Theology

Students in this course will explore social justice issues, the foundational principles of Catholic social teaching, and apply their knowledge and faith to their experiential service work by engaging in an ongoing community service project. This course requires students to engage in learning about the organizations and communities they serve, the challenges they face, and issues of social justice on a local, national, and global level. While students engage in their service projects independently, they meet as a group to examine the theological foundations of social justice, discuss readings, current events, and to share reflections on their experiences. The coursework includes assigned readings, a reflection journal, and culminates with a final project presentation or research project. For Fourth Formers.

The Life Worth Living course aims to engage students in critical discussion about the most important question of our lives: What is a life worth living? What kind of life would be truly worth wanting? What kind of world would be truly worth seeking? How ought I to live? This course spurs critical thinking on the question of what constitutes a flourishing life by drawing upon several religious and philosophical traditions, as well as literature, poetry, and art. Students and teachers together approach the core question—what is a life worth living? – by examining different models of the good life, by active reflection, discernment, and how to pursue the good life, and by practicing collective habits of discussion within a respectful, honest, and diverse community of learners. For Sixth Formers.

This semester course is an introduction to moral philosophy. We’ll discuss various theories in moral philosophy regarding what makes actions right or wrong, what makes someone a good person, and what it takes for a person to be morally responsible for some action or attitude. We will ask a number of questions about such claims in order to better understand the nature of morality. With respect to all of the questions, we will investigate competing answers and critically engage with them to evaluate their strengths and weaknesses. First, we will ask what we are doing when we say that an action is wrong: are we expressing a negative emotional reaction to it, offering our personal opinion, or making an objective claim about the action that it is possible to be mistaken about? Second, we will ask what makes actions right or wrong: is it the consequences of the action, or whether or not we have a duty to perform the action, or whether or not good people characteristically perform those actions? This course aims to evaluate these moral theories, in part, by focusing on how they bear on particular contemporary moral issues but also to improve the student's ability to think carefully and critically about ethical issues and to express his/her own views in a clear, well-reasoned way through both writing and conversation.

Grief and Loss is an exploration into the different aspects of grief, death, and life. Students will explore common misinformation about grief, as well as the different types of loss other than death. Other topics covered are different cultural perspectives on death, the survivor’s experience of grief, and different cultural and religious beliefs about life after death. We also explore near-death experience and conclude the course by reading the book The Shack. The goal of the course is to introduce students to loss in a way that is informative and gives them the tools to help navigate this experience in the future.