TH 203 - Catholic Church: Life and Thought

(3.00 cr.)

Prerequisite: TH 201 . A survey of the seminal events of the two-thousand-year history of the Catholic Church. Because the Church's history is so vast and complex, and its membership so various, key events are presented through the prism of the lives and thought of major figures. Generally, the persons selected are canonized saints or those proposed for canonization; whether pope or lay woman, each is acknowledged to have lived a Christ-like life, sometimes under the most trying circumstances. Without exception, the persons studied are integral to universal Catholicism and can accurately be called re-formers of the Church. Profoundly involved with the ideas, issues, movements, and crises of their time, they exerted an extraordinary influence on contemporaries, becoming in the process exemplars for future generations of Catholics. In this way, they shaped the course of Church history. Students assess carefully why the weight of their accomplishments is felt even to this day. IC