M. A. in Pastoral Theology: Concentration in Catechetics 

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.

This course introduces students 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. We seek to understand Catholic education with the guidance of Sacred Scripture; Church Fathers and Doctors; recent Catholic historians, poets, philosophers, and theologians; and Church documents on Catholic education.

What does it mean to say that human beings are made “in the image of God” (Gen. 1:27)? What is human nature? What does it mean to call human beings persons? This course examines reflections on human nature and the human person found in the writings of great authors in the Western tradition, and it seeks to apply this wealth of knowledge to teaching and learning today. Readings are drawn from many sources, including Sacred Scripture, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, St. Augustine, Boethius, St. Thomas Aquinas, Karol Wojtyła/St. John Paul II, Robert Spaemann, and Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI, among others. Special emphasis is placed upon the writings of Sts. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and John Paul II.

In this course students acquire knowledge of key figures and schools of thought and practice on education through the centuries, and they become aware of 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. Other authors include Homer, Plato, Christopher Dawson, John Dewey, Henri Marrou, Mortimer Adler, E.D. Hirsch, Jr., and recent historians of American education and Catholic education in America, among others.

This course explores the three verbal arts traditionally known as the trivium: grammar, logic, and rhetoric. Students read classic works in each of these arts and discover the foundational role that they have in a Catholic liberal education. Authors and texts studied include Plato’s Meno, Gorgias, and Phaedo; Aristotle’s “Organon” (Categories, On Interpretation, Prior Analytics, Posterior Analytics, Topics, and Sophistical Refutations) and Rhetoric; Porphyry’s Isagoge; St. Augustine’s On Christian Doctrine and Confessions; Hugh of St. Victor’s Didascalicon; commentaries by St. Thomas Aquinas on various works of Aristotle; and works by more recent authors, including but not limited to St. John Henry Newman, G. K. Chesterton, Dorothy Sayers, C. S. Lewis, Stratford Caldecott, and Pope Benedict XIV.

This course explores the four mathematical arts and sciences traditionally known as the quadrivium: arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. Students read classic works in each of the four arts and discover the essential, integrative role that they have in a Catholic liberal education. Authors and texts studied include Plato’s Republic and Timaeus; Aristotle’s Categories, Physics, and Metaphysics; Euclid’s Elements; Nicomachus’s Introduction to Arithmetic; Ptolemy’s Almagest; St. Augustine’s On Order, On Music, and Confessions; Boethius’s On Music and Consolation of Philosophy; Hugh of St. Victor’s Didascalicon; commentaries by St. Thomas Aquinas on various works of Aristotle; Nicolaus Copernicus’s On the Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres; Johannes Kepler’s Astronomia Nova; Galileo Galilei’s Sidereus Nuncius, or The Sidereal Messenger; and works by more recent authors, such as St. John Henry Newman’s Idea of a University, C. S. Lewis’s The Discarded Image, Stratford Caldecott’s Beauty for Truth’s Sake, Francis Su’s Mathematics for Human Flourishing, and J. Jacob Tawney’s Another Sort of Mathematics, among others

Three 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.  

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

Three 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.  

Three 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.  

Three 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.