five authors based upon scholarly research output. Unlike the Transcendentalists, Brownson was an original thinker who challenged not only the assumptions of the group, but his own assumptions.

Brownson was an early advocate of compulsory universal state-controlled early childhood education ( Owen-Wright Theory) and dismissed the notion as evil as well as unsound. You see, unlike the Blithedale gang of the Brook Farm movement -the petri dish of American intellectualism -Brownson believed in sin. Can't have that.  If all men are by nature pure and wonderful, sin must only be some judgmental anomaly associated with slavery of every stripe. Thought rooted to core belief has no place on the commune -

Then in 1844 (the year of Emerson's second "Nature" essay) Brownson and his family converted to Catholicism. The very negative response of the Transcendentalists to his conversion is best expressed in Theodore Parker's sermon that ascribed to Brownson an "unbalanced mind, intellectual always, but spiritual never" (J.Weiss, II, 28). After that, the Transcendentalists ignored him.

In 1844, Brownson did the unimaginable and converted to the Church of Rome.  The reaction of his former intellectual companions is rather harsh - they continue to be just that* Brownson sought, like Milton had done so, to justify God's ways to man and not the other way around.  Transcendentalism sprang from the Universalist Unitarian doctrine of Man's inner-light as a pan-theist approach to salvation that requires only that man be man. It's all good! For Brownson and that Jewish kid Gershwin - 'T ain't  necessarily so.

Browson** was engaged in living religion and not merely attending to it. Brownson's life was a constant immersion, not a dabbling, in causes to improve mankind's lot.  Mankind's lot is covered with broken beer bottles, garbage, sharp rusty objects - mankind sins and that is mankind's lot.  The convenient truths of American intellectual tradition deny sin and turn to European models of thought to justify man to himself - e.g. American realism and especially naturalism in fiction ( Howells, James, Crane, Dreiser, Sinclair, Wright) were rooted in Hugo, Stendhal,  Balzac, and ultimately Emile Zola.  Instead of considering personal responsibility for human misery, American intellectualism prefers to hold a mirror above a corpse while a pathologist cuts and digs and arrives at the assumption that preceded the cool science as the conclusive answer - Society, class, race, gender-envy did it!

Brownson disagrees.  American scholars can get their heads around human sin; therefore, ignore it. Brownson flies in the face of Thoreau who went deep into the woods in order to live life 'deliberately,' but had his Mom truck out to his cabin with baskets full of brownies, cookies and preserved treats. Brownson denied the democracy that is the gilt paint and mascara of Henry James' Yanks abroad. Brownson was vilified by William Lloyd Garrison as a copperhead Papist, but gave two sons on Lincoln's altar of sacrifice to the Abolitionist cause. These icons of  American thought and literature taught us to parse as a people and embrace Dewey, the ACLU, Planned Parenthood and public everything.

Orestes Brownson was a Protestant (Congregationalist, Presbyterian, Unitarian)  who never allowed the sun to set on his own sins against God and in order to become as good a protestant, he was required to become a Catholic.  American writers can born Catholic, but they must be 'fallen away' Catholics, like Fitzgerald, Dreiser,  Wolfe, O'Neill, O'Hara, Ferlinghetti, Farrell, or silent Catholics like Flannery O'Connor.  Orestes Brownson will remain out of the American intellectual mainstream and the canon of American literature.

Orestes Brownson should have a place in American Catholic education - a very prominent place.

* A sermon delivered by the Rev.R. Paul Mueller to the Unitarian Society of New Brunswick on September 14, 1997 was completely free of any reference to Orestes Brownson's conversion to Roman Catholicism. Interestingly, Rev. Mueller speaks of the 'religious person, rather the spiritual persons' frustrations and ultimate cynicism when confronted with the social injustices and draws in another 'frustrating' Catholic - Mother Theresa.  No mention of sin. Always 'sombody else's troubles' - American intellectualism in sum.

His childhood was passed on a small farm with plain country people, honest and upright Congregationalists, who treated him with kindness and affection, taught him the Lord's Prayer, the Apostles' Creed, and the Assembly's Catechism; to be honest and industrious, truthful in all circumstances, and never to let the sun go down on his wrath. With no young companions, his fondness for reading grew rapidly, though he had access to few books, and those of a grave or religious nature. At the age of nineteen he had a fair knowledge of grammar and arithmetic and could translate Virgil's poetry. In October, 1822, he joined the Presbyterian Church, dreamed of becoming a missionary, but very soon felt repelled by Presbyterian discipline, and still more by the doctrines of unconditional election and reprobation, and that God foreordains the wicked to sinnecessarily, that He may damn them justly. Rather than sacrifice his belief in justice and humanity on the altar of a religion confessedly of humanorigin and fallible in its teachings, Brownson rejected Calvinism for so-called liberal Christianity, and early in 1824, at the age of twenty, avowed himself a Universalist. In June, 1826, he was ordained, and from that time until near the end of 1829, he preached and wrote as a Universalistminister, calling himself a Christian; but at last denying all Divine revelation, the Divinity of Christ, and a future judgment, he abandoned the ministry and became associated with Robert Dale Owen and Fanny Wright in their war on marriage, property, and religion, carried on in the "Free Enquirer" of New York, of which Brownson, then at Auburn, became corresponding editor. At the same time he established a journal in westernNew York in the interest of the Workingmen's Party, which they wished to use for securing the adoption of their system of education. But, besides this motive, Brownson's sympathy was always with the labouring class, and he entered with ardour on the work of elevating labour, making it respected and as well rewarded in its manual or servile, as in its mercantile or liberal, phases, and the end he aimed at was moral and social amelioration and equality, rather than political. The introduction of large industries carried on by means of vast outlays of capital or credit had reduced operatives to the condition of virtual slavery; but Brownson soon became satisfied that the remedy was not to be secured by arraying labour against capital by a political organization, but by inducing all classes to co-operate in the efforts to procure the improvement of the workingman's condition. He found, too, that he could not advance a single step in this direction without religion. An unbeliever in Christianity, he embraced the religion of Humanity, severed his connexion with the Workingmen's Party and with "The Free Enquirer", and on the first Sunday in February, 1831, began preaching in Ithaca, New York, as an independent minister. As a Universalist, he had edited their organ, "The Gospel Advocate"; he now edited and published his own organ, "The Philanthropist".
Finding, from Dr. W.E. Channing's printed sermons, that Unitarians believed no more of Christianity than he did, he became associated with thatdenomination, and so remained for the next twelve years. In 1832 he was settled as pastor of the Unitarian Church at Walpole, New Hampshire; in 1834 he was installed pastor of the First Congregational Church at Canton, Massachusetts; and in 1836 he organized in Boston "The Society for Christian Union and Progress", to which he preached in the Old Masonic Temple, in Tremont Street. After conducting various periodicals, and contributing to others, the most important of which was "The Christian Examiner", he started a publication of his own called "The Boston Quarterly Review", the first number of which was dated January, 1838. Most of the articles of this review were written by him; but some were contributed by A. H. Everett, George Bancroft, George Ripley, A. Bronson Alcott, Sarah Margaret Fuller, Anne Charlotte Lynch, and other friends. Besides his articles on literary and philosophical subjects, his political essays in this review attracted attention throughout the country and brought him into close relations with the leaders of the Democratic Party. Although a steadfast Democrat, he disliked the name Democrat, and denounced pure democracy, called popular sovereignty, or the rule of the will of the majority, maintaining that government by the will, whether that of one man or that of many, was mere arbitrary government, and therefore tyranny, despotism, absolutism. Constitutions, if not too easily alterable, he thought a wholesome bridle on popular caprice, and he objected to legislation for the especial benefit of any individual or class; privileges, i.e. privatelaws; exemption of stockholders in corporations from liability for debts of their corporation; tariffs to enrich the moneyed class at the expense of mechanics, agriculturists, and members of the liberal professions. He demanded equality of rights, not that men should be all equal, but that all should be on the same footing, and no man should make himself taller by standing on another's shoulders.
In his "Review" for July, 1840, he carried the democratic principles to their extreme logical conclusions, and urged the abolition of Christianity; meaning, of course, the only Christianity he was acquainted with, if, indeed, it be Christianity; denounced the penal code, as bearing with peculiar severity on the poor, and the expense to the poor in civil cases; and, accepting the doctrine of Locke, Jefferson, Mirabeau, Portalis,Kent, and Blackstone, that the right to devise or bequeath property is based on statute, not on natural, law, he objected to the testamentary and hereditary descent of property; and, what gave more offence than all the rest, he condemned the modern industrial system, especially the system of labour at wages. In all this he only carried out the doctrine of European Socialists and the Saint-Simonians. Democrats were horrified by the article; Whigs paraded it as what Democrats were aiming at; and Van Buren, who was a candidate for a second term as President, blamed it as the main cause of his defeat. The manner in which he was assailed aroused Brownson's indignation, and he defended his essay with vigour in the following number of his "Review", and silenced the clamours against him, more than regaining the ground he had lost, so that he never commanded more attention, or had a more promising career open before him, than when, in 1844, he turned his back on honours and popularity to become a Catholic. At the end of 1842 the "Boston Quarterly Review" was merged in the "U.S. Democratic Review", of New York, a monthly publication, to each number of which Brownson contributed, and in which he set forth the principles of "Synthetic Philosophy" and a series of essays on the "Origin and Constitution of Government", which more than twenty years later he rewrote and published with the title of "The American Republic". The doctrine of these essays provoked such repeated complaints from the editor of the "Democratic Review", that Brownson severed his connexion with that monthly and resumed the publication of his own review, changing the title from "Boston" to "Brownson's Quarterly Review". The first number was issued in January, 1844, and the last in October, 1875. From January, 1865, to October, 1872, he suspended its publication.

Baseball and Orestes Brownson Meet Tacitus and Darwin - Sox in 1st Place Again!

I was reading the Annals of Tacitus last night, as I could not get the Sox Game on Cable. I read until Clare came home and checked the web - Sox Win!  11-4 and back in 1st Place AL Central!


Had I not known that the Sox played the Minnesota Twins at home and relied solely upon my beliefe that that they, had, in fact played, the Chicago Tribune account would not have satisfied with conclusive evidence that that had been the case. The article is joyfully exuberant, but lacks a small but essential verity -Who Played????


Nowhere in the report by Chicago Tribune's Mark Gonzales are to be fund any veriable evidnce that Chicago White Sox had played the Minnesota Twins at Sox Park ( AKA The Cell to Sheep) on the evening of July 24, 2012. -By Mark Gonzales, Chicago Tribune reporter

11:51 p.m. CDT, July 24, 2012

Absent is any idenification whatsoever to the professional baseball team from Minnesota:  the reader will not find the words Twins, Minnesota.  Other teams are mentioned: Detroit, Yankees, and Texas Rangers.  There is a hat-tip to Josh Willingham who plays for the Twins, but this was something that I believed prior to game itself, but could not verify upon reading the Tribune account of the Dunn,/Konerko/Ventura Victory Troika:

Konerko, who is 7-for-8 over his last two games and batting .536 with two doubles, two homers and six RBIs in his last eight games, gave plenty of credit to Dunn.

As I said above, I read Tacitus while game was played.  Tacitus wrote Roman history and the Annals
concentrate the reader upon the Empire -dominated by the Julio Claudian family.  Augustus (Octavian) was the first emperor. While he ruled Jesus was born. Tacitus talks about the Jewish carpenter's kid  when he gets into telling about the reign of Tiberius ( Tiberius Nero).  When old Augustus was about to die, all of Rome fretted that this would signal the start of a bloody fight for power.


August was married to a horrific old bitch who was a combination of revolutionary Bernardin Dohrn welded to hack loud-mouth Jan Schakowsky.  Livia was not above killing her step-children and grandkids to advance her agenda.  Livia and Tiberius( her son by a previous marriage) plotted to bump off the next in in line -Agrippa.


Give this long passage a read.

Thus thus the State had been revolutionised, and there was not a vestige left of the old sound morality. Stript of equality, all looked up to the commands of a sovereign without the least apprehension for the present, while Augustus in the vigour of life, could maintain his own position, that of his house, and the general tranquillity. When in advanced old age, he was worn out by a sickly frame, and the end was near and new prospects opened, a few spoke in vain of the blessings of freedom, but most people dreaded and some longed for war. The popular gossip of the large majority fastened itself variously on their future masters. "Agrippa was savage, and had been exasperated by insult, and neither from age nor experience in affairs was equal to so great a burden. Tiberius Nero was of mature years, and had established his fame in war, but he had the old arrogance inbred in the Claudian family, and many symptoms of a cruel temper, though they were repressed, now and then broke out. He had also from earliest infancy been reared in an imperial house; consulships and triumphs had been heaped on him in his younger days; even in the years which, on the pretext of seclusion he spent in exile at Rhodes, he had had no thoughts but of wrath, hypocrisy, and secret sensuality. There was his mother too with a woman caprice. They must, it seemed, be subject to a female and to two striplings besides, who for a while would burden, and some day rend asunder the State."

While these and like topics were discussed, the infirmities of Augustus increased, and some suspected guilt on his wife's part. For a rumour had gone abroad that a few months before he had sailed to Planasia on a visit to Agrippa, with the knowledge of some chosen friends, and with one companion, Fabius Maximus; that many tears were shed on both sides, with expressions of affection, and that thus there was a hope of the young man being restored to the home of his grandfather. This, it was said, Maximus had divulged to his wife Marcia, she again to Livia. All was known to Caesar, and when Maximus soon afterwards died, by a death some thought to be self-inflicted, there were heard at his funeral wailings from Marcia, in which she reproached herself for having been the cause of her husband's destruction. Whatever the fact was, Tiberius as he was just entering Illyria was summoned home by an urgent letter from his mother, and it has not been thoroughly ascertained whether at the city of Nola he found Augustus still breathing or quite lifeless. For Livia had surrounded the house and its approaches with a strict watch, and favourable bulletins were published from time to time, till, provision having been made for the demands of the crisis, one and the same report told men that Augustus was dead and that Tiberius Nero was master of the State.

The first crime of the new reign was the murder of Postumus Agrippa. Though he was surprised and unarmed, a centurion of the firmest resolution despatched him with difficulty. Tiberius gave no explanation of the matter to the Senate; he pretended that there were directions from his father ordering the tribune in charge of the prisoner not to delay the slaughter of Agrippa, whenever he should himself have breathed his last. Beyond a doubt, Augustus had often complained of the young man's character, and had thus succeeded in obtaining the sanction of a decree of the Senate for his banishment. But he never was hard-hearted enough to destroy any of his kinsfolk, nor was it credible that death was to be the sentence of the grandson in order that the stepson might feel secure. It was more probable that Tiberius and Livia, the one from fear, the other from a stepmother's enmity, hurried on the destruction of a youth whom they suspected and hated. When the centurion reported, according to military custom, that he had executed the command, Tiberius replied that he had not given the command, and that the act must be justified to the Senate.

As soon as Sallustius Crispus who shared the secret (he had, in fact, sent the written order to the tribune) knew this, fearing that the charge would be shifted on himself, and that his peril would be the same whether he uttered fiction or truth, he advised Livia not to divulge the secrets of her house or the counsels of friends, or any services performed by the soldiers, nor to let Tiberius weaken the strength of imperial power by referring everything to the Senate, for "the condition," he said, "of holding empire is that an account cannot be balanced unless it be rendered to one person."
Meanwhile at Rome people plunged into slavery- consuls, senators, knights. The higher a man's rank, the more eager his hypocrisy, and his looks the more carefully studied, so as neither to betray joy at the decease of one emperor nor sorrow at the rise of another, while he mingled delight and lamentations with his flattery. Sextus Pompeius and Sextus Apuleius, the consuls, were the first to swear allegiance to Tiberius Caesar, and in their presence the oath was taken by Seius Strabo and Caius Turranius, respectively the commander of the praetorian cohorts and the superintendent of the corn supplies. Then the Senate, the soldiers and the people did the same. For Tiberius would inaugurate everything with the consuls, as though the ancient constitution remained, and he hesitated about being emperor. Even the proclamation by which he summoned the senators to their chamber, he issued merely with the title of Tribune, which he had received under Augustus. The wording of the proclamation was brief, and in a very modest tone. "He would," it said, "provide for the honours due to his father, and not leave the lifeless body, and this was the only public duty he now claimed."

As soon, however, as Augustus was dead, he had given the watchword to the praetorian cohorts, as commander-in-chief. He had the guard under arms, with all the other adjuncts of a court; soldiers attended him to the forum; soldiers went with him to the Senate House. He sent letters to the different armies, as though supreme power was now his, and showed hesitation only when he spoke in the Senate. His chief motive was fear that Germanicus, who had at his disposal so many legions, such vast auxiliary forces of the allies, and such wonderful popularity, might prefer the possession to the expectation of empire. He looked also at public opinion, wishing to have the credit of having been called and elected by the State rather than of having crept into power through the intrigues of a wife and a dotard's adoption. It was subsequently understood that he assumed a wavering attitude, to test likewise the temper of the nobles. For he would twist a word or a look into a crime and treasure it up in his memory.
On the first day of the Senate he allowed nothing to be discussed but the funeral of Augustus, whose will, which was brought in by the Vestal Virgins, named as his heirs Tiberius and Livia. 

Tacitus, like your humble scribbler here, is limited by what he knows and yearns for what is knowable; when that is denied, like Mark Gonzales' account of the 11-4 victory over the Twins, who remain unmentioned, we must hold onto faith - Josh Willingham is on the Twins and my head is still attached to my neck.


History, Science and  Baseball  can be reduced to faith -belief a priori truths ( I knew Josh was a Minnesota Twin) and ontologogical issues. Consider this -

Does anyone really doubt that he has a head? Notice that the mere possibility of error is not enough to defeat this belief. Just because I could be a brain in a vat deceived by a mad scientist doesn’t give me any reason to think that I am. Until you give me some compelling proof that I do not have a body, I am perfectly rational to believe in a properly basic way that I have a head.
Similarly, the theist would need some compelling reason to think that God is deceiving him in order to abandon the belief that he has a head. Brian, turn the tables on the sceptic by asking him to give you a proof that theism gives you a defeater of your properly basic beliefs. About all he can say is, “God could be deceiving you.” But that provides no reason to think that He is. We could be deceived by a mad scientist; but that possibility is not sufficient to defeat our properly basic beliefs. At most, it shows that one cannot prove inferentially that one’s foundational beliefs are true. That’s right; that’s the lesson of Descartes. But that doesn’t imply that our properly basic beliefs are therefore irrational or unwarranted

Perhaps but Darwin said Descartes was wrong. Darwin is the Progressive pivot point and ontological prime mover.  If  you are au courante, have the New York Times delivered to your door daily, watch only PBS, and are so much smarter than everyone else ( Rubes, Tea-People, Catholics, devout Jews, Evangelicals, and working stiffs), Darwin trumps God.  In the 19th century, an American former-Transcendentalist and Catholic convert, Orestes Brownson, argued against Hegalian-Darwinian theology.  In 1873, Brownson wrote  

Say what you will, the ape is not a man; nor, as far as our observations or investigations can go, is the ape, the gorilla, or any other variety of the monkey tribe, the animal that approaches nearest to man.  The rat, the beaver, the horse, the pig, the raven, the elephant surpass the monkey in intelligence, if it be intelligence, and not simply instinct; and the dog is certainly far ahead of the monkey in moral qualities, in affection for his master and fidelity to him, and so is the horse when kindly treated.  But let this pass.  There is that, call it what you will, in man, which is not in the ape.  Man is two-footed and two-handed; the ape is four-handed, or, if you choose to call the extremity of his limbs feet, four-footed.  In fact, he has neither a human hand nor a human foot, and, anatomically considered, differs hardly less from man than does the dog or the horse.  I have never been able to discover any of the simian tribe a single human quality.  As to physical structure, there is some resemblance.  Zoologists tell us traces of the same original type may be found running through the whole animal world; and, therefore, the near approach of the ape to the human form counts for nothing in this argument.  But here is the point we make; namely, the differentia of man, not being in the ape, cannot be obtained from the ape by development.

This sufficiently refutes Darwin’s whole theory.  He does not prove the origin of a new species either by natural or artificial selection; and, not having done that, he adduces nothing that does or can warrant the induction, that the human species is developed from the quadrumanic or any other species. . . .Two-thirds of his work on the “Descent of Man” is taken up with what he calls Sexual Selection.  . . .
Mr. Darwin, though his theory is not original with him, and we were familiar with it even in our youth, overlooks the fact that it denies the doctrine of the creation and immutability of species, as taught in Genesis, where we read that God said: “Let the earth bring forth the green herb, and such as may seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after its kind, which may have seed in itself upon the earth.  And it was done.”  “And God created the great whales and every living and moving creature which the waters brought forth, according to their kinds, and every winged fowl according to its kind.”  “And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds, and cattle, and everything thing that creepeth on the earth.” Genesis I, 11,21,25.  Now this doctrine, the doctrine of the whole Christian world, and which stands directly opposed to Mr. Darwin’s theory, is, as say the lawyers, in possession, and therefore to be held as true until the contrary is proved.  It is not enough, then, for Mr. Darwin to set forth his theory and ask us as Christians, as believers in Genesis, to accept it, unless able to disprove it; nor is it enough for him even to prove that it may be true.  The onus probandi is on him who arraigns the faith and convictions of the Christian world, which are the faith and convictions of enlightened and living mankind.  He must prove his theory not only may be, but is, true, and prove it with scientific or apodictic certainty, for only by so doing can he oust the Christian doctrine from its possession, or overcome the presumption in its favor; and till he has ousted and made away with that doctrine, his theory cannot be legally or logically entertained even as a probable hypothesis.  This he hardly pretends to have done.  As far as we can discover, he does not claim apodictic certainty for his theory, or profess to set it forth for ant(sic) thing more than a probable hypothesis, which he leads us to suspect he hardly believes himself.  But in the present case we must prove it to be true  and indubitable, or he has no right to publish it at all, not even as probable; for probable it is not, so long as it is not certain that the Christian doctrine in possession is false.
This principle, which is the principle both of ethics and logic, is disregarded by nearly the whole herd of contemporary scientists.  They make a point of ignoring Christianity, and proceed as if they were perfectly free to put forth as science any number of theories, hypotheses, conjectures, guesses, which directly contradict it, as if they were under no obligation to consult the universal faith of mankind; and theories too, not one of which, even if plausible, is proved to be true, or deserving the name of science.  We by no means contend that the general belief of mankind, or the consensus hominum, is in itself an infallible criterion of truth; but we do maintain that it is, as the lawyers say, prima facie evidence, or a vehement presumption of truth, and that no man has the moral right to publish any opinions, or uncertain theories or hypotheses, that are opposed to it.  It can be overruled by science that is science, by the truth that is demonstrated to be truth, and which cannot be gainsaid.  He who assails it may plead the truth, if he has it, in justification; but not an uncertain opinion, not an unproved theory, or an unverified hypothesis, however plausible or even probable it may appear to himself.  Sincerity, or firmness of conviction on the part of the defenders of the adverse theory or hypothesis, is no justification, no excuse even; and no one has any right to assail or contradict the Christian faith, unless he has infallible authority for the truth of what he alleges in opposition to it.  And this no scientist has or can have. (emphases my own) Brownson 1873 - Dawin's Descent of Man

Thanks to Mark Gonzales, I knew the score -Sox win 11-4 . . .over somebody.

Unlike your humble servant, Orestes Brownson knew not only the school but he really knew who was playing.

http://www.orestesbrownson.com/24.html

http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/baseball/whitesox/ct-spt-0725-white-sox-twins-chicago--20120725,0,2458913.story

http://reasonablefaith.org/does-theism-foster-scepticism

http://lamar.colostate.edu/~jgaughan/primarywebpages/courses/Tacitus.htm

Twelve Days of Christmas Was an Irish/French Catholic Rebel Song

(Carraig an Aifrinn - Mass Rock in Ireland celebrates Faith under Persecution)

Only Atheists take out billboards to mock the faith of people. Illinois Atheist Bob Sherman bought a bus. Churches do not persecute anyone in this country - that is for the ACLU to decide when a where the facts can be taffy-pulled into a new St. Batholomew's Day Massacre. That usually has to do with a five year old cupping hands in class and thank Jesus, or Yaweh, of Allah, or Vishnu for the peanut butter sandwich in her lunch. What I always found interesting was the fact that the American Congregationalist Evangelical Movement of the 19th Century, rooted in William Wilberforce's Enthusiasm for Abolition in England, was rooted in the religious/civil point of view that created the Anti-Catholic Laws in England. Ironically, William Wilberforce actively fought for Catholic Emancipation and his sons became Roman Catholics. Something left out of the PC version of this Champion of Abolition.

American intellectuals erase Catholic influence in all things. It's as old as the Great Awakening and the Brook Farm Movement, from which Orestes Brownson was cast away when he converted to Roman Catholicism. The ACLU's founders Roger Baldwin et al were the secular preachers of Secular Enthusiasm.

Mother England codified much of the ACLU's "Do-Away With" Pettifoggery from Good Queen Bess, the Cromwellian period and through the Glorious Revolution.

Ireland suffered under Penal Laws* (Na Péindlíthe) that outlawed the practice of religion while Wilberforce fought to end the slave trade around the world.

In Ireland, no catholic could hear Mass and priests were hunted, like wolves. Father Nick Sheehy was the las recorded Outlaw Priest 'murdered by the Crown in 1766. Irish peasants heard Mass.

Christmas is as much under assault as my ancestors were when they attended the Eucharist at Mass Rocks ( Carraig an Aifrinn ) out in the cold and wind and rain. We squeak when Terry McEldowney opens all the windows at Sacred Heart before Mass-
" Wakes You Clowns Up!"

The 12 Days of Christmas is often thought to be a nice Secularist French Seasonal Song - nope, it seems that the tune and the words were ones of resistnace against religious persecution. The numbered items hold religious conotations. "The 12 Days of Christmas." It is said that each gift represents an aspect of the Catholic faith and that the song was used to teach children during a time when Catholicism was banned. Many versions of the story abound, one being written by a Friar who states that he was doing research in some old Latin texts when he came up references to the song in "letters from Irish priests, mostly Jesuits, writing back to the motherhouse at Douai-Rheims, in France." ( click my post title)



2 Turtle Doves = Old and New Testaments
3 French Hens = Faith, Hope and Charity
4 Calling Birds = Four Gospels and/or the Four Evangelists
5 Golden Rings = first Five Books of the Old Testament
6 Geese A-laying = Six days of creation
7 Swans A-swimming = Seven gifts of the Holy Spirit
8 Maids A-milking = Eight beatitudes
9 Ladies Dancing = Nine Fruits of the Holy Spirit
10 Lords A-leaping = Ten Commandments
11 Pipers Piping = Eleven faithful Apostles
12 Drummers Drumming = Twelve points of doctrine in the Apostle's Creed

Ironically enough the Partridge ( that sits in the Pear Tree- Fruit Tree for Wassiling Cider?)symbolizes the Church and has also been used to represent Satan. Both might work in this song.


*Exclusion of Catholics from most public offices (since 1607), Presbyterians were also barred from public office from 1707.
Ban on intermarriage with Protestants; repealed 1778
Presbyterian marriages were not legally recognised by the state
Catholics barred from holding firearms or serving in the armed forces (rescinded by Militia Act of 1793)
Bar from membership in either the Parliament of Ireland or the Parliament of Great Britain from 1652; rescinded 1662-1691; renewed 1691-1829.
Disenfranchising Act 1728, exclusion from voting until 1793;
Exclusion from the legal professions and the judiciary; repealed (respectively) 1793 and 1829.
Education Act 1695 - ban on foreign education; repealed 1782.
Bar to Catholics entering Trinity College Dublin; repealed 1793.
On a death by a Catholic, his legatee could benefit by conversion to the Church of Ireland;
Popery Act - Catholic inheritances of land were to be equally subdivided between all an owner's sons with the exception that if the eldest son and heir converted to Protestantism that he would become the one and only tenant of estate and portions for other children not to exceed one third of the estate. This "Gavelkind" system had previously been abolished by 1600.
Ban on converting from Protestantism to Roman Catholicism on pain of Praemunire: forfeiting all property estates and legacy to the monarch of the time and remaining in prison at the monarch's pleasure. In addition, forfeiting the monarch's protection. No injury however atrocious could have any action brought against it or any reparation for such.
Ban on Catholics buying land under a lease of more than 31 years; repealed 1778.
Ban on custody of orphans being granted to Catholics on pain of 500 pounds that was to be donated to the Blue Coat hospital in Dublin.
Ban on Catholics inheriting Protestant land
Prohibition on Catholics owning a horse valued at over £5 (in order to keep horses suitable for military activity out of the majority's hands)
Roman Catholic lay priests had to register to preach under the Registration Act 1704, but seminary priests and Bishops were not able to do so until 1778
When allowed, new Catholic churches were to be built from wood, not stone, and away from main roads.
'No person of the popish religion shall publicly or in private houses teach school, or instruct youth in learning within this realm' upon pain of twenty pounds fine and three months in prison for every such offence. Repealed in 1782. [2]
Any and all rewards not paid by the crown for alerting authorities of offences to be levied upon the Catholic populace within parish and county.