As an advanced moral theology course, this course treats in an in-depth manner specific issues that confront the personal moral life of Christians. It presents both official Church teachings on the topics as well as the learned opinions of moral theologians. The students will be trained in applying the fundamental principles of moral reflection provided in Fundamental Moral Theology to the more concrete issues affecting the lives of ordinary Christians today. Karol Wojtyla’s “Love and Responsibility”
Even before he assumed the papacy, Karol Wojtyla had already produced a remarkably eloquent and cogent defense of Catholic tradition in the sphere of family life and sexual morality. His major work, Love and Responsibility (1960), drawn from his own pastoral experiences as a priest and bishop, and based on his Christian Personalism, contains his philosophico-theological persuasions on the sexual self-realization of the human person.
This course is a systematic attempt at an understanding and appreciation of the mind of the Personalist philosopher who became Pope John Paul II. It will explore his life and times, especially mindful of the significant influences that shaped his thinking, examine in depth his aforementioned opus as the result of what he calls an incessant confrontation of doctrine with life, and enable the students to engage in meaningful discussions on the moral issues which Wojtyla addressed and which have remained controversial even in our time. Ethics of Death and Dying
For the Christian, death marks the point when “life is changed, not ended.” Such a perspective seeks to console those who approach death and counsels openness to it. At the same time, it affirms a continuity between life and death, even a certain priority of life over death. Decisions that facilitate death or delay death, whether one’s own or that of another, and other human behavior surrounding death and dying make up the matter for ethical reflection in this course. Analysis will be based on scripture, tradition, and selected contemporary texts.
