Roads to Rome: Alice Morton Rutherfurd (1879-1917)

Born in Newport, Rhode Island, Alice Morton Rutherfurd was the daughter of Levi P. Morton, who served as Vice President of the United States under Benjamin Harrison (1889-1893). She was raised Episcopalian, and converted to Catholicism, along with her husband Winthrop Rutherfurd. In 1917, she died at an early age of apendicitis. After her death, her sister Helen financed the erection of a Carmelite monastery in Brooklyn to honor her memory. Alice gave the following reasons for her conversion in the 1909 book Some Roads to Rome, an anthology of conversion stories:

MY STEPPING STONES TO THE CHURCH
1. Supernatural graces.
2. “Thou art Peter and upon this rock I will build my Church.”
3. Unchanging Doctrines.
4. The Authority to Teach and to Preach.
5. The grace derived through Jesus really present in the Blessed Sacrament.
6. The Truth of the Church.
7. The Devotion of its Children.
8. The abounding graces given to Catholics.
9. The satisfaction the heart receives through the channels flowing from the Cross into the Sacraments.
10. The enlightening of the understanding by the doctrines and teaching of the Church on all points of life— theological, religious, and practical.

11. The Paradise of the Soul.