CATHOLIC SOCIAL TEACHING IN ACTION (CSTA) (CERS-4712)

CATHOLIC SOCIAL TEACHING IN ACTION (CSTA): OPTION FOR THE POOR AND FOR THE EARTH
This interactive seminar, led by an instructor who has worked with marginalized persons in more than ten countries, and is composed of in-person and online participants, provides an opportunity to explore how best to put into action, more than a hundred years of Catholic Social Teaching. Often described as “the best kept secret”, this radical social gospel, which provides salt, leaven, and light for a world very much in search of values, responds concretely to challenges around poverty, immigration, health care access, homelessness, racism, gender inequality, and climate crisis. At its core, this body of teachings rooted in scripture, tradition, magisterium, and human experience, embraces such values as human dignity, solidarity, especially with persons on the margins, the option for the poor, unified struggle and committed participation towards the common good, and care for our common home, mother earth. The seminar uses a pedagogy which is interactive, one grounded in human experience and ecclesial belonging, hence opportunities to not only see Catholic Social Teaching in Action, but also to drink of its wider Christian and spiritual wells. Learning activities, rooted in community learning, assume that the students will come to the first session already having done some preparatory work connected with relevant readings, for example, a site-visit to a Catholic Worker house, Black Alliance for Just Immigration, soup kitchens, peace rallies, other forms of advocacy, etc., a movie review, online posting, class presentations, case studies, and a final project which entails designing a ministerial plan for a concrete setting. In the spirit of Catholic Social Teaching’s working towards the common good and inter-faith collaboration, the seminar welcomes persons of diverse faiths. Its methodology emphasizes intersectionality, for example, how women are doubly poor, how gender interacts with power, class, race, sex, and other cultural forms of marginalization. Course meets weekdays, 6/12/23-6/29/23, from 9am-12:30pm at JST 216.