Master of Arts in Religious Sciences
Hybrid
Courses
Common Core
SRO503Development, Religion, Culture and Society
2 credits
The course addresses the issue of development in an intercultural perspective and in relation to the different religious and socio-cultural areas within a single culture. It also aims to show the interrelations between concepts, research methods and complexity of socio-cultural changes; and identify problems related to the transposition of assessment instruments from one religion to another and from one culture to another, as well as outline the educational implications and the clinical perspectives.
SRO500Pastoral Reading of the Gospels
3 credits
This course aims at introducing the most important characteristics of the 4 Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) and to perceive them as a catechesis designed to meet the needs of the Christian community to which they are addressed. This course also covers the major themes of the Gospels and allows students to be challenged by the Evangelists on an announcement that reflects the needs of today's communities.
SRO501Psalms and Biblical Wisdom: Spirituality of Daily Life
3 credits
How to understand and assimilate the Psalms and biblical wisdom and their spiritualties? On the one hand, how are the Psalms words of God for believers today? How do they help us better understand the mystery of Christ? How are they prayers of humanity? And what life lessons do we learn in the search for God and happiness?
MTR501Research Methodology
2 credits
The overall objective of the course of research methodology is to help students develop a certain problem statement and a research plan, and it also leads them to become familiar with the necessary procedures and steps to write a better dissertation.
SRO502Symbolic Means of Religions (Prayers, Rites, Meditation)
2 credits
Our faith in the living God is not only fed by experiences and ideas, feelings and actions, but also great symbols and powerful images. To speak of the encounter with the living God, the Bible uses prayer, rites and places that marked the Jewish people and the early Christians and have acquired a symbolic significance. The course will allow the exploration of these symbolic meanings, an identification of the spirituality attached to them and a reading of our experience in the light of these symbolic meanings.
Specialization
ERP603Conduct of Catechetical Projects
3 credits
The objective of this course is to introduce students to different aspects of catechesis intervention and develop a capacity to enable them to recognize the main aspects of a catechetical experience (links to the Word, to the experience, to the Church, to the world, to the spiritual life and teaching models), learn to make a critical review and to implement them in given situations.
In addition, this course will also allow them to browse the different communication models on which the act of "transmitting" can be based in a church within a pluralistic world and in an "exploded" society and determine how to implement various catechetical projects while noting, in the form of personal synthesis, the basic elements of the current catechesis.
ERP601Lectio Divina
3 credits
In the monastic tradition, the lectio divina is a way to approach the reading of the Bible to relish it and draw on from the bread of life. The course will present the traditional teaching on the lectio divina, its place in the spiritual life (reading, mediation, prayer, contemplation) and its current application.
The theoretical teaching (How to do? What to do? With what measures should we approach the text? What are the difficulties?) will be structured around questions of students and a reading of John 9-11 which will serve as an introduction to the Word of God and a spiritual life journey.
ERP690AMaster Thesis in Religious and Pastoral Education
ERP602Mystagogy: Renewal of Connections Between Liturgy and Catechesis
3 credits
The word "mystagogy" is now on many lips. This certainly reflects the feeling that everything does not end with a sacramental celebration and that catechesis still has its place after the celebration. However, this intuition needs to be clarified and better defined.
We feel that there is a successful stowage between a catechetical process that precedes the liturgical celebration, the liturgy itself and a possible catechetical practice after the celebration. What conditions must be put in place so that the liturgical experience becomes “what we have heard, what we have seen, what we have touched concerning the Word of life (1 John 1: 1).”
ERP604New Grounds in Theology: Updating the Word of the Lord for Today
3 credits
Many pastoral interventions involve the actualization of the Word of God. How is it done? How to preach the Word? Given the double danger of an Orthodox word that is cut off from the reality of people or a popular word, but which dissolves the radicalism of the message, how can we be faithful to the Gospel?
ERP600Pastoral and Communication Means
3 credits
· In a world that is becoming more and more secularized, where Christianity is marginalized and whose language is not common, the Church needs means of communication to provide this secularized world with its pastoral care.
This course will be approached according to the two following axes:
Communication and testimony based on the idea “Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel”. This axis develops into practice the theme of the media as evangelistic and pastoral means. The transmitter sends a message to the receiver.
Communication and communion: the media will allow the closer bringing together of humans as brothers under the fatherhood of God. The communication of God is never without incarnation: Christ "the first and perfect communicator"; that’s why, the transmitter will not only become a message bearer but he himself becomes a message to the receiver.
Electives
PHL135Ethical Issues: Moral Doctrines of Religions
3 credits
This course studies the difference between man and animal then proposes a challenge to the human nature. It examines the question of man and human nature that seeks to determine if the man is the product of nature or culture. It also analyzes the problem of the plurality of cultures and the unity of humankind.
SRO506Moral Doctrines of Religion
3 credits
As part of this course students will be confronted with the foundations of the ethics of major religions, especially in the following areas: building an ethical discourse from the three dimensions that comprise it (universal, particular and singular), the human person, freedom, conscience, forgiveness, evil and suffering, and salvation. Students are invited to link these different foundations to a specific ethics issue (bioethics, social ethics ...) that they choose themselves and that they will present during the exam.
SRO505Schools of Great Christian Spirituality
3 credits
Christian spiritualties offer a great diversity of life paths for believers. These spiritualties aim to help them, through prayer and action, to become more human, to follow the Christ. Every Christian school of spirituality is inspired by a great saint and pore in it its originality.
Although its schools are coming from very different eras and contexts in the history of the Church, their inspiration (from monastic, active life, apostolic life, mystic life and contemporary life) always remains current. Through different faces of saints, the course invites students to find which spirituality schools they belong to.
SRO504What is Believing?
3 credits
What does "believe" mean in our time? Does God still reveal himself today? If so, how? In a world marked by science and technology, believing is becoming more difficult to explain. If one admits the spiritual search, it is very laborious to account for personal faith in the God of Jesus Christ. This course will enable students to become familiar with these two great themes of fundamental theology that are revelation and faith. Students will reflect on the human act of believing and the distinctions between spirituality/religion/faith. In addition to historical and theological considerations, this course tackles the transfer from Vatican I to Vatican II. Then it deepens the revelation as the mystery of God's communication that occurs in the heart of history and human existence.
Mission
Specialization in Religious and Pastoral Education introduces students to the realities of living faith, transmission of the Christian tradition and the maturing of religion and its pastoral at all stages of life.
It is of interest to both secular and religious persons eager to gain a thorough training in pastoral and religious knowledge.
Program Educational Objectives
1. Graduates will be active in teaching according to new computer techniques used today (teaching Catechesis and ICT; Church and mass media).
2. Conduct scientific research in the practical and pastoral field.
3. Train ecclesiastical and pastoral trainers.
Program Outcomes
a. Students will clarify basic views to acquire essential internal stability to the exercise of leadership in dialogue.
b. Improve the way to communicate orally and in writing.
c. Deepen their own spiritual or pastoral experience.
d. Learn to carry out rigorously the steps of research in pastoral theology.
e. Become a professionals in religious activities.
f. Interpret a religious phenomenon in a multidisciplinary aspect (sociology - psychology).
g. Pursue a thorough research work in the ecclesiastical domain.
h. State clearly and precisely the teaching of the Church.
i. Lead the listening centers in schools and rehabilitation centers.