IMPORTANCE OF A SINGLE CONVERSION.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVIII, Issue 37, 13 September 1900, Page 6

IMPORTANCE OF A SINGLE CONVERSION.

One hundr< <1 yeirs ago Count Frederick Leopold Stolberg became a convert to the Catholic Church, and now the family, the Bishop, the local clergy, and the Westphalian nobility have been celebrating (.he hundredth anniversary of the event. A contemporary says —

The importance of a single conversion is indicated by the fact that nn fe * er than I"J2 direct descendants* of the Count were present at the feti h But the influence of Stolberg's conversion had a fax wider ranye than Ins family circle He waa a scion of one of the oldest ami noblest houses in Germany, was recognised at the courts of Copenhagen. 11-Thn, and irt. Petersburg as a diplomatist of high ability, was looked up to by the people as a poet and a writer, was an intimate friend of such men as Goethe and Klopstock, and, above all, enj< yed universal esteem for the uprightness of his character. His submission to the Catholic Church at a time when eminent Germans were averting that Christianity was approaching an end, and that it was all over with Catholic progress, created a remarkable Isensation. His great work, If tutor 1/ of the Jttl/gion of Jexut Chr'Kt, was epoch making. It was for the beginning of the present century what Bossuet'a Krjtosition tie la Doctrine Catholique was for the seventh century, or what Mohler"s SymboWt has been for the middle of the nineteenth century. ' How many soulb have been brought to a knowledge of Catholic truth by Stolberg's work will,' says Frederick von Kchlegel, who owed his own conversion to it, ' only be known on the day when all things are brought to light.' The effects of Stolberg's labors are still felt, and his name will always be linked with that of Gorres for his succeßS in reviving Cattohc life in Germany.