ABSTRACT
The Roman Catholic Church was an unlikely end to an American's religious quest during the nineteenth century. Anti-Catholic sentiment was pervasive and vigorous. A number of factors contributed to the antipathy toward the Roman Catholic Church in America: its despised immigrant population, its loyalty to Rome, and its generally suspect status as a religious and cultural minority. This chapter focuses upon the phenomenon of conversion to nineteenth-century American Catholicism, beginning with a brief account of the history of the Roman Catholic Church in America as it pertains to the nineteenth-century conversions. Estimates of the number of conversions and identification of their sources follow. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the ways in which nineteenth-century Roman Catholics understood conversion. Liberal Catholics applauded and encouraged efforts to promote conversions which they considered to be a vital dimension of the Church's apostolate.
