Becoming Catholic, Again: Connecting the Faith We Were Taught with the Faith We Live

Everywhere I go, I find Catholics moving into adult faith and also longing for adult faith–usually without even knowing it. Here is an excellent book that can partner both groups on their journeys. Becoming Catholic, Again is deeply personal, very readable, and quite solid theology too. You don’t often get all three!

– Fr.Richard Rohr, O.F.M. For many Catholics, practicing one’s faith may have felt much simpler as a child. This was true for Catherine Wiecher Brunell; but as she matured, she encountered a tension in her faith–a disconnect between the faith she learned as a child and the faith she lived as an adult. In Becoming Catholic, Again, Brunell shares her realization of a spiritual identity that is congruent with both her lived experience and Church Tradition.

Becoming Catholic, Again examines how to maintain an authentic spiritual life and a connection to the Church in a postmodern world. For example, Brunell describes her experience with theology of inadequacy if we only prayed more and did more, then blessings and grace would flow. But that attitude might actually box God out of our lives–to find grace, we should focus on the lives we lead and meet the needs we see in the world from where we stand.

Brunell invites us to experience a faith that grows through personal discovery. Like Brunell, we may no longer have the absolute faith of a child, but we can nurture an adult faith that reconciles any differences.