The centenary of the death of Frederick Ozanam has passed practically unnoticed. A few articles in the Catholic Press, a couple of small and unpretentious works from Ireland, a meeting of the Brothers of the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul in Paris 5 this seems a meagre tribute to pay to one of the greatest Catholic laymen of our time. The reason is, I think, that Ozanam presents a difficult problem for many of his most fervent admirers. They are attracted by his spirituality, his deep sense of Christian charity, his love of God and of the poor. But there is a whole side of Ozanam which is out of keeping with what English Catholic publicists are pleased to call the ‘Catholic tradition’. He was a man of bold and original views, a republican, a radical and a democrat at a time when most French Catholics were devoted to the principles of absolute monarchy; he had an intense dislike for aggressive apologetics, and showed to Protestants and unbelievers a spirit of tolerance which many considered to be treason to the Faith. The failure of the revolution of 1848, the dictatorship of Louis Napoleon and the rejection of democracy by Pius IX, dealt a crushing blow to all the social and political ideals of Christian democracy for which Ozanam had fought, and his hagio- graphers have therefore had a tendency to suppress or tone down the more awkward facts, presenting us with edifying little biographies, full of touching and pious incidents, which fail absolutely to give us an idea of his striking originality.