COURSE DESCRIPTIONS
Spiritual Life I: Prayer & Spiritual Growth
Prayer is the loving communication between God and each of us. It is the raising of one’s heart and mind to God and, at the same time, divine guidance and bestowal of grace. Without speaking with God we cannot know Him nor love Him. This course will explore the Catholic understanding of prayer and the interior life. The course will also model various approaches to Catholic prayer as well as exploring different spiritualities in the Church.
The Sacred Scriptures are truly God’s revelation to man in human language. As St. Jerome stated, “to be ignorant of Scripture is to be ignorant of Christ”. In four weeks, this course will provide the necessary fundamental truths behind the Bible: its inspiration by the Holy Spirit, its canon, its inerrancy, and its truly being the Word of God. By the end of this course, students will be able to begin reading and understanding the Scriptures for what they truly are.
The purpose of the apologetics course is to provide the tools from Apostolic Tradition, Scripture, the writings of the Early Church Fathers, history and logic which enable Catholics to be able to explain their faith, which is the hope that is in them, as St. Peter expressed it. The objective is to show the reasonableness of the faith and its deep roots and integrity, not to win arguments. Pope John Paul II told a group of U.S. bishops that the growth and vitality of the faith depends upon “guarding doctrine and teaching the faithful to spread it.” A second objective is to recognize the universal call for holiness and our need to live lives that reflect our faith and seek greater spiritual formation. The course will examine topics such as papal authority, apostolic succession, justification, the communion of Saints, Mary and the Sacrifice of the Mass, to name a few.
The basic tenets of the Faith have been handed down in the Church since Christ taught them to the Apostles. They are so important that Catholics profess their belief in them every Sunday at Mass. This first of two courses on the creed will take the students through the first part of the catechism: the essence of God, His relationship with the world, His interior relations in the Trinity, creation, and beginning to introduce the students to salvation. This course lasts three weeks.
Creed II will continue to explore the fundamental doctrines of Christianity as professed in the Apostles Creed. The Apostle’s Creed originated as the baptismal profession of faith for catechumens in the early Church. Following Creed I, this course will follow the division into twelve articles employed by the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Each topic illuminates the core belief of Christianity: faith in the Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. As the former Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict) said, everything is an unfolding of simple faith in God. The course aims to show students that this Triune God is, above all, the God of love.
New Testament I: The Gospels will journey through the life of Christ in a chronological manner by way of the texts of the four canonical Gospels in the Sacred Scriptures. These Gospels, as the very Word of God, “faithfully hand on what Jesus Christ, while living among men, really did and taught for their eternal salvation until the day He was taken up into heaven” (DV 19). After being supplied with necessary background knowledge on the culture of Jesus and the persons of the Evangelists, the student will come to a deeper understanding of Jesus through the very text of Scripture itself. By the end of the course, the student will have a deeper understanding of and relationship with Jesus, the only Way to the Father, by the Words of the Holy Spirit in the Scriptures as understood by His guidance in the Church.
Catholic Morality
Syllabus
Catholic Morality journeys through a part three of the
Catechism: “Life in Christ.” The first section will cover
the Catholic understanding of the human person, rooted in
nature and clarified by Sacred Scripture and Tradition. We
will discuss our common human vocation to beatitude and how
this vocation is lived out as life in Christ. The concepts
of freedom, conscience, sin, grace, virtue, and law will be
explored as well as their role as the means of motivating
moral action from relationship and excellence rather than
mere duty and legalism. Finally, the Ten Commandments
will be the frame for examining specific questions in moral
action and virtue.
Marriage and Family
Syllabus
Marriage and Family introduces students to the Catholic understanding of marriage—the foundational human relationship. It explores the meaning of human sexuality, the origin of marriage “in the beginning,” its essence as exclusive and indissoluble, and its elevation to a Sacrament of the New Covenant by Christ. We will look at the Church’s teachings on marital sexuality and procreation, especially in the texts of Vatican Council II, Humanae Vitae, and the writings of John Paul II. The Church’s teachings on marriage, sexuality, and family seek to reveal the true beauty of married love as an image of Divine love and to assist spouses in fully realizing their calling to follow Christ as husband and wife, mother and father. We will also look briefly at the serious attacks on marriage and true love in our culture today and how to combat them.
Liturgy and Sacraments
Syllabus
Liturgy and Sacraments will examine the public worship due to God and offered by the Mystical Body of Christ, the Church. It delves into the meaning, purpose, and celebration of the Christian mystery, most particularly the Passion, Death, Resurrection, and Ascension of Jesus Christ, and the re-presentation of this mystery here and now through the liturgy. Students will understand and appreciate the Liturgy of the Hours, sacramentals and devotions. Most importantly, the seven sacraments will be examined thoroughly that the students may understand the celebration, meaning, and fruit of each. For, it is the sacraments which carry to us eternal life and union with the Father.
