Course Catalogue 2024-2025

This course is a brief introduction to the foundations - and some of the riches - of spirituality in the Catholic Church. It examines the nature of virtue (acquired and infused) and the gifts and fruits of the Spirit. It also considers the distinguishing features of Catholic education (elementary and high school) in the contemporary cultural context. It then invites reflection on the spirituality and vocation of the Catholic educator in this era of a new evangelization.

This course is geared to enrolment in the Artists' Workshop of the Institute for Christian Studies' ART in Orvieto offerings in Orvieto, Italy. It aims to integrate, through the writing of a major paper, the practical experience gained in these arts workshops with the more theoretical knowledge obtained through academic courses in the area of art, religion and theology. Building upon the activities undertaken in the workshop (discussion, visual journals, presentation of work and feedback) as well as the arts project accomplished, the paper will serve as a summative statement of what the student learned. It should demonstrate the student's analytical and interpretive skills as it seeks to find the points of intersection between artistic practice and the life of faith.

Few methods have been more foundational to the scholarly study of religion, or more subject to searching criticism, than the practice of comparison. This seminar offers an advanced introduction to comparative method in the contemporary academy by means of a close study of 4-6 significant comparative projects published in the last decade. Examples will be drawn from different sub-disciplines of theology and religion, including but not limited to ritual studies, philosophy of religion, comparative theology and/or ethnography. Students will engage various foundational questions of comparative method, including the presuppositions of the comparativist, the skillful construction of comparative examples, and the role of theory.

This seminar is an introduction to Sharia, the Islamic ethical-legal tradition or, more precisely, Sharia’s interpretation (fiqh). Of primary concern are the methodologies of its derivation, including its core principles, such as the Qur?an, the Prophet’s tradition (Sunna), consensus (ijm??), and reasoning by analogy (qiyas). The course will also introduce students to the theory of the objectives of the law (maq??id al-shar??a) and legal maxims (al-qaw??id al-fiqhiyya al-kulliyya), which are important resources in contemporary Islamic ethical-legal reasoning. It will examine Sharia’s institutions, the historical development of its schools of thought (madh?hib), and the processes by which ethical-legal decisions are made. Students will also have the opportunity to examine its applications in case studies of contemporary significance, mainly in the areas of biomedical ethics and sexual ethics.

This course explores creativity and its theological significance, drawing from interdisciplinary sources to consider the imagination, creative process and the arts in relation to the life of faith and spiritual practice. Even though creativity is often associated with intentional artistic endeavours, the capacity to imagine, improvise, innovate, and make/construct is intrinsic to human life e.g., in daily routines and relationships, rituals, stories, spiritual identity, personal resilience, empathy, community building, and peace and justice building. By paying attention to various dimensions of creativity, human and divine, the course investigates the making and perceiving of beauty in the world as an orientation toward value and personal and communal transformation. It thus seeks move beyond cognitive and entrepreneur models of creativity as well as dichotomies of action vs. reflection in theology. Particular consideration is given to visual arts and music.

For most of Christian history the interpretation of the Bible was a pastoral activity. Drawing on basic notions of post-modern consideration of 'reader response', we will survey the pre-critical interpretation history of the Bible from a diachronic perspective as an unfolding process across history, and in key synchronic snapshots focusing on types of interpretation as specific moments in the history. How do interpretations reflect and repress the tensions, inner dynamics and problematics of the biblical texts to which they are a response? How are they responses to the needs of the community in specific places and times? We will examine theories of interpretation and also actual examples of interpretation from various periods. Broad topics will include: early Christian interpretation of texts from Leviticus and Ecclesiastes, hermeneutic approaches of Origen, Augustine, Luther and others, mediaeval readings of the book of Ruth, Luther and Calvin as archetypal Reformation readers of scripture, visual art as a form of biblical interpretation, the emergence of historical-critical models of reading, and the cantatas and Passions of J.S. Bach as instances of affective and intellective interpretation.

Orthodox Christian thought has always been deeply concerned with ethical-social issues of the daily encounter with life and culture, but grounds solutions to these issues in tradition, not 'progress'. This course will follow an opening overview of the dilemma of ethical decision-making with a set of problems which touch on personal self-recognition. Issues under discussion will include personal rights, identity, gender, disability, and bioethical and other life concerns.

Orthodox Christian thought has always been deeply concerned with ethical-social issues of the daily encounter with life and culture, but grounds solutions to these issues in tradition, not 'progress'. This course will follow an opening overview of the dilemma of ethical decision-making with a set of problems which touch on personal self-recognition. Issues under discussion will include personal rights, identity, gender, disability, and bioethical and other life concerns.

A study of human sexuality, love, marriage and select related issues in light of Catholic anthropology and the Catholic moral tradition.

A study of human sexuality, love, marriage and select related issues in light of Catholic anthropology and the Catholic moral tradition.

This course seeks to provide both an historical and a systematic overview of the development of social ethics within the Catholic tradition, noting major themes in the tradition. The course presumes that one has completed at least an introductory course in Christian ethics at the graduate level. The purpose of the course is to assist students in forming moral arguments, engaging discussions on emerging issues, and placing debates within their historical context, including their contemporary context. All students will at the end of the course be expected to have a firm grasp of the ethical teaching of the Church, including knowledge of key magisterial documents, as well as how to apply them to situations they will face in their ministerial context. While the course will attend to major magisterial works chronologically, it will engage the issues raised by those texts as they developed over time. For example, Pope John's encyclical, Pacem in Terris, will be linked with growing attention to human rights as a foundation for world peace.

This course seeks to provide both an historical and a systematic overview of the development of social ethics within the Catholic tradition, noting major themes in the tradition. The course presumes that one has completed at least an introductory course in Christian ethics at the graduate level. The purpose of the course is to assist students in forming moral arguments, engaging discussions on emerging issues, and placing debates within their historical context, including their contemporary context. All students will at the end of the course be expected to have a firm grasp of the ethical teaching of the Church, including knowledge of key magisterial documents, as well as how to apply them to situations they will face in their ministerial context. While the course will attend to major magisterial works chronologically, it will engage the issues raised by those texts as they developed over time. For example, Pope John's encyclical, Pacem in Terris, will be linked with growing attention to human rights as a foundation for world peace.