The ways in which the Roman Catholic Church shaped its attitudes, practices and structures as it faced the "modern world" in the 19th and 20th centuries will be explored in a seminar being offered this fall under the auspices of the department of religious studies.
Last year, the department succeeded in obtaining funds from a foundation that requests to remain anonymous to support a course on Catholic thought. The first of these courses was offered last spring by noted Catholic theologian Avery Dulles.
This fall, Church historian Joseph Komonchak will lead an course titled "Catholicism's Road to Modernity: the Church in the 19th and 20th Centuries." The accredited course will meet 2:30-4:30 p.m. on Mondays.
The course will examine the significant moments and figures that typify both the Catholic Church's internal self-construction and its responses to the many facets of "modernity." The topics to be discussed include the French Revolution, emergent democracy, philosophical developments, the "social question," the First Vatican Council, the modernist crisis, the renewal of Catholic thought, and the Second Vatican Council and its impact on the church.
Professor Komonchak teaches in the department of religion at Catholic University of America. He has also taught at Union Theological Seminary in New York and at the Gregorian University in Rome. Although he has published on a wide range of theological subjects, he is perhaps best known for "The History of Vatican II," which he edited with the Italian historian G. Alberigo, and for "Foundation in Ecclesiology."