Conversion as Transformation: Lonergan, Mentors, and Cinema - Paperback

by Dominic Arcamone (Author)

The process of human transformation is complex and ongoing. This book presents a framework for understanding human transformation through the insights of Bernard Lonergan. The reader will be introduced to terms such as the turn to the subject, consciousness, subjectivity, and intersubjectivity. It will explore terms such as horizon, feelings, values, self-esteem, sublation, conversion, dialectic, and religious experience. The book explores transformation through the way mentors have authored their own lives, told their own stories, and taken possession of their interiority. Transformation is illustrated through the lives of saints and ordinary men and women who did extraordinary things, such as St. Augustine, Dag Hammarskjold, Vaclav Havel, Franz Jaggerstatter, St. Therese of Lisieux, Fredrich Nietzsche, Katherine Ann Power, and Marie Cardinal. Transformation is also illustrated through the medium of cinema: Babette's Feast, The Mission, As It is in Heaven, Romero, Dead Poets Society, Ordinary People, The Godfather trilogy, Three Color trilogy, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Dial M for Murder, and Twelve Angry Men. While the book treats religious, moral, affective, intellectual, and psychic conversion as moments of transformation, it argues that ecological conversion requires all of these so as to meet the most serious moral challenge of our time.

Author Biography

Dominic Arcamone is a retired mission manager in healthcare. He was a sessional lecturer for the Australian Catholic University from 2007 to 2015, writing and teaching graduate and postgraduate courses in theological subjects. He has a BTh, MTh, MA (Counseling and Pastoral Care), DMin, and PhD. Since the events of 9/11, he has focused on the problem of religion and violence and published Religion and Violence (2015).