RETURNING, TO THE FOLD

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVII, Issue 15, 15 April 1909, Page 571

RETURNING, TO THE FOLD

Amongst those who have lately been received into the Church in the United States is Mr. George L. Rockwell, of Bidgefield, Connecticut, a nephew of two former Governors of the State.

We (Catholic Times) learn that the Rev. A. J. Field, M.A., until recently Anglican vicar of Ravensden, Bedfordshire, was recently received into the Church at the Church of the Holy Child, Bedford, by the Rev. Father Freeland.

. Few people are aware that Artemus Ward, the noted humorisb, than whom there was no more genial wit in American letters, became a Catholic shortly before his death. The Catholic Encyclopedia notes this fact, and accords him a brief but comprehensive biography.

Mrs. Hyde, widow of the -late George Merriam Hyde, of New -York, and -sister of the Rev. David- Hillhouse IBuel, S.J., took her final vows in the Dominican Convent of Perpetual Adoration in New York recently. Mrs. Hyde is a convert to the Catholic Church, as is her «ntire^ family.

Prince Constantine Beloselsky, who has been attached to the. Russian Court for 25 years, has become a convert to the Church. He is 65 years old and is married to "the daughter of General Skobeleff, the hero of the Russo-

Turkish war. His conversion has created ' an unpleasant impression in Court circles. -• " ' -iz Dr. Samuel Joseph Limerick, a prominent physician of Seattle, was received into the Church on November 11 at St. James' Cathedral, by the Rev. W. Quigley, of . Hillman. Mr. Frederick Parrott James, until recently a student at Nashotali House, Wisconsin, who was reported to be under instruction for reception into the Church, has been received. The Mexican Herald -records the conversion, which has taken -place in Mexico, of six" members of the wellknown family of Mr, William Vernon, Backhus. Amongst those present at the ceremony, of reception was Mr. W. H. Sloan, a Protestant missionary in Mexico, who was converted to the Church last year. Miss Cicely de Hoghton, younger daughter of Sir James de Hoghton, Bart., has been received into the Church in the Notre Dame Convent Chapel, Blackburn, England. The officiating clergyman was the Very - Rev. Joseph Browne, S.J., late rector of Stonyhtirst, and now rector of St. Francis Xavier College, Liverpool. The London- Tablet announces that Lady Muriel Watkins, only daughter of the Earl of Lindsay, has been received into the Church. The Earl of Lindsay is a Scottish Peer. The earldom dates from 1633, but the Lindsays are descended from the ancient line of Wornistone, the first Lord Lindsay of the Byres being' created in 1445. Madame Dolores^, writing from London, sends news of tlie death of Mr. Fernando Vert, .who .managed.. heii^ first tours in Australia, and whose brother was one of tlie"^ most famous of London entrepreneurs for years. .^TVErIC Vert, who died on December 16, become a ~ convert to .the? Catholic faith. Mr. Vert died, in the, same, nursing homo"-" as tlie late Cardinal Mathieu, in" J John street, Mayfairf The Requienf Mass was celebrated by the Rev. . FaSSof"' Bernard Vaughan, S.J., who also' "officiated at the cemetery. , - ■ Miss Gertrude de -Wolfers, a recent convert, was' confirmed privately in New York on the Feast of the Holy Innocents by the Right Rev. Bishop Cusa-ck. Miss de Wolfers, who is a daughter of the late Baron Anthony Francesco . de Wolfers, was for several years a Sister in. the Protestant Episcopal Order of St. Mary, Peekskill" ' New York. On January 4, Miss Edith Pardee, formerly known as Mother Edith, and Miss Elsie Montgomery, of the same community, were received as novices in the Catholic Order of the Blessed Sacrament at - St. Elizabeth's Convent, Cornwells. Mr. W. D. Aston, Fellow of Downing College, Cambridge, was on December 9 received into the Church (says the Tablet). Mr. Aston is Junior Dean and Director of Legal Studies for his college. He has had a distinguished University career, and won a Whewell Scholarship for International Law. It may be of interest to recall the fact that the Rev. P. G. Provost,- M.A., of Westminster Cathedral, ~who received Mr. Aston, was himself received into the Church when studying law at Downing. Mr. Aston is the first Fellow actually in residence who has become a Catholic. Magdalen College, Oxford, where Father Harold Castle, C.SS.R. (who died early in November after some years of laborious work at the monastery of his Order at Perth), took his degree some twenty years agoy;has been the alma mater during the past two or three c generations, of many wellknown converts to the Catholic Church (says the Glasgow Observer). Among the convert Fellows of that ancient foundation have been Mr. Palmer, Lord Selborne's brother (the ' dear "William Palmer ' of Newman's Ajiologia) ; Mr. William Wheelej* ; and Father Bernard Smith, of Great Marlow, one of the last survivors of the earliest Tractarian converts. Other priests educated at Magdalen have been the late .Father Luke Rivington, the eminent controversialist; Father Mac Call, now chaplain to the Duke of Norfolk ; .Father .George Tatum^ now at Brighton; Father Lassotter, C.SS.R. ; Canon W. Denliam, late Diocesan Inspector of Schools, Westminster; and Dom Oswald Hunter Blair, 0.5.8. " Included among lay converts who graduated at Magdalen have been the late Viscount Encombe, eldest^ son of the late Earl of Eldon ; Mr. W. H. Bliss, - sub-librarian of the Bodleian, and sometime tutor to the present King of Italy ; and Mr. A. C. Dunlop,late President of. the Chamber of Commerce, Southampton. Miss Ida Hitchcock, . the daughter of Rev. Dr. Hitchcock, for" ten yeaTS principal of the Hitchcock Military Academy of Sari ■ Rafael, Cal._, and an ordained ' Episcopalian minister, was received into the Church recently at St. Ignatius' Church, San Francisco, Rev. Father Kenner, S.J., officiating. Miss Hitchcock had the full consent of her parents, who, though staunch • Episcopalians, wished their daughter to follow the dictates of her conscience.

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Rev. Francis McFetrich, late of St. Simeon's P. E. Church, Philadelphia,, was (says the Catholic Standard and Times) received into the one true fold by Rev. Joseph L. J. Kirlin, rector of the Church of the Most Precious Blood, on the Feast"" of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin. In the afternoon he was confirmed at the Cathedral Chapel by Archbishop Ryan, and on Sunday morning he made his first Holy Communion. According to a press despatch from Boston, Dr. Laura A. C. Hughes applied for admission as a novice in. a convent, and her application has been accepted. Early this year Dr. Hughes will enter her novitiate. She will join the Sisters of the Holy Cross, whose mother house is at South Bend, Ind. Dr. Hughes is the best known woman physician in Boston. As a surgeon her patients have numbered members 'of the exclusive society of the Back Bay, and she has given her services free to the poor. She studied in Berlin, Vienna, and Rome. Declaring that he had discovered the error of his ways, the Rev. Francis Kowalski, pastor of the; Polish Independent Church of the Sacred Heart, Bayohne, New Jersey, who renounced the Church to join the ranks of the Independents, has returned to the Catholic fold. On a recent Sunday he informed his congregation of the change, explaining to them the nature of the wrong he had committed, and his desire to do penance before it was too late. In the just published volume on Mr.. Gilbert Chesterton, says the London Tablet, the . statement is definitely made that he has joined the Catholic Church;- and, if as some say, the biography has the sanction of its hero, we may accept as final the announcement which transforms many rumors and . more hopes into a fact on which we congratulate Mr. Chesterton and ourselves and all onr countrymen. Mr. - Chestei-ton, as all his readers know, stands for talent -among his contemporaries somewhere very near the top; aiid he ranks among his fellow- journalists as their pride and their pattern in the inviolability of his integrity. Mrs. Martha Moore Avery, formerly a leader among Socialists, is now a devout Catholic. Further than this, her daughter, as we are informed by the True Witness of Montreal, is a Catholic nun. It appears that the daugnter of Mrs. Avery went to Montreal a little over five years ago and entered a convent there to pursue her studies. Becoming filled with the desire to enter the Catholic Church,, she sotight instruction from the Rev. Martin Callaghan, who was only too happy to satisfy, her earnest wish, and in due time he baptized her. Answering a call to the religious life, she entered the Congregation cf Notre Dame, and is now a most fervent member of that Order at St. Joseph's Academy, Kankakee, 111. At Baltimore, on September 5, Rev. Harmar C. Denny, S.J., died at "Woodstock Seminary of an illness which lasted more than seven years. He was seventy-five years old. Father Denny was born in Pittsbiirg in 1833 of a wealthy family, and he was the grandson of the late Ebenezer Denny, the first Mayor of Pittsburg. While a young man he "went to England and entered Oxford University, from which he graduated with the degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1855. It was while he was in England that he became a Catholic, and was received into the Church by Cardinal Manning. Upon returning to America he entered the Jesuit Order, and renounced a large fortune, which was his by inheritance, preferring the work of the Church to any earthly enjoyment which money might afford. He •converted many persons to. the true faith.