The 15-credit Catholic Studies minor provides students from any major or discipline the opportunity to examine the social, political, economic, environmental, and health issues we face in the world today, and to develop constructive and positive solutions to these issues.
The minor in Catholic Studies provides students not only with a broad based interdisciplinary study of the Catholic Intellectual Tradition, but also fosters the development of the knowledge, skills, abilities, and moral and ethical understanding employers seek in today’s college graduates.
I have reconnected with my faith through passionate professors and discussion-based Catholic Intellectual Tradition seminars. This past year I was introduced to the power of learning with one’s heart and mind and about ecological conversion and the integration of theology and science. I will bring all that I learned this year to a seminar at Cornell where I am eager to have the opportunity to nurture and continue my faith journey and deepen my knowledge about ecology, theology and science.
Students who take a Minor in Catholic Studies will complete the University’s core courses.
These two seminars are Sacred Heart University's academic signature common core. They are a direct reflection of the University's Mission. These seminars provide students with an understanding of the roots and development of the Catholic Intellectual Tradition as an interdisciplinary, ongoing 2,000 year conversation between the great writers, thinkers, and artists of the Tradition and the cultures in which they lived, asking fundamental questions about God, humanity, nature, and society. Using seminar pedagogy, these seminars ask students to join in this conversation and relate the texts and ideas of the seminars to students own lives and to the world in which they live.
Prerequisite: Take FYS or FYWS 125
These two seminars are Sacred Heart University's academic signature common core. They are a direct reflection of the University's Mission. These seminars provide students with an understanding of the roots and development of the Catholic Intellectual Tradition as an interdisciplinary, ongoing 2,000 year conversation between the great writers, thinkers, and artists of the Tradition and the cultures in which they lived, asking fundamental questions about God, humanity, nature, and society. Using seminar pedagogy, these seminars ask students to join in this conversation and relate the texts and ideas of the seminars to students own lives and to the world in which they live.
Prerequisite: Take CIT 201
The remaining three elective courses will be selected from courses across the disciplines. The student will consult with the Director of the Minor in Catholic Studies to select his/her courses to complete the Minor.
This course is an interdisciplinary look at how Catholic thought and imagination have intersected with culture from the 1960's to the present time. We will look at texts, films, and art.
This interdisciplinary course explores the themes of sin, sainthood, and sacraments, particularly as those themes are depicted in Catholic fiction and film. The Catholic sacramental tradition is based on the belief that creation and human activities (rituals, saints' lives, etc.) can somehow manifest God's presence (i.e. grace) in a sinful world. We will discuss a diverse range of topics through a sacramental lens, as well as practices, beliefs, and debates surrounding both the sacraments and the Catholic tradition of canonization. We will particularly highlight the relationship between evil and grace in our various fictional texts, and how conversion so often entails a recognition of sin, both structural and personal. Students will be asked not only to learn common issues and symbols of the seven Catholic sacraments and the Catholic piety of sainthood, but also to reflect and discuss critically how issues raised by sacraments and sainthood continue to be relevant to their own lives and the contemporary world.
This course explores the experience of pilgrimage. Students learn in the classroom then spend ten days in Spain walking the Camino de Santiago.
Prerequisite: Take CIT-201
In this course we will examine how life's BIG Questions emerge in different popular films and television.
This course examines Catholic Social Justice in the contemporary world.
This course examines how religious, ethical, and cross-cultural themes emerge in plays and musicals.
This course will offer students the chance to engage with the longer history of feminist and LGBTQ movements in the twentieth century, while at the same time immersing them in how Catholics responded to historic debates about gender and sexuality that shaped political and cultural life in this same period.
The Catholic Studies minor has revolutionized my college education by making it an integrative experience. Complementing the clinical perspectives of my major, the course content, discussions, and the subsequent relationships I formed within Catholic Studies helped me find, and authentically express, my true self. ~ Jenna Calabrese BS Exercise Science '21
The core curriculum requirement of the CIT gives each student a chance to find themselves at a time in life when this is so crucial. The lessons learned here transcend through all aspects of life, and through every focused major studied here. ~Meghan Briggs
