Catholicism, Sex, Law, and Politics

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

In an age of growing polarization, how should human beings relate to one another, as members of families, social communities, professional callings, and civil society? This course explores ways that Catholic theology and Western political thought, particularly feminist thought, can engage each other on a fundamental aspect of human relationships: sexual difference. Though these traditions are often in tension, conversation between them will richly inform our study of the course’s core questions: How should we think about sexual difference, and how ought contemporary men and women live and work together in the family and the public sphere? We will take an interdisciplinary and historical approach, moving from the earliest days of Christianity through the medieval, Enlightenment, and modern periods and culminating in the present day. Theological sources will be drawn from Scripture, The Catechism of the Catholic Church, papal encyclicals, and writings of various Catholic theologians and philosophers. We will bring these sources into dialogue with ancient and modern political thinkers, their relationship to the tradition of feminist thought (with particular focus on first and second wave feminism), and constitutional law. Throughout the course, we will study underlying theories that inform our core questions: ideas about human nature, the meaning of sexual difference, equality, freedom, marriage and the family, human rights, and the ends of government and law. We will aim to discover areas of compatibility between Catholicism, as a tradition of faith seeking understanding, and feminism, considered as a philosophical, political, and legal movement centrally concerned with sexual difference and its implications. The course will conclude with discussion of contemporary American debates about the relationship and roles of the sexes in marriage & the family, the home, the workplace, and public life. Students will learn both how to distinguish the modes of thought that characterize theology and political science as disciplines, and how to integrate them in order to draw conclusions about reality. They should emerge from the course not only well-formed in their own views on our focal questions, but able to engage robustly and charitably with perspectives that differ from their own.