Master's Degree in Theology?

[JGheen]

Lux_et_veritas:

How long ago did your dad go there?

I do know that people have told me that there have been significant improvements. Its just that I could not get away from some of the very people I wanted to avoid based on the first semester schedule. It was not how I wanted to start out.

Hmmm . . . I think he graduated 2 or 3 years ago. He studied part time at night, so both Masters programs took him a long time.

He was grounded in metro-Detroit by work and family, so I’m not sure if there were many other options for him. However, he made the most of his time there and met some good people - especially with Dr. Latkovic and Mark Reardon.

 

[cjmurray94]

Lux_et_veritas:

Unfortunately, Orchard Lake St. Mary’s is no longer in existence under that name. I could only find this on its recent history:

St. Mary’s was a college in dire financial straits when Monaghan purchased the school in 2000. The rejuvenated college was well on its way to becoming an orthodox bastion with a renewed liberal arts curriculum and student life thanks to Ave Maria’s timely intervention. Less than three years later, however, while negotiating an exit grant to see the college on its way to an independent future, the marriage between Ave Maria and St. Mary’s was annulled when Monaghan abandoned the college to Madonna University.

Full article by Michael S. Rose

Once Madonna took over, I had no idea what to expect. If it had remained part of Ave Maria University, it would have been well worth the drive and I would have felt confident with the orthodoxy.

Under Madonna (for the time being) The Catholic Integrated Core Curriculum is sound. However, it’s only undergrad. The Institute for Pastoral Studies, which was under Madonna after Monaghan abandoned St. Mary’s, is back under Ave Maria (for the time being). I’m sorry, but I’m just assuming that nothing is going to last “forever” with Monaghan, including Ave Maria University. You want to bash me for saying that, fine. We’ll just look at this in five years. I hope I’m wrong. I don’t think I am. Past history doesn’t bode well for it, in any case.

There is a Polish seminary on the Orchard Lake campus. The inquirer wouldn’t likely be interested in its approach of Catholicism, however.

 

[Rand_Al_Thor]

Lux_et_veritas:

I’ve just applied to the Franciscan University of Steubenville’s distance learning program because I know that the theology program is sound. In order to get residency requirement, I will have to go there two summers for just 3 weeks each time. They have compacted several classes into 3 weeks in order to facilitate these summer sessions. The rest are taken at home via video taped sessions.

I did this because I do not fully trust the professors at my home town seminary yet (Sacred Heart Seminary in Detroit). I started to take theology about 20 years ago there and ran into an unsuspected pocket of heavy progressiveness and feminism. I’m a traditional, orthodox minded female so that did not mix very well. A freind studying for the diaconate was pressing me to become a female deacon (Ordinatio Sacerdotalis was not out yet). The priest-professor was using Fr. Richard McBrien’'s “Catholicism” (most likely 1st or 2nd edition) which the USCCB had written several letters against and stated it is not to be used for Introductory Theology classes. But, they not only used it, they were clinging fast to the ideologies expressed in the book. After the professor made a less than charitable remark about the Rosary and people who say it, I dropped the class. It was just 3 weeks after it started.

Finding a solid Catholic seminary or university to learn theology is difficult. I don’t know about you, but I am going to study theology because I love the Church and I’m not interested in picking apart the faith in a dissenting manner. Yet so many programs do just this. I want a program that will teach me about the Magisterium and how to defend it not a program that encourages students to challenge the Magisterium.

Steubenville is well known for it’s affiliation with Charismatics, but I am told by many that the theology, material, and professors are very solid. In fact, Scott Hahn is on the graduate program faculty there.

I plan to write and would love to teach, however, the only place close enough for me to teach Catholic theology is at Sacred Heart Seminary. I understand it has made about a 60-70% improvement since I went there, but Bishop Bruskewicz and company have recently showed up for “the visit”. Also, because it is a seminary, I would be required to have an STL (Sacred Theology Licentiate), minimum, to teach there (typically follows a masters or is incorporated, I believe). When I get done with Steubenville, I may consider going back to Sacred Heart for their STL, if I see certain faces are no longer there. To teach at a seminary or pontifical univeristy you need the STL.

I too would be interested to know what else I could do with it.

More on the Steubenville program.

I’d say study thoroughly any theology program you are considering. Some, unfortunately, are actually teaching heresy and getting away with it (for now). The web is a good place to learn the good, the bad and the ugly about any prospective program.

Peace be with you!

My friend from my college’s Newman club is doing her master’s in theology at Stubenville right now! She says that it’s the best time she’s ever had because she’s, as she put it, “immersed in God’s revelation every day.” One of my other friends has a sister doing her master’s there as well (and I believe her sister’s husband is also taking classes there, but I’m not sure).

In Christ,
Rand

 

[wildleafblower]

University of Navarra is a good place.

unav.es/english/

"On January 31st 1998 Cardinal Ratzinger received honorary doctorates from the University of Navarra. The doctorates were conferred by Bishop Javier Echevarria, Prelate of Opus Dei and Chancellor of the University. The following text is Cardinal Ratzinger’s address…

[snip]

"Theology transcends human thought

"If theology wishes and should be something other than the science of religion, something more than confronting unresolved questions about what transcends and at the same time constitutes us, then it has to be based solely on the fact that it comes from a response that we ourselves did not invent. But for this answer to be truly an answer, we have to try to understand it, and not let it be diluted.

“The special nature of theology is that it concerns something that we have not imagined and that can ground our life precisely because it precedes us and sustains us, that is to say, because it is greater than our own thought. The path of theology is well expressed in the formula Credo ut intelligam: I accept a proposition previously given in order to find, from it and in it, access to true life, to a true understanding of myself. This means in turn that theology presupposes, by its very nature, an auctoritas. It only exists because I know that the sphere of my own thought has been transcended, because I know, so to say, that a hand has been extended to help human thought, a hand that pulls one upward, beyond one’s own powers. Without this presupposition, which always surpasses the capacity of one’s own thought, and which is never diluted into something purely personal, there would be no theology…”

kathsurf.at/lehramt/lehramt/ratzing.html
The best of wishes to you, Journeyman

 

[Journeyman]

Rand Al'Thor:

Peace be with you!

My friend from my college’s Newman club is doing her master’s in theology at Stubenville right now! She says that it’s the best time she’s ever had because she’s, as she put it, “immersed in God’s revelation every day.” One of my other friends has a sister doing her master’s there as well (and I believe her sister’s husband is also taking classes there, but I’m not sure).

In Christ,
Rand

Is this on campus or through distance learning?

 

[Rand_Al_Thor]

Journeyman:

Is this on campus or through distance learning?

Peace be with you!

It’s on campus for both of them. Actually, my friend’s sister is studying in Rome for a year.

In Christ,
Rand