Becoming Catholic: Story, Sacrament, Conversion and the Emergence of Faith in Postconciliar Autobiographies

Abstract

This thesis looks at the spiritual autobiographies of thirty contemporary young adult Catholic men and women in their early twenties through their early forties. It argues that their life writings, when taken together as a whole and read through the dual lens of Story and Sacrament, evidence an emergent process of conversion, of "becoming Catholic" in the modern American milieu.