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Show A CONVERT'S SOMERSAULT. From Protestantism to Rome and back again to Protestantism is a step as incongruous as it is rare. It raises the suspicion that conversion in the first instance was not the result of knowledge loading to positive conviction. Marquise des Monsliers Merenville has abandoned the Catholic faith and returned to her first belief. The announcement was made Tuesday through a Roman dispatch - to the Assocmtc-i Press, and the news is exploited as a sensation. Jt is such only by reason of the lady's social position. In reality it is; only another example of the fickleness fickle-ness of woman, of most women in possession of great wealth. The niarqui.-e was formerly Mary Gwendolyn Caldwell, an American girl, one of those units in the matrimonial mart who exchange wealth for a European title, so demoralizing to honest American tradition. . Her father was the late j William Shakespeare Caldwell; her mother ,a Breckinridge. A grand old Kentucky family, but the sire inherited nothing from his forbears. The millions left to his children were gathered in a shrewd yet honest way. Before he died William Shakespeare Caldwell became a convert. In the light of her fathers example, the daughter, later on, became a Catholic. Today it would seem to have been he promptings of filial affection rather than a religious change of mind and heart. And carrying such suggestion further, it is not improbable im-probable that the same filial affection prompted Mary Gwendolyn Caldwell to part with $300,000 in order to build Divinity Hall of the Catholic university. uni-versity. If it so chanced that she married Prince Murat, to whom she was once engaged, the university uni-versity would never hare seen' a penny of the Caldwell Cald-well endowment. That titled scalawag demanded half of Miss Caldwell's fortune as a marriage dowry. The engugcmeiit wa3 thereupon broken off. So it is that the Catholic university got what in all probability - would have been lost over the gambling table at Monte' Carlo, had matrimonial anticipations turned out differently. Over the reported reasons given by the marquise for casting off "the yoke of Rome," little comment need be made. They exhibit the pettishness of a spoiled child; silly enough to excite contempt, yet yield to compassion for the benefactor of Catholic educational endeavor. Of course, they will be magnified mag-nified by those who exult over the defection of any Catholic convert. However, Catholics are consoled in the reflection that for one thus led astray, ten with honest convictions enter the fold. These belong be-long to the intellectually great rather than to the wealthy great. What Catholics arc admonished to do is to pray for the return of the lost sheep to the true Shepherd. The second conversion, God so willing, will proceed from conviction, and therefore endure. |