Robert_Wild_-_Catherine_Doherty_Servant_of_God

intermarriage, the close living together of neighbors, the
influx of Russians into the Catholic parts of the country and
vice versa—all had their effects. I give them to you as they
came to me, from living with my grandmother’s folks near
Warsaw, and with my grandfather’s near Moscow. (v-vi)
We, the members of Madonna House, speculate
among ourselves as to why Catherine, when she came to
England after escaping from Russia, made a profession of
faith in the Catholic Church. (Her name is in the records
of converts in the Westminster archives). We know where
and when it happened (London, November 29, 1919),
but the “why” remains somewhat shrouded in mystery. In
London she had come across a convent of those very
Sisters of Sion who had taught her in Alexandria. She
received instructions and entered the Church. But why
Several reasons come to mind.
She had been raised in the two worlds of Catholicism
and Orthodoxy, as the above quote testifies. As a young
girl, not over-educated in doctrinal matters, she might not
really have seen all that much creedal difference between
Catholicism and Orthodoxy. Also, her father used to read
to them, as children, from the works of Vladimir Soloviev.
Considered by many to be the greatest Russian philosopher/theologian,
he himself made a public confession of
faith in the Pope as the “wonder-working icon of
Christian unity,” and this in the 1880s in Russia. Soloviev
taught that Christ could not really be divided. She was
undoubtedly influenced by him. (His picture has a very
prominent place in the main house in Combermere.)
Believing that she would never be able to return to
Russia, perhaps there was an impelling sense to identify,
now, with the new world in which she was going to live.
No form of Protestantism would have appealed to her, and
Catholicism was already in her bones.
Privately, she retained some of her Orthodox customs
all her life: icons, bowing before the Blessed Sacrament
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