Holy Apostles College & Seminary
With this course engagement project, Holy Apostles College & Seminary seeks to merge climate-related science and the Catholic intellectual tradition taught by our theology and philosophy programs. They are developing two new interdisciplinary courses through the guidance of an on-campus faculty workshop. They are also hosting a campus-wide lecture series presented by two climate scientists, a philosopher, a theologian, and the course instructors to educate our clergy, staff, faculty, and students about climate science and Catholic thought, especially the instruction given by Pope Francis and the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.
The first course, to be launched in the Summer of 2025, is titled “Climate Science and Catholic Thought.” It is a graduate theology course that covers current research on climate science, the teaching from Pope Francis’s 2015 encyclical letter, Laudato Si’, On the Care for Our Common Home, and his 2023 apostolic exhortation, Laudate Deum, to All People of Good Will on the Climate Crisis, as well as the proceedings from the workshops and summits on the climate crisis held by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences (PAS).
The second course, to be launched in the Fall of 2025, is titled “Our Physical World.” It is a core curriculum undergraduate course required for all first-year students. Because climate science deals with the workings of a global system, we want to unite in this course what physics, chemistry, and biology teach us about our role as stewards of the Earth with Scholastic natural philosophy, metaphysical principles embraced by the Catholic intellectual tradition, and divine revelation.
To develop two new courses, an Interdisciplinary Faculty Workshop titled “Climate Science and Catholic Thought” will be held in the Spring of 2025 on the campus in Cromwell, CT. As our two new courses are launched in the Fall of 2025, they also seek to better inform all their campus members about climate science and role as stewards of creation by hosting a lecture series titled, “Our Common Home: Science, Nature, and Creation.”
