A Faith To Die For: The Christian Life in Catholic Belief and Practice

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

An introduction to Catholicism by showing how Catholic beliefs and practices shape the Church’s understanding of the Christian life. It is organized around the four basic parts of the Mass: (1) the Opening Rites, (2) the Liturgy of the Word, (3) the Liturgy of the Eucharist, and (4) the Closing Rites. In this basic format, many aspects of Catholic belief and practice are explored: baptism, the sacraments, the proclaiming and preaching of the scriptures, Holy Communion, the Blessed Virgin Mary, the witness of the martyrs, the lives of the saints, Holy Orders, religious life, marriage, Catholic social teaching, ecumenism, interreligious dialogue, and the mission of the Church in the modern world. In covering these topics and themes, several authors will help us: Hippolytus, Cyril of Jerusalem, Augustine, Aquinas, Thomas Merton, James Joyce, Graham Greene, Dorothy Day, Josef Pieper, Richard Rodriguez, Ron Hansen, Carolyn Forche, Christian de Cherge, and Popes Benedict XVI, Francis, and Leo XIV. The overall purpose of the course is to acquire and develop a broad understanding of Catholic life shaped by the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, and thus also to avoid the usual clichés about the Catholic Church—that it’s narrow, outdated, oppressive, unintelligent in its thinking—all of which are true sometimes, but not necessarily so. Put in positive terms, “the faith” will be explored as a constellation of beliefs and practices that come together to form a distinct form of life, one that is both deeply traditional, yet also disturbingly radical, in that it calls on the followers of Christ to die to themselves as the only sure road leading to true life.