Letters From a Young Catholic

My reflections as a Catholic young adult passionate about the Faith, seeking to grow in knowledge and understanding of God and discerning the will of the Lord in my life.

Sunday, November 27, 2005

Last Day of Classes!

Today is the last day of classes for the Fall semester.

Maybe I'm a gluton for punishment, but as the first semester comes go a close, I'm already looking forward to some of my courses for next semester. I promise I'll take a break over Christmas - no one needs to convince me of the importance of that! I did summer courses all summer this past year (except for two weeks in Germany for WYD - that doesn't constitute a "break" or "rest") so I'm about ready now to relax for a couple weeks.

But anyways, these are the upcoming courses that I'm most excited about:

1. Christian Theology in Ecumenical Dialogue: A survey and analysis of the main achievements of the ecumenical theological dialogue process among the Christian churches, and the significant challenges still facing that dialogue today. The course is taught by a Catholic instructor, utilizing texts from Catholic, Protestant Evangelical, Eastern Orthodox, and Anglican sources, and guest lecturers from Catholic, Evangelical and Orthodox traditions. This should be a very interesting course and I think it's pretty much an essential for having a basic understanding of how to approach apologetics in an ecumenical context (both in terms of common ground and clearly defining differences without running around in circles). The prof for this course couldn't be more appropriate. He's a former Anglican Priest, a convert to the Catholic Church, and now has his STD (Doctor of Sacred Theology...not a disease...) from the Angelicum (St. Thomas University) in Rome. He's also the Director of the Divine Mercy Institute. Anyways, this is a course I've been looking forward to for a long time.

2. Philosophy of the Human Person: This course addresses what it means to say that human beings are persons having freedom and subjectivity and examines the different powers of the human person, including the powers of understanding, willing, feeling, and loving. In this course we will study the difference between body and soul, as well as the unity of the two in humans and explore the question of the immortality of the soul. We get to read St. Thomas Aquinas and Pope John Paul II. According to the professor, this is the course you take to find out who you are. Sounds good to me. Finding out who you are is usually a good thing in the end. The prof teaching this course just received his doctorate in Thomistic Studies two weeks ago and this course is his "pet project" so it should be a lot of fun.