T

HERE is much rejoicing among the Catholic literary folk of Boston at the awarding of the Laetare Medal, this year, to their most prominent member-Miss Katherine E. Conway.

The Laetare Medal, as every Catholic American knows-or ought to knowis conferred every year by the University. of Notre Dame upon some member of the Catholic laity supe

rior in talent and eminent in good works. The list of those who have already received it includes men and women whose names are household words among the Catholics of the United States-men and women who have been chosen because of their widely-acknowledged ability, intellectual attainments and self-sacrificing work in the field. of Catholic charity. Among them may be mentioned Attorney. General Bonaparte, the Hon. Bourke Cockran,

the higher things of Catholic life, but who always has participated in every work of Catholic endeavor.

And now the Medal comes again to the Modern Athens, and this time to a woman-one who as editor, poet, essayist and novelist has won an enduring place in Catholic literature, and whose manifold good works of charity and philanthropy have made her name respected and beloved. Katherine E. Conway is a native of Rochester, N. Y., the fifth child of the large family of sons and daughters, born to her parents, James and Sarah Conway. Her father was one of the well-known bridge. builders and railroad contractors of the State, and very active in the political life of the city of his home.

In earliest childhood Miss Conway attended what are now the famous Cathedral schools of that city, then in charge of the Sisters of

Twice before has the Medal come to Boston. The late Patrick Donahoe, founder of the Pilot and pioneer in the work of Catholic journalism, was the first Bostonian to receive it. Two years ago it was awarded to another Boston man, Mr. Thomas B. Fitzpatrick, who, although one of Boston's leading men of business, has never been too busy for

local Convent of the Sacred Heart. She made a four years' course at St. Mary's Academy (familiarly known as Miss Nardin's Academy), Buffalo, N. Y., at the time under the direction of two eminent educators, one a graduate of the University of Paris, the other an English convert of signal literary ability. Later, Miss Conway spent some time at the

Sacred Heart, Manhattanville, as a parlor boarder.

Her literary work was begun while she was still a schoolgirl, and her excellent preparation for it was supplemented by the judicious interest of the Rt. Rev. Bernard J. M'Quaid, D. D., Bishop of Rochester, who gave her valuable direction in reading and the formation of a literary style.

After some work on the religious and the secular papers of Rochester and Buffalo, especially the Catholic Union of the latter city, experience as a special teacher in Rochester, and a modest success with short stories and poems, she was invited to an editorial place on The Pilot by John Boyle O'Reilly, who not only advanced her interests rapidly on his own paper, but opened to her the general literary life of Boston. At his instance she went earnestly into the Catholic Reading work the year before his lamented death.

She has been twenty-three years a resident of Boston. Her life is in her work. On the death of John Boyle O'Reilly and Mr. James Jeffrey Roche's accession to the editorship of The Pilot, she became associate editor. On the departure of Mr. Roche to Genoa, more than two years ago, she became editorin-chief. She has long had the faculty of doing an immense amount of work easily and quickly. Besides her work on The Pilot, she has contributed special articles from time to time to most of the Boston secular papers, and short stories and poems to several magazines.

She is a loving student of sacred art, and early in her Boston life collaborated with Clara Erskine Clement in a popular art-book, "Christian Symbols and Stories of the Saints." Her books include two novels, "Lalor's Maples," and "The Way of the World and Other Ways;" five volumes of the Family Sitting Room Series, "Lady and Her Letters," "Making Friends and Keeping Them," "Questions of Honor in the Christian

Life," "Bettering Ourselves," and "The Christian Gentlewoman;" "New Footsteps in Well-Trodden Ways," a book of foreign travel sketches; "A Dream of Lilies," poems; "Watchwords from John Boyle O'Reilly, with Literary Estimate," and "In the Footsteps of the Good Shepherd" (in press). All these books have passed through a number of editions, and are in steady demand.

Miss Conway's activities have not been confined to literature. Busy as is her life as a journalist she has found time to interest herself in works of charity and philanthropy. She was one of the pioneers of the Catholic Reading Circle movement, and has been president of the John Boyle O'Reilly Reading Circle, one of the three great Reading Circles of the country, since its inception, an honorary member of the Catholic Union of Boston, a member of the Boston Authors' Club, of the New England Women's Press Association, etc., and a vice president of the Children of Mary of the Sacred Heart.

She is, however, first, last and always, a Catholic journalist and litterateur, as her constant work on the Pilot and her other literary work testify. This is why the Catholic literary colony of Boston is feeling very proud these days. It rejoices, of course, that the Laetare Medal comes again, and so soon, to Boston; but it rejoices much more that this signal mark of honor should be awarded to one who is the acknowledged leader of the corps, whose true womanliness is known to all, and whose gracious helpfulness has been experienced by many a young struggler on the hard road that leads to literary fame.

Of her family there is but one other survivor, a brother, James J. Conway, in the service of the city of Boston. Her sister, Mary E. Conway, foundress of the Colegio Americano, Buenos Ayres, who contributed a number of short stories to THE ROSARY MAGAZINE, died three years ago.

II.

LUTHER AND MATRIMONY.

N the Gospel of St. Luke (chap. 19, 22) we read that Christ, the good Lord, said to the unfaithful servant: "Out of thy own mouth, I judge thee, thou wicked servant." Thus Father Denifle in his "last and lasting work," "Luther and Lutherthum," judges the character of Martin Luther by the words of his own mouth, by what he wrote, and what he preached.

The critical edition of the works of Martin Luther, published by the leading professors of the Protestant Church, describes a twofold character in Luther, one phase being almost diametrically opposed to the other. For ten years he was a good, religious priest; for the rest of his life he was the organizer and leader of the anti-Catholic protesting sect, bearing his name, called Lutherthum-Lutheranism.

The fundamental, heretical doctrine of "faith without good works," "gospel without commandments," "reward without labor," "heaven without the cross," Luther found in his own heart, and his blinded mind was soon brought into harmony with it. His own subjective experience was made general and universal. Just because he, without prayer, and therefore without grace, could not keep the commandments, he believed and taught that others could. not keep them although they prayed fervently, and consequently received an abundance of the grace of God. This pernicious doctrine he applied not only to individuals, but also to society. The family is the foundation of society. The laws regulating matrimony strengthen

or weaken, build up or destroy the family, and consequently society, according to their nature. Therefore, when God created man, He instituted marriage. He "cast a deep sleep upon Adam, and when he was fast asleep, He took one of his ribs,—and the Lord God built the rib, which he took from Adam, into a woman and brought her to Adam." When, in the garden of pleasure, Adam, innocent and perfect, beheld Eve, the woman whom the Almighty had created, and brought to him, filled with the light of the Holy Ghost, he proclaimed for all nations and generations the unity and indissolubility of matrimony in words which Lacordaire pronounces "consoling and terrible:" "Wherefore a man shall leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife and they shall be two in one flesh."

This sacred institution of matrimony and its first and principal laws were reviewed and confirmed by Jesus Christ, Who said: "What, therefore, God hath joined together, let no man put asunder." All great missionaries of barbarous nations, all true reformers of Christian society, preached and enforced these laws.

In Martin Luther we find, on the one hand, a true, clear exponent of the sublime, Catholic idea of matrimony; on the other, the formulator and promulgator of the worldly conception of that holy state, after he had broken his vow of celibacy and married a person consecrated to God by religious profession.

We shall first consider his true Catholic doctrine in order to be instructed and edified by it; then his "reformed” doctrine, in order to see his deep fall, and the shock he gave to society-a shock so terrible that the evil effects are

felt up to the present day. No subject, I believe, reveals more clearly the heart of Luther and the harm he has done to Christianity than this. It shows, above all, that while he pretended to reform the Church of Christ, he did all in his power to tear down its pillars.

As a Catholic priest, Martin Luther preached the revealed doctrine that the state of matrimony is holy, and that the state of virginity is still holier. In the year 1519 he still preached: "Neither Christ nor the apostles prescribed the state of virginity; they recommended it, and left it to every one to try his own heart. The truth that the state of virginity is holier than the state of matrimony, so expressly taught by the word and example of Jesus Christ and His beloved disciple St. John, was defined as a dogma of the Church by the Council of Trent.

"The truth that the single state, for the love of God, is holier than marriage, does not imply in any way that marriage is not very holy. The Blessed Virgin Mary is a greater saint than St. Joseph, still St. Joseph is a great and glorious saint." While Martin Luther was a faithful priest, he understood this well, according to the teachings of the Catholic Church. "Who does not know," he says, "that marriage was instituted by God, introduced into Paradise, confirmed and blessed after the fall of man? Every one knows it. I learned it when young."

I desire to emphasize all such statements, for we shall see that later on he flatly contradicts them.

In one of his sermons, preached on the Gospel of the wedding of Cana, Luther gives the reasons why matrimony is so holy. "The doctors of the Church," he says, "find three great blessings and advantages in the married state-faith, offspring and sacrament."

He saw in the hearts and souls of the spouses that mutual, noble, spiritual union and fidelity expressed in the

words: "For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part"—a fidelity and confidence most sorely tried and most beautifully illustrated in the lives. of the Blessed Mother and St. Joseph. When St. Joseph, not understanding the divine mystery of the Incarnation, "being a just man, and not willing publicly to expose her, was minded to put her away privately, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in his sleep, saying, 'Joseph, son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost'" (Matt. 1, 19).

Regarding offspring, a second blessing of matrimony, Luther, in the spirit of the Church, exhorted the faithful to look upon it, not with the eyes of the flesh, but with the eyes of faith. They were to see in the children not only the image of the parents, but the image of God, not only the body, but also and above all the immortal soul, and its glorious, eternal destiny.

He well explains that the patriarchs of old would not have married, if they had not seen in their children the ministers of God, preparing the coming of the Messiah; if they had not seen that their own flesh and blood would finally be honored and glorified and blessed in His redemption.

In order that the spouses may have the grace to be true and faithful to one another, and to bring up their children in the fear and love of God, Christ honored this state, instituted by the heavenly Father in Paradise, and elevated it to the dignity of a sacrament. In order to explain this, Martin Luther quotes the beautiful passage found in St. Paul's epistle to the Ephesians, chapter v, 22-32 verse. We give it in full:

"Let women be subject to their husbands, as to the Lord: Because the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ is the head of the Church. He is the saviour of his body.