St. Louis University High School
Senior Theology
Goals and Objectives
Christian Life Choices
Full Course Title:
Religious Experience: Human Moments in the Midst of Mystery
Goal #1: Students will learn to write, discuss and reflect in such a way as to better exhibit two indispensable standards for academic work: openness and critical thinking.
Outcome: Students will prepare and present in class oral reflections on topics relevant to the course and their personal reflections and intended to inspire reflection in their fellow students.
Outcome: Students will write two polished and carefully written reflection papers on topics relevant to the course according to detailed reflection paper guidelines.
Outcome: Students will write a 5 - 7 page paper on a book of the own choosing but approved by the teacher in which they bring their own reflections and the key themes and insights of the course to bear on the content presented by the author.
Outcome: Students will write 6 - 8 journal assignments which ask challenging, open-ended and personal questions on topics relevant to the course.
Outcome: Students will participate in class discussion exercises designed to encourage them to share ideas, listen actively to classmates and allow new ideas to color their personal reflections.
Outcome: Students will read the assigned readings, listen actively to lectures and take quizzes and exams designed to measure their objective understanding of what is presented to them.
Goal #2: Students will come to appreciate the wide and inclusive character of the word �religion� and to reconcile themselves to whatever narrow, exclusive or negative conceptions or experiences of religion they may bring to the course.
Outcome: Students will be able to articulate very universal, positive and inclusive definitions of religion presented by two contemporary theologians: Paul Tillich and Thomas Merton.
Outcome: Students will complete an extensive journal exercise in which they review their history in religious practice and education with a special eye to the moments which spoke to them in a powerful and positive way or a narrow and negative way.
Goal #3: Students will come to better understand the burdens, responsibilities and joys of human freedom which is fundamentally a choice between life and death, authenticity and self-delusion, love and alienation, God and the void.
Outcome: Students will be able to articulate a"Fundamental Option" theology in which each free choice with moral weight contributes to an over-arching pattern of yes or no, life or death creating the direction and destiny of a person's life. In discussion and written reflection they will apply this theology to their own lives.
Goal #4: Students will thoughtfully, prayerfully and honestly consider their gifts and talents, their deepest and best desires, the needs of their community and the world, the example of Jesus and the faith of the Church so that they might become more aware of God�s personal call to each them, in the concrete circumstances of their lives, to live a full and authentically human and Christian life.
Outcome: Students will be able to articulate a definition of Vocation as the following of a call which fulfills both one's own identity, reflected in our deepest and best desires, and God's will, reflected in the message of Jesus and the teachings of the Church.
Outcome: Students will write a reflection paper in which they describe their vocation as they now understand it.
Goal #4: Students will come to appreciate the central and indispensable role of Jesus in making true human freedom possible and the Incarnation as the foundation for an authentic human identity. They will be able to apply an Incarnational Theology to each of the key topics or questions we will consider in the course.
Outcome: Students will be able to articulate the necessity of embracing the full humanity of Jesus if they are to have any hope of making his life relevant to theirs.
Outcome: Students will be able to express, in a deeper way than before, the mystery of the divinity and humanity of Jesus in such a way as to make it a concrete challenge for the living of their lives rather than an abstract theological principal to be affirmed.
Outcome: Students will write a journal exercise which challenges them to describe their past and present images of Jesus and their response to the notion of a fully-human Jesus as presented to them in the course.
Outcome: Students will be able to define and apply the �Incarnational Perspective�--a theological principal inspired by the teaching of Jesus and animated by his continued presence among us, which holds that God is to be found in the concrete, ordinary circumstances of life.
Goal #5: Students will examine and reflect upon their own sexual moral standards and behaviors.
Outcome: Students will participate in a rigorous �take a stand� exercise in which they respond to open-ended statements about sexual morality and are then challenged to examine those responses at deeper levels of personal conscience.
Outcome: Students will write a reflection paper on their own sexual morality.
Goal #6: Students will come to better understand the Christian and Catholic view of the sacramental or �Incarnational� meaning of sexuality and the body and the sexual morality which flows from it.
Outcome: Students will read material and actively listen to lecture in which the Church�s theology of the body, and the deep connection between the spiritual and the sexual are presented.
Goal #7: Students will come to better understand, in practical ways as well as in intellectual and spiritual terms, the rewards and demands of living out a Christian sexual morality.
Outcome: In discussion and written reflection students will consider conscience formation about sexuality according to the "negative" morality of avoiding destructive consequences.
Outcome: In discussion and written reflection students will consider conscience formation about sexuality according to the"positive" morality of sexuality as the language of love, covenant and sacrament.
Outcome: Students will participate in an open and frank discussion about the dynamics of sexual activity in dating relationships in order to highlight the way in which physical expression can become something which objectifies another person and destroys true relationship.
Outcome: When the schedule allows, students will participate in an open discussion on the topic of dating with both male and female students participating.
Goal # 8: Students will come to better understand the Church�s vision of the vocation to the married life and will reflect on the central importance of the married relationship in their own lives and the life of the community.
Outcome: Students will write a journal exercise in which they reflect upon their impressions of marriage, and their observations of their own parents marriage.
Outcome: Most students will conduct an interview with their parents or another married couple in which they seek to learn more about the married life. Some students will elect to interview a person who has made a different life choice in which they are interested.
Outcome: Students will read materials and listen actively to lectures which present various topics connected to marriage: engagement and preparation for marriage in the Catholic Church, the Sacramental theology of marriage in the Church, the Church�s teaching on divorce and annulment and on fertility and the regulation of birth.
Goal # 9: Students will come to better understand the Church�s vision of the vocations to vowed religious life and the Priesthood.
Outcome: Students will listen to the testimony of those who have chosen to follow a vocation to the vowed religious life or priesthood.
Outcome: Students will read materials and listen actively to lectures on the historical evolution and present nature and purpose of ministries and priesthood in the Catholic tradition.
Goal # 10: Students will reflect on the looming choices of college and career in light of the wider context of the course: freedom, responsibility, and the vocation to full human and Christian identity.
Outcome: Students will write a journal exercise concerning their thoughts and observations about leaving SLUH, entering college and pursuing a career.
Outcome: Students will participate in an �open forum� discussion on college and career.
Outcome: Students will read several articles intended to encourage reflection about how to find satisfaction and meaning in the pursuit of a college education and a career.