ere
the stepping-stones that led you here?' he would have asked if he had
had the temperament of the apostle. But instead of searching for
truth in me he began to search for error. I had lived with the Brook
Farm Community and with the Fruitlands Community, and before that had
been a member of a Workingman's party in New York City, in all which
organizations the right of private ownership of property had been a
prime question. . . . But, as for my part, at the time Bishop
Fitzpatrick wanted me to purge myself of communism, I had settled the
question in my own mind, and on principles which I afterwards found
to be Catholic. The study and settlement of the question of ownership
was one of the things that led me into the Church, and I am not a
little surprised that what was a door to lead me into the Church
seems at this day to be a door to lead some others out. But when the
bishop attacked me about it, it was no longer with me an actual
question. I had settled the question of private ownership in harmony
with Catholic principles, or I should not have dared to present
myself as a convert. But I mention this because it illustrates Bishop
Fitzpatrick's character.

"His was, indeed, a first-class mind both in natural gifts and
acquired cultivation, but his habitual bearing was that of suspicion
of error; as man and prelate he had a joyful readiness to search it
out and correct it from his own point of view. He was a type of mind
common then and not uncommon now--the embodiment of a purpose to
refute error, and to refute it by condemnation direct, authoritative
even if argumentative: the other type of mind would seek for truth
amidst the error, establish its existence, applaud it, and endeavor
to make it a basis for further truth and a fulcrum for the overthrow
of the error connected with it.

"It will be seen, then, what kind of man Dr. Brownson first met as
the official exponent of Catholicity, one hardly capable of properly
understanding and dealing with a mind like his; for he was one who
had come into the possession of the full truth not so much from
hatred of error as from love of truth. Brownson's soul was intensely
faithful to its personal convictions, faithful unto heroism--for that
is the temper of men who seek the whole truth free from cowardice, or
narrowness, or bias. He has admitted that the effect of his
intercourse with the bishop was not fortunate. He confesses that he
forced him to adopt a line of public c