When we encounter our own lives and the lives of others, several questions about responsibility and requirement are raised. Such questions often demand not only careful discernment but also decisive action. Yet many often wonder whether certain actions are right or wrong, just or unjust, good or evil. Others are restrained from action, debilitated by a sense of power but without any clear understanding of where to direct such power. Others still might act with a particular confidence and steady resolve. How are we to understand ethical demands and where might we discover the resources to navigate the dilemmas that confront us each day, whether such demands and dilemmas are obviously insignificant or potentially catastrophic? The intent of this course is to stimulate not only engaged thinking but also practiced postures that ready us all to confront the demands and dilemmas we will face each day. Put differently, this course aims to cultivate astute clergy, clinical caregivers, lay-persons, and professionals who are responsive to the needs, contexts, and insights of parishioners and members of the larger moral community who will be confronted by the panoply of questions and claims that arise each day in our everyday lives from before the cradle to after the grave.
This course is online only via Zoom, available as a synchronous or asynchronous course.