ABSTRACT
One hundred people, apparently alike in their Catholic up-bringing, enrolled at forty-three different Catholic colleges sometime in the late fifties and early sixties. At some point in the next four years, most of them entered a critical period of evaluating their own Catholic background and beliefs. In the end, fifty dissociated themselves from the Catholic Church and fifty did not. In order to understand why these positions were reached, this chapter describes in detail certain events that led individuals on the road to change. The change did begin, generally, in college. Before the data was collected, the author thought the catalyst of change might be the transition from a Catholic college to a non-Catholic graduate school where, for the first time, information discrepant with one’s Catholic beliefs would be encountered. Sixty subjects, however, said the process of change began during attendance at a Catholic college, and only twenty-six reported it began after college.
