Student thoughts re: "Law and CST"

Here are two students' comments on the "Law and Catholic Social Thought" seminar that I just wrapped up.

For years, I've been struggling with how to deal with my Catholicism in my professional life, and my profession in my spiritual life.  I was so pleased that the course gave me a chance to think through some tough issues, hear what scholars in both legal and religious studies fields had to say on the subject, and think about the kind of lawyer I want to be beyond 'litigation or corporate'.  I guess classes of Professor Garnett's sort are more standard fare at colleges and law schools with religious bents, but I was pleasantly suprised to be able to really *study* this subject with the seriousness it deserves, along side my other UChicago 'standard fare' classes. . . .  I hope that all students, regardless of religious persuasion or personal spirituality, may come to see our profession as a 'calling' or 'vocation,' rather than a mere job or career.

And:

Professor Garnett's "Law and the Catholic Social Tradition" course was a profound challenge.  It demanded a unique combination of humility and assertiveness -- assertiveness in arguing for one's own application of Catholic Social Teaching to a particular problem or concern, humility in trying to form and promote that answer in a faithful, faith-filled manner.  The class was largely comprised of Catholic students, which made painfully obvious the catechetical shortcomings of family faith formation, CCD and Catholic schooling.  So often the answers to the more subtle questions we were trying to answer remained virtually impenetrable because of a missing baseline level of knowledge . . . .  The discussion, too, was inevitably tainted by years of University of Chicago-style consequentialism.  But as a graduating 3L, Law and the Catholic Social Tradition provided an invaluable alternative to that prevailing ethos as my classmates and I begin law-firm life.

More to come (I hope).