Rick's CST Course

Back from a blogging hiatus, occasioned by, along with writing commitments, having simultaneously to hire faculty for our law school and a new rector for our (Episcopal) parish.  You lucky folks don't have to worry about the latter for your parishes (wink).

Rick has a great list of subjects for his course.  To follow up on Michael's post about the death penalty, I was wondering why there's not a subject heading about the tradition's emphasis on protection of human life.  Also following up on Michael's mention of development of doctrine, that would be a great subject, even though it's methodological rather than first-order substantive.  It's very accessible for a methodological topic, because a lot of people's beliefs about individual subjects are affected by a gut sense of whether and in what ways having the Church adapt to new circumstances is a good idea.  Plus there are engaging case studies past as well as current.  Spending a little time on a historical subject like slavery or usury can free students from total immersion in, and give them some perspective on, the currently debated topics.

Two concepts that are organizing themes for recent encyclicals are work ("the key to the social question") and development.  They could be dealt with extensively under the markets and internationalism headings.

Tom B.