Catholic’s Conversion:Reason And Process

With the implement of the policy of religious belief, Catholicism has entered a period of rapid development in china, for example, a large number of non-religious people choose to participate in Catholicism. So how people participate in Catholicism step by step? What reason encourage people to do this? What is the process? In order to explain the above question, this paper which is based on the field research put a detailed analysis on the collected case material. At the same time, this paper describe the Catholic conversion process from the rational choice theory and social network view.Through field research, the author thinks that the Catholic conversion is an ongoing dynamic process. The individuals choose the Catholicism owing to encountering the crisis which can not be solved by the established schemes. Therefore, the individuals begin to choose Catholicism under the guide of social relationship network. The individuals can also be influenced by the Missionaries’personal charism and social status and receive the religious products at the same time,through this process, they begin to produce the strong interests to the religion.Subsequently, they begin to have the frequent social interaction and participate in the religious rituals, study the religious lessons and so on. These processes strengthen the feel of religious conversion and help the individuals establish the belongings to the Catholicism. They begin to integrate into the religion step by step and overcome the eventual obstacles of acquiring the identity of the catholic.The conversion process can be explained by the view of rational choice theory and social network theory. In the early stage of religious conversion, the individual consider how to seek the resources to solve their questions. However, in the last period of religious conversion, the individuals have a deep comprehension to the religious ritual and integrate into the internal relationship network of the religion. They begin to spend a lot of emotion in the church and produce strong belonging to the church.They start to focus on the belief that the church is committed to convey. The choice of conversion to religion does conform to the belief of the Catholicism which has the obvious value rationality. Therefore, the author considers that the individuals’conversion process have the trend from the instrumental rationality to the rational value, but both can not be completely separated. In addition, the guidance and mobilization of the social network is throughout the whole process of the individual’s conversion. The first will of the individual’s contaction with religion is the result of the mobilization of social network specially, the strong relationship of the social network plays an important role. In the process of the interaction between the individual and church, the strong relationship still plays an important role in the process of guidance and accompany. The relationship between the individuals and members of the church begins to complete the change from the lack of obligation to the strong relationship of high trust. Through the above procession, the individuals begin to integrate into the internal relationship network of church and choose the conversion at last.