This course helps students to understand the unity of God’s plan of salvation from Creation to the Second Coming. By a thorough overview of the Old and New Testaments, this course introduces Catholic exegetical approaches and theological interpretation, aiding students in reading Scripture as the Word of God. Students engage some comparative primary texts and grapple with historiographical questions that help them to demonstrate the reliability of the Bible. With a special focus on the themes of covenant and mission, the course illustrates how Jesus fulfills God’s promises and how He invites His followers to share in His work of evangelization.

This course offers a synthetic introduction to the Christian faith through its central mysteries, in which “God has spoken to us by his Son” (Heb. 1:2), and their sacramental, liturgical, moral, and spiritual fullness in the life of the Church. Students will read from the whole Catechism of the Catholic Church, alongside the Fathers and Doctors of the Church.

This course journeys from the historical roots of Christianity to modern times with primary sources from the Church’s greatest saints and theologians. Central to this story are basic questions about the nature of the Church and of the spiritual and moral life. The lives and writings of the saints offer the chief examples of the divinized life, for they show us how to obey the Lord’s command, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Matt. 16:24).

Among all the books of the Bible, the Gospels have “a special preeminence,” according to the Second Vatican Council, “for they are the principal witness for the life and teaching of the incarnate Word” (Dei Verbum, 18). This course examines Jesus’ life and mission in light of the Synoptic Gospels and the Gospel of John. Students engage insights from historical research into the life of Jesus and the world of first-century Judaism as well as gain a deeper understanding of the Gospels as narrative. In addition, the Gospels are also studied for their perennial theological and spiritual significance.

Students will be introduced to the ends, principles, and means of Catholic education, with special emphasis placed upon the human person, the classical liberal arts, and the integration of all learning in the light of the Catholic Faith.

Students will receive a firm grounding both in philosophical and theological anthropology as well as in what it means to be a human person, with special emphasis on the teachings of Sts. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and John Henry Newman.

Students will gain a knowledge of key figures and schools of education through the centuries and be able to identify how the history of Western education was informed and enriched by the Catholic Church and its influence on society and culture; special attention is given to the teachings of Fathers and Doctors of the Church, Church documents on education, and the rich, centuries-long tradition of Catholic liberal education.

Student will be encouraged to see and to experience their teaching vocation as the loving formation of their students in moral, intellectual, and theological virtue; students will acquire a firm, experiential knowledge of the best teaching styles, from leading stimulating and productive Socratic conversations to delivering dynamic, engaging lectures (as well as various “hybrid” forms of teaching).

Four courses in which students explore the areas of catechetics appropriate for K-12 Catholic schools and acquire the best methods and skills for teaching the basic truths of the Catholic Faith to their students.  

Four courses to prepare students to teach literature, history, and related subjects from a Catholic perspective and informed by the Catholic tradition.

Four courses that will extend the students training in the principles and practices of Classical pedagogy, with special emphasis on the seven liberal arts and the formation in students of a disciplined mind that has learned how to learn.  

Four courses that begin with a study of the quadrivium and proceed to an integrated approach to mathematics and natural science within a well-ordered Catholic curriculum, with special attention to questions about the relationship between faith and reason.  

Four courses that prepare aspiring teachers to teach in Catholic grammar schools, with emphasis on the formation of the imagination, the trivium (grammar, logic, and rhetoric), and elementary math and science.