People’s Catholic Seminary will begin a new on-line course the week of November 7. This course aligns with Unit 4 in the ARCWP Ordination Units and is free to ARCWP candidates and their program companions.
Registration closes November 1.
Many blessings,
Bridget Mary and Mary Theresa
http://pcseminary.blogspot.com
401: Sacraments
Facilitators:
Dr. Bridget Mary Meehan, ARCWP
Dr. Mary Theresa Streck, ARCWP
The course opens the week of November 7, 2016 and concludes the week of December 19, 2016.
Cost: $200 (financial aid available)
Register now at peoplescatholicseminary@gmail.com
Course Overview
Course participants will engage in dynamic conversations about sacraments for the 21st century through on-line blog postings.
The primary text for the course is “Deconstructing Sacramental Theology and Reconstructing Catholic Ritual” by Joseph Martos. Other supplemental material for the course will be posted in the interactive blog. Class discussions will focus on the material presented in Joseph Martos’ book.
According to Martos, Catholic sacramental doctrine has lost much of its credibility. Baptized people leave the church, adolescents stop attending shortly after they are confirmed, supposedly indissoluble marriages regularly dissolve, few go to confession, and many do not believe in transubstantiation.
Drawing upon his decades-long study of the sacraments, Martos reveals how teachings that seemed rooted in the scriptures and Catholic life have become unmoored from the contexts in which they arose, and why seemingly eternal truths are actually historically relative.
After carefully constructing Catholic teaching from the church’s own documents, he deconstructs it by demonstrating how biblical passages were misconstrued by patristic authors and how patristic writings were misunderstood by medieval scholastics. The long process of misinterpretation culminated in the dogmatic pronouncements of the Council of Trent, which continues to dominate Catholic thinking about the church’s religious ceremonies. If the sacraments are released from their dogmatic baggage, Martos believes that the spiritual realities they symbolize can be celebrated in any human culture without being tied to their traditional rites.
