American Catholic Radicalism: Liturgy, Solidarity, and Protest

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

How did the resources of traditional Catholicism– the sacraments, the scriptures, and the lives of the saints– enable figures like Dorothy Day, Father Daniel Berrigan, and Sister Maura Clarke to resist endemic violence, poverty, and political repression in their time? Can one be a Catholic and an anarchist? How have student anti-war protests on Catholic campuses like Notre Dame drawn on the Catholic social tradition and Catholic liturgy in 1968 and 2024? This course examines the development of a socially-engaged, Gospel-centered pacifism from the earliest witnesses in Scripture and the lives of the saints through their grounding in the teachings of the Catholic faith in a contemporary American context. Looking to movements such as the Catholic Worker, Ploughshares, solidarity with Central American, and anti-war activism from the Vietnam era to the present, we will explore how doctrines such as the imago Dei and the Mystical Body of Christ are enfleshed in the life of the Church.