This course presents a survey of Church history, from the first century to the present day. Special attention will be given to major events, figures, and movements that helped to shape the life of the Church over time. This course is a hybrid course of alternating in-person classes held at Our Lady Help of Christians in Newton, MA, and online meetings using the Canvas learning platform.

This survey course aims to introduce students to the history of the Catholic Church from the beginning of the sixteenth century to the present day. Through an examination of the historical narrative, including its key periods, movements, and figures, students will come to a deeper understanding of the history of the Catholic Church in the modern period.

This survey course aims to introduce students to the history of the Catholic Church in the United States. It will provide a context for better understanding the mission and ministry of the particular church in the United States and the unique circumstances in which it has grown since its beginning. From the founding of Maryland in 1634 through the present day, Catholics have played a pivotal role in American life. Through an examination of the historical narrative, including its key periods, movements, and figures, students will come to a deeper understanding of the history of the Catholic Church in the United States and, through it, a deeper understanding of their roles as future priests and ministers in the nation.

This course is a systematic study of the foundation, nature, structure and mission of the Church. The course follows the treatment of themes found in the Vatican II Constitution Lumen Gentium, and gives particular emphasis to the revealed doctrine of the necessity of the Church, the holiness of the Church, and the relation of the Church to other faiths and to the temporal order.

This course provides a theology of marriage that emphasizes both its natural goodness and its sacramentality. This theology is anchored in Sacred Scripture and Tradition, and it serves as the context for a treatment of conjugal morality. In the first portion of the course, students will review the historical and theological developments pertaining to the sacrament of marriage, beginning with its biblical roots. The development of the sacrament of marriage then is traced: from the patristic era, through the Council of Trent, to key magisterial documents of the twentieth and twentieth-first centuries. Additionally, this course equips students for marriage preparation and to offer pastoral care to engaged couples, married couples, and their families.

This is a systematic study of the nature and mission of the Church, emphasizing particularly the vocation and mission of the baptized. All classes will meet in person at Saint John’s Seminary.

The goal of this course is to give the students a fuller appreciation of the liturgical life of the Church. This will be accomplished by first addressing a general understanding of what is meant by liturgy. The course will then look at each of the sacraments of the Church developing both an historical perspective of the sacraments’ liturgical expression and appreciation of the theology that underlies each of the sacraments. As part of the coursework the current ritual expression of each sacrament will be addressed to see how it continues the traditions of the Church and how it expresses the theology of the sacrament. This course is a hybrid course of alternating in-person classes held at Our Lady Help of Christians in Newton, MA, and online meetings using the Canvas learning platform.

Within the historical context of the Catholic social tradition this course will examine the continuity and change embodied in the teaching of three modern popes. The course will focus on the historical context in which they taught, the major texts they contributed to the tradition, and the commentaries about their teaching and the range of socio-political issues to which they addressed their teaching. A particular emphasis will be on issues affecting American society, including domestic and foreign policy.

A study of the 1983 Code of Canon Law marriage canons in their historical and doctrinal context with special consideration given to consent, covenant, and sacrament, as well as mixed and interfaith marriages and pastoral preparation and care for persons marrying.

The field of science and technology is an ever-evolving and rapidly developing field that has given rise to countless new possibilities, particularly in the area of healthcare. Although such an enterprise seems enticing, these new developments, especially within the last century, have raised a number of moral questions. Just because something is technically possible does not necessarily mean that it should be done. This course will cover the fundamental principles of Catholic bioethics to see how the Church has consistently responded to bioethical questions from the perspective of both faith and reason. Students will utilize these principles to develop sound moral reasoning to respond to bioethical questions and issues with truth and charity.

The purpose of this course is to develop a proficiency in reading Ecclesiastical Latin at an intermediate level.

It is assumed that the student has had no formal instruction in Latin or has had only one or two years of high school Latin.

This course provides the student with a systematic introduction to the Western liturgical patrimony of the Catholic Church. It examines the historical, theological, canonical, and pastoral realities which undergird the celebration of the liturgy. In the first part of the course, the student will come to understand the origins of the liturgy and its major eras of development and reform. In the second part, the principal liturgical books of the Roman Rite are examined in detail, since these are the texts which a candidate for Holy Orders will encounter most frequently in the work of ministry. In the third part, pastoral considerations for the contemporary celebration of the liturgy are discussed.

This course will provide students with a broad overview of the social, political, and religious world of the New Testament and of central issues in New Testament interpretation such as the quest for the historical Jesus, the relationship between the four gospels, the role of Paul in the emerging Christian movement, and the centrality of the resurrection to the life and theology of the early Church. After studying these foundational topics, we will move on to survey key books of the New Testament, taking into account the literary, historical, and theological significance of these texts. This course is a hybrid course of alternating in-person classes held at Our Lady Help of Christians in Newton, MA, and online meetings using the Canvas learning platform.

The class will pursue a close exegetical analysis of the letters, with particular attention to the historical setting, style, author and audience, political and social issues. The course will also develop the student’s ability to integrate Paul’s perspective meaningfully into preaching, teaching, and theological reflection.

This course builds upon undergraduate introductions to the Christian Bible and acquaints students with various approaches to the Sacred Scripture as described in the Pontifical Biblical Commission’s document “The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church.” The course investigates the nature of Hebrew poetry. The literary, historical, and theological dimensions of the Old Testament will be disclosed through an exegetical study of selected texts from the prophetic and sapiential literature. There is a special emphasis placed upon the theological message of these texts.

This course will survey the interpretive history of the parables of Jesus, explore their complexity, and focus on why some see the parable as a bridge that may lead back to the original voice of Jesus. The class will also discuss the meaning of the parables based primarily upon an exegetical and narrative analysis of the text with attention to current discussions in the scholarly literature. This course aims to develop the student’s ability to appreciate how parables support the evangelists’ overall theological perspective which enables one to integrate it meaningfully into preaching, teaching, and theological reflection. Completion of the course should give the student the ability to: apply various interpretive methodologies to parabolic material; explore issues that pertain to the historical Jesus; understand the parables in their historical context; draw interpretive conclusions from the context of the overall narrative; utilize the parables for preaching, teaching, and pastoral applications; survey the treatment of parables from the secondary literature

Philosophy is the pursuit of wisdom. This course will provide an introduction to metaphysics, centering on Thomas’s achievement in enunciating the real distinction. It will also give an overview of modern Western philosophical critiques of metaphysics, focusing on Descartes, Kant, and Nietzsche. It will also examine Pope St. John Paul II’s contribution to the relation of faith and reason. An important goal of the course will be to equip students to research and write academic papers. This course is a hybrid course of alternating in-person classes held at Our Lady Help of Christians in Newton, MA, and online meetings using the Canvas learning platform.

This course includes a general theory of the sacraments based on the principles of Catholic sacramental realism and examines the major moments in the history of sacramental theology with the aim of achieving a measure of systematic understanding concerning what a sacrament is and what it does. The Catechism of the Catholic Church and other documents of faith, such as liturgical and conciliar texts, supply the principles for this theological inquiry, which also includes particular treatment of the sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation.

This course will lead students to a deeper understanding of the mystery of the Triune God and of Jesus Christ, through a reflection upon Scripture, Tradition, and the contributions of key theologians. Additional topics in soteriology will be explored. Theologians covered will include St. Anselm, St. Thomas Aquinas, Luther, and Pope St. John Paul II. Using the theo-drama of Hans Urs von Balthasar, students will learn to enunciate the relation of mission and evangelization to Christology. All classes will meet in person at Saint John’s Seminary.