Catholic Social Learning: Educating the Faith That Does Justice

by Roger Bergman

Overview

The canon for Catholic social teaching spreads to six hundred pages,yet fewer than two pages are devoted to Catholic social learning or pedagogy. In this long-needed book, Roger Bergman begins to correct that gross imbalance. He asks: How do we educate (lead out) the faith that does justice? How is commitment to social justice provoked and sustained over a lifetime? To address these questions, Bergman weaves what he has learned from thirty years as a faith-that-does-justice educator with the best of current scholarship and historical authorities. He reflects on personal experience; the experience of Church leaders, lay activists, and university students; and the few words the tradition itself has to say about a pedagogy for justice.Catholic Social Learning explores the foundations of this pedagogy, demonstrates its practical applications, and illuminates why and how it is fundamental to Catholic higher education. Part I identifies personal encounters with the poor and marginalized as key to stimulating a hunger and thirst for justice. Part II presents three applications of Catholic social learning: cross-cultural immersion as illustrated by Creighton University's Semestre Dominicano program; community-based service learning; and the teaching of moral exemplars such as Dorothy Day, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and Archbishop Oscar Romero. Part III then elucidates how a pedagogy for justice applies to the traditional liberal educational mission of the Catholic university, and how it can be put into action.Catholic Social Learning is both a valuable, practical resource for Christian educators and an important step forward in the development of a transformative pedagogy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780823233281
Publisher:	Fordham University Press
Publication date:	04/15/2011
Edition description:	3
Pages:	228
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Roger Bergman is the founding director of the Justice and Peace Studies Program at Creighton University, where he is also Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology.

Table of Contents

Preface vii

Acknowledgments xi

Part I Foundations

1 Personal Encounter: The Only Way 3

2 Ignatian Pedagogy and the Faith That Does Justice 21

3 Teaching Justice After MacIntyre: Toward a Catholic Philosophy of Moral Education 39

Part II Applications

4 Immersion, Empathy, and Perspective Transformation: Semestre Dominicano, 1998 59

5 "We Make the Road by Stumbling": Aristotle, Service-Learning, and Justice 77

6 Meetings with Remarkable Men and Women: On Teaching Moral Exemplars 92

Part III Institution and Program

7 Education for Justice and the Catholic University: Innovation or Development? An Argument from Tradition 119

8 Aristotle, Ignatius, and the Painful Path to Solidarity: A Pedagogy for Justice in Catholic Higher Education 137

Notes 163

References 183

Index 195

Editorial Reviews

Roger Bergman has been doing justice for the past thirty years and teaching others in masterly fashion to do it. In this volume, he articulates his vast experience of doing and teaching to the benefit of all of us. I cannot think of a single reader, experienced or inexperienced in the area of social justice, who will not be greatly enriched by reading his reflections and following his instructions in this book.

Professor Emeritus of Catholic Theology, Creighton University - Michael G. Lawler

Roger Bergman has been doing justice for the past thirty years and teaching others in masterly fashion to do it. In this volume, he articulates his vast experience of doing and teaching to the benefit of all of us. I cannot think of a single reader, experienced or inexperienced in the area of social justice, who will not be greatly enriched by reading his reflections and following his instructions in this book.-Michael G. Lawler

"Bergman's summary of the Jesuit commitment to justice in higher education is superb."-Teaching Theology and Religion

From the Publisher