Majors & Minors / Academic Departments
What types of jobs can I do with one of these liberal arts degrees from Christendom?
Majors
- Classical & Early Christian Studies
Classical and Early Christian Studies has two major focuses. The first is to have the student increase his knowledge of the literature, history, and mores of Graeco-Roman civilization even as he develops his grammatical, lexical, and rhetorical command of Greek, Latin, and–to a lesser degree–Hebrew. The second is to have the student appreciate how that civilization was transformed into Christendom beginning from the Apostolic Age through late antiquity and into the Middle Ages.
- English Language & Literature
Great literature is the gateway to that vast range of human experience which can be expressed and shared with a countless multitude only by means of verbal language transfigured by the moral imagination. Great literature allows the serious reader to enter into the very heart and mind of man, wherein the perennial conflict between good and evil is waged.
- History
"Historians are the guardians of memory." This dictum of the College’s founding president, Warren H. Carroll, aptly indicates the spirit and the purpose of the courses offered in the History Department. Dr. Carroll reminds us that cultures, like individuals, derive their identity in large measure from their memories. Historians are a civilization’s designated rememberers, those who introduce new generations to their heritage and encourage a vision that expands one’s awareness beyond his own age, and therefore makes him aware of the fundamental issues of human life and the ways in which different societies have grappled with them.
- Philosophy
Philosophy, the “love of wisdom,” begins in wonder and ends in an organized natural knowledge of the ultimate causes of all things. It is an essentially speculative discipline, one that seeks knowledge for its own sake and not for its usefulness. It is not a means to a liberal education but, along with theology, is the very purpose and end of a liberal education. Desirable in itself, philosophy also prepares the mind for the understanding of theology, the study of God based on Divine Revelation.
- Political Science & Economics
It is the purpose of the Department of Political Science and Economics of Christendom College to help restore all things in Christ by educating, through the regular courses, and training, through the Politics Program, Catholic leaders in the public forum. Knowledge of the principles of a just political, social, and economic order are essential to a renewal of the temporal sphere. In line with this purpose, the College through its two required core courses in the fields of Political Theory and the Social Teachings of the Church gives the student the knowledge of classical and Catholic political and legal philosophy up to St. Thomas Aquinas, and demonstrates the deterioration of the classical natural law understanding in the major modern thinkers.
- Theology
This department seeks to restore and advance the scholastic discipline of Theology, the "Queen of the Sciences." The Instruction on the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian reminds us that "the object of theology is the Truth which is the living God and His plan for our salvation revealed in Jesus Christ."(8). Every course is designed both to cover the perennial truth taught by the Church and developed by the Catholic theological tradition, and to expose the false steps which have led to widespread loss of orthodoxy in recent years. As the late Pope John Paul II stressed in his address to the Pontifical Academy of Theology, the vitality of theological study "does not lie in a relativism or historicism."
CIAO, ROMA!
Yes, that's a real student. And yes, that is St. Peter's in the background. Our classrooms are located right next to St. Peter's, so why not do a little reading on the terrace on a beautiful day? Find out more about our Junior Semester in Rome.
Minors
- Economics
The purpose of the science of economics, as the famous British economist Alfred Marshall said, is to raise up the poor. This is a Christian duty, but many well meaning Christians have either no idea or merely false ideas about how to do this. Good intentions are no substitute for sound economic theory. The economics minor gives the student the full range of economic knowledge, from economic philosophy, economic history, to advanced social teachings and technical courses.
- Mathematics & Science
The tradition of Aristotle and St. Thomas sees that mathematics is the science of abstract quantity, a science which arises directly or by analogy from a consideration of quantity as found in the physical world, which has the fundamental property of “having part outside of part.” The two branches of mathematics, Geometry and Algebra, arise out of the observation that the parts can have common boundaries (continuous quantity) or no common boundary (discrete quantity).
- Liturgical Music
Because true education involves the domestication—not the suppression—of the soul’s raw passions, and since music touches this non-rational part of man, an education in good music is vital. Aristotle, for instance, held music to be the most important of subjects in the early education of the children of his day, “not because it is necessary, or because it is useful, but simply because it is liberal and something good in itself.” And this is precisely the definition of the liberal arts: the study of things that make us free, more human and truer to our nature, and not simply the acquisition of particular vocational skills that help in getting a job.