Curriculum
*Cycle of Courses 2006-2009
Theological Core Courses
LIM 703 Introduction to Practical Theology - 3 credit hours
This course seeks to help participants develop a rhythm of disciplined reflection and action for the
sake of the reign of God. The traditions of the church, culture, institutional life, and personal life are
the matrices of practical theology. Interpretation theory and social analysis are key components of
the conversation in which faith and daily life meet and build.
LIM 711 The Jewish Roots of Christian Faith - 3 credit hours
This course explores the religious heritage of ancient Israel largely through reference to its sacred
writing (the Old Testament). It examines the major themes of promise-fulfillment and covenant in
Israel’s history from the patriarchal period to the apocalyptic era, which was the context of Jesus’ life
and teachings. The events, metaphors, symbols, stories, and persons which become the interpretive
background for New Testament authors will be highlighted.
LIM 712 Christian Origins: Intro to New Testament - 3 credit hours
This course attempts to uncover “the kingdom of God” in the experience that Jesus effected during
His earthly ministry. A study of Jesus’ parables, healings, table fellowship with outcasts, and
intimacy with “Abba” lead participants to a root understanding of Christian religious experience. The
progress of faith developed in the network of Christian communities from Jesus’ death/resurrection
to the end of the first century in the common era will be studied.
LIM 714 Grace, Christ, and Spirit - 3 credit hours
In this course, students study grace as God’s universal invitation to personal and communal
transcendence (fundamental theology). The course examines the work of God’s Spirit (pneumatology)
in the redemptive transformation of human experience (soteriology), and focuses on Jesus as the
touchstone historical manifestation of God in human history (Christology). The course cites
important moments in the history of Christian thought, with attention to how language, culture, and
history have affected our interpretation of God’s saving acts (historical theology). God-person-world
meanings, with the theology of Karl Rahner as an example of a contemporary theology of grace, are
explored.
LIM 722 Church, Sacraments, and Ministry - 3 credit hours
This course helps students understand the experience of church through a historical purview of how
community has prayed and ritualized its experience (sacraments, liturgy) of Jesus Christ and how
ministry and leadership have functioned throughout its life (laity, hierarchy, structure). It examines
the church’s self-understandings as disclosed in this purview of the Christian community’s life. Special
attention is given to Vatican II and postconciliar developments in ecclesiology, especially, vis-a-vis
the theology of the local church.
LIM 704 Spirituality, Morality, and Ethics - 3 credit hours
Students study the connections between personal spirituality and Christian living as a background for
exploring personal moral decision making and social ethics today. A contemporary understanding
of sin and moral choice introduces a consideration of moral norms, conscience, and decision
making. Careful reflection upon and discernment of the basis of one’s own moral choices and decision
making are major components of the course.
Electives
LIM 744 Stewardship and Financial Management - 3 credit hours
This course offers a rationale for the integration of foundational issues in pastoral ministry with the
principles of sound financial management in parish settings. Application and management of
stewardship programs in ecclesial environments, measurement and reporting issues, managerial
accounting, and financial data for decision making are studied.
LIM 800 Topics in Religious Education - 3/1 credit hours
This course explores specific issues and concerns in religious education. Topics may include
history of faith sharing, experiential education, development of educational theory, educational
programming, art of teaching, developing a community of educators, and religious education in Latin
America.
LIM 804 Models of Religious Education - 3/1 credit hours
This course is designed for those students who are already or soon to be director of religious
education. Four interrelated areas will be explored: the role and responsibilities of the DRE,
administrative skills, models of educating and learning, and the prophetic dimensions of educational
ministry.
LIM 811 Old Testament Topics - 3/1 credit hours
This course focuses on particular books or themes from the Old Testament collection. Topics may
include Pentateuch, Prophets, the historical writings or the Psalms, and themes such as creation,
promise and fulfillment, or ritual patterns may be considered.
LIM 812 New Testament Topics - 3/1 credit hours
This course explores specific books and themes in the New Testament literature. The focus may vary
from the Pauline writings to the Gospel of John, from an inquiry into the teachings of the historical
Jesus to the vision of the Church in the Pauline mission.
LIM 821 Topics in Christian Theology - 3/1 credit hours
This course explores specific issues in Christian theology, including the broad categories of sin,
reconciliation, and political theory, or such issues as the contrast in ecclesiologies between Trent and
Vatican II.
LIM 825 Methods of Theological Reflection - 3/1 credit hours
Students explore a variety of methods for theological reflection, including theology of story;
journal keeping; process theology; liberation theology; the interaction of culture, tradition, and
personal experience; and case studies. In any given semester, one of these methods may become the
focus of the course.
LIM 832 Sacramental Topics - 3/1 credit hours
This course focuses on particular sacraments or groups of sacraments such as Reconciliation or
Marriage, sacraments of initiation, or sacraments of healing. In any given semester, the focus of this
course will change to address particular sacramental concerns.
LIM 835 Current Moral Issues - 3/1 credit hours
This course explores current moral issues in personal life, work/profession, and sociopolitical life.
Students will focus on a particular moral issue such as abortion or nuclear war or on the theoretical
and practical implications of contemporary moral theory in a broad category of contemporary life such
as sexuality or politics.
LIM 836 Human Sexuality and Christian Faith - 3/1 credit hours
The course explores the significance of human sexuality, its expression in personal experience, and
cultural influence.
LIM 842 Peace and Justice Ministry - 3/1 credit hours
This course explores the theoretical and practical issues involved in peace and justice ministry today.
Particular issues such as the morality of nuclear war, world hunger, and human rights as well as
pastoral approaches to community organizing and political participation will be studied in any given
semester.
LIM 843 Women’s Issues in Church and Culture - 3/1 credit hours
This course offers an exploration of the historical, psychological, and sociological factors which
continue to influence the patriarchal tradition in the Western World. The course focuses on the
perspective and experience women offer Church and society.
LIM 855 Psychology and Spirituality - 3/1 credit hours
This course offers an examination of psychological theories and classical theological models of
spirituality.
LIM 856 Topics in Christian Spirituality - 3/1 credit hours
This course explores particular classical spiritualities such as St. Ignatius’ spiritual exercises or the
spiritual vision of Meister Eckhart, or more generic themes such as prayer and contemporary
spiritual discipline.
LIM 863 Family Systems - 3 credit hours
This course offers an integrational perspective on family systems. The primary purpose of this course
is to help participants understand more deeply how the web of family relationships continues to affect
all of our interpersonal relationships, including our professional ones. A parallel goal is to sensitize
ourselves to the effects of family history on those with whom we interact as professionals in
counseling and ministry.
LIM 874 Special Topics in Ministry - 3/1 credit hours
Students in this course will focus on particular topics critical to their concerns in ministry. Such topics
as ministry to the sick and dying, ministry to the aged, and ministry in minority communities will be
explored in any given semester.
LIM 880 Ministry and the Arts - 3/1 credit hours
This course explores the use of music, mime, art, dance, media, poetry, and storytelling in ritual and
religious education. The arts are considered as vehicles of theological expression and liturgical
celebration.
LIM 885 Religious Communication - 3/1 credit hours
This course explores how a variety of communication media can benefit ministers in their particular
settings. Both theory and practice of contemporary communication media, especially the use of
television, are explored with hands-on experience.
LIM 890 Special Topics - 3/1 credit hours
This course number is used to offer courses on an infrequent basis. Typically, the course is offered once
using this number with a unique title. For a full description, contact the Institute office.
LIM 897 Practicum - 3/1 credit hours
Students wishing to explore the practice of ministry in specific contexts may apply to the director to
arrange a three-hour practicum which will include a reflective paper and supervised experience.
LIM 899 Independent Study - 3/1 credit hours
Students may apply to the director for independent study based on specific situations or needs. Forms
are available in the Institute office.
Focus Area Courses
LIM 701 Foundations of Religious Education - 3 credit hours
This course is an immersion in the tradition of religious education. It samples the array of
perspectives that inform and constitute the field and helps the students locate one’s own practical
understanding of its meaning and mission. It relates the religious character of education to its
explicit forms of practice within religious tradition.
LIM 715 Curriculum Development - 3 credit hours
This course examines a developmental view of curriculum and helps students achieve competence
in structuring learning processes that are engaging, appropriate, and effective, while understanding
the practice of curriculum as the crafting of an ecology of learning.
LIM 716 Religious Education Across the Curriculum - 3 credit hours
This course envisions a school in which religious education is set at the center of the academic
curriculum. Within such a school, religious education would obviously take the traditional form of
a discrete subject that is concerned with passing on to students the distinctive teachings of the Catholic
faith. This explicit focus of necessity remains but a part of the whole curriculum. What is needed and
taken up in the course is a more comprehensive and integrated understanding and practice of
religious education in which the religious educator partners with teachers to illumine the presence and
activity of God, of the sacred, that ultimately and intimately pervades every subject and discipline
as well as to affirm and support these teachers’ more implicit practice of religious education.
LIM 809 Inner Life of Small Christian Communities - 3 credit hours
A true Christian community is both gathered (faith’s internal life) and sent (faith’s public life). This
course examines the internal life of small Christian communities: their leadership, communications,
worship, and decision making. It includes historical and theological perspectives of the functioning
of Christian communities inside their own boundaries.
LIM 810 Public Life of Small Christian Communities - 3 credit hours
This course explores the public life of small faith communities. The course includes historical and
theological perspectives on the relationship between Christian communities and their surrounding
cultures and society.
LIM 813 Universe as Divine Manifestation - 3 credit hours
This course engages students in a process of discernment, interpretation, and response to the
natural world as revelatory, as a primary mediation and distinctive locus of divine presence and
activity. Our exploration begins with searching out this revelation in the cosmological order
through scientific insights into the structure and functioning of the universe. From this macrophase
perspective, the course shifts to the more proximate witness to the divine as this finds expression in
and through the planet Earth.
LIM 814 Emergent Universe: Our Sacred Story - 3 credit hours
This course asks participants to immerse themselves in contemporary discoveries and understandings
of the emergent universe and to reflect on its spiritual dimensions and significance. As we become
familiar with this new story, this sacred story, we will also attend to the data which describes the
urgency of the ecological issue with an eye to discerning its implications for the physical, psychic,
and spiritual dimensions of our lives.
LIM 815 African-American Experience in Religion and Culture - 3 credit hours
The course provides a means by which African-American culture and religion can be better
understood and appreciated each for its own sake as well as its contribution to world civilization and
culture. During the course, participants examine the interplay of religion and culture in the African-
American experience ranging from African antiquities through the African Diaspora to present day
expressions such as theomusicology.
LIM 816 African-American Experience and Black Church History - 3 credit hours
This course examines the history and institutional life of Africans and African-Americans in the
Diaspora, especially the Western Hemisphere. The study starts in Africa with ancient and traditional
African religions, continues into Latin America, and then on to North America with Roman
Catholicism, Protestantism, and their synthesis with their African antecedents. Emphasis will be placed
on the development of the black church in the United States as an institution.
LIM 819 Spirituality and the Theology of Work - 3 credit hours
Oriented to those students who understand their ministry as primarily taking place outside of
parish or other explicit ecclesial communities, this course investigates work and profession from the
standpoints of vocation and community. Vocation is considered as a transformation of toil into creative
work, and profession is viewed as an expression of the way one professes commitment to a
particular community. Creativity, redemption, and collaboration are explored in light of workplace
systems and the difference that Christians can make in the world.
LIM 820 Ministry in the Marketplace - 3 credit hours
This course helps students discern practical approaches to working toward mutually respectful, caring,
and just communities in diverse and pluralistic work and community settings. The course will
explore how images of collective life rooted in the biblical image of the reign of God can be
translated into contemporary societies and community life with respect for persons of varying
backgrounds and tradition.
LIM 827 Spirituality for Ministers - 3 credit hours
This course will discuss the theological foundation of Christian life and explore how ministry is rooted
in and gives expression to the minister’s relationship with God. Students will be invited to reflect on
prayer, discernment, and spiritual growth in the context of finding God in the midst of ministry.
LIM 828 History of Christian Spirituality - 3 credit hours
This course is an introduction to the variety of experiences and expressions of Christian spirituality
from the roots of the Hebrew Scriptures to contemporary spiritual writing. The course will focus on
monasticism, mysticism, and modern apostolic spirituality as a way of exploring the recurring
questions and challenges that shape the human search for God.
LIM 833 Hispanic Experience of Religion and Culture - 3 credit hours
This course presents an overview of the diversity of Hispanic cultures in the United States and
introduces participants to the history and development of Hispanic/Latino/Latina theologies that have
emerged in the United States context since the second half of the 20th century. Participants will gain
an appreciative awareness of various cultural symbols and expressions of religious life among
Hispanic communities and explore the implications of these for ministry among Hispanic peoples.
LIM 834 Pastoral Ministry in Hispanic Communities - 3 credit hours
Rooted in an understanding of cultural and religious experiences of Hispanics in the United States
context, this course explores various pastoral approaches that address issues particularly significant
in Hispanic communities. Theological reflection on ministry is interwoven throughout the course.
LIM 844 Parish Life and Ministry - 3 credit hours
The aim of this course is to help participants reflect on today’s experience of the parish in its many
shapes and forms. Pastoral practice and canon law are used during the course as reference points for
discussion of the pastoral and canonical issues raised by the student and the course content.
LIM 845 Contemporary Issues in Pastoral Ministry - 3 credit hours
This course examines a number of challenges and issues that pastoral leaders face today, especially
within the diverse forms of ministry found in local faith communities. Participants will explore various
topics related to pastoral ministry, including team ministry, transitions to lay pastoral administrators,
ministry in a pluralistic church, and a spirituality of pastoral ministry. Course participants will also
examine in more depth ministry to a particular population in their home community (e.g., youth
ministry, family ministry, ministry to the bereaved, ministry to single young adults, etc.) and will
present a needs analysis identifying the most pressing ministerial needs found among the populations
they have chosen to study along with their proposed ministerial responses to those needs.
LIM 849 Introduction to Pastoral Care and Counseling - 3 credit hours
This course is a religious and social psychological introduction to the basic stance of pastoral
care and counseling. It explores how pastoral counseling is like and not like secular counseling
practice and articulates the unique characteristics of forms of counseling calling themselves
pastoral.
LIM 861 Pastoral Leadership and Organization- 3 credit hours
This course explores the meaning of pastoral leadership in light of the current research in organizational development and ecclesiology and also addresses communications skills, group dynamics, and conflict resolution approaches. Current literature is surveyed in light of the mission of the church and the ecclesial vision of participants. Special emphasis is placed upon participative strategic planning processes and organizational development. Participants will analyze an organizational system for its strengths and weaknesses and propose interventions that would strengthen its organizational functioning. (This course is required for M.P.S. focus areas in small Christian community formation, religion and ecology, African-American ministries, marketplace ministry, Christian spirituality for ministry, Hispanic ministry, pastoral life and administration, youth ministry, and in the individualized program.)
EDGR A830 Counseling Theories* - 3 credit hours
This course is aimed to provide students with a comprehensive view of the major theoretical schools of counseling along the dimensions of development of the theory (historically and philosophically), development of normal and abnormal behavior across the lifespan, how therapeutic change occurs, methods and techniques, and approaches to special topics in mental health, including diverse cultures, gender issues, spirituality, treatment efficacy, and psychopharmacology.
*offered through the Department of Education and Counseling in Loyola's College of Arts & Sciences
EDGR A835 Counseling Practice* - 3 credit hours
Counseling Practice is a course designed to acquaint students with the special methods and techniques found in effective counseling. The curriculum is based on personality and counseling theory with a special emphasis on the logical extension of these research areas into practice. Techniques alone do not make an effective counselor. Effective counselors must correctly combine theoretical, clinical, personal, and professional issues. Lectures, discussions, guest speakers, demonstrations, and videotaped vignettes will be used during the term to help students develop the skills and the conceptual frameworks that are necessary for effective counseling.
*offered through the Department of Education and Counseling in Loyola's College of Arts & Sciences
LIM 897 Clinical Pastoral Experience - 3 credit hours
Ordinarily arranged through a local CPE supervisor in a hospital, prison, or other pastoral counseling setting, this CPE praxis experience acts as the capstone of the pastoral care and counseling focus area.
LIM 870 Foundations of Youth Ministry - 3 credit hours
The course examines the broad foundations of youth ministry with younger and older adolescents.
It then investigates a model for comprehensive youth ministry that incorporates developmentally
sound youth programs, strengthens the family’s role in the lives of young people, involves
adolescents as integral members of the local church, and reaches out to key individuals and
organizations in the wider community in the dynamic effort to promote healthy youth formation.
LIM 876 Adolescent Spirituality and Methods of Faith Development - 3 credit hours
With this course, students first examine in depth the phenomenon and characteristics of adolescent
spirituality today. They then examine typical stages of religious development during the adolescent
years. Finally, students direct their attention to a study of a variety of methodologies to enhance and
encourage the faith development of youth, and appropriate to helping youth grow in religious
knowledge and religious expression.
PRAXIS
LIM 886 Pastoral and Educational Praxis - 3 credit hours
In this capstone course, students employ the method of practical theology to reflect on concerns related
to their ministerial and educational praxis. Careful analyses that include the social and cultural
circumstances surrounding their identified praxis will be undertaken, as well as an appreciative and
critical retrieval of the voice of the faith tradition. Based on that reflection, possible educational and
ministerial interventions which meet criteria of pragmatic feasibility and religious faithfulness
will be examined and articulated verbally and in writing for evaluation and feedback.