The Monday night class after philosophy is practical theology, which I was looking forward to because...well I guess for the same reason that applied science is interesting: the theoretical stuff is all well and good but what do we actually do with it? And so far the answer is looking like, BURN IT TO THE GROUND!!!
No seriously. The instructor is a retired priest and child of the 60s. He wrote his doctoral dissertation about the liberation theologian Dom Hélder Câmara, was on Swiss TV in the 80s, and has written several books on practical theology. He talks fast ("like a machine gun" said one of my table-mates) and name-drops like crazy and seems to expect that we will all know who he's talking about. Famous French Jesuit theologians of the last 100 years? Anyone? I'm chronically lost in these classes, but this time I'm sure I'm not the only one.
His thesis is that the Church took a very wrong turn during the Constantinian Shift between 300 and 400 AD, when the movement based on Jesus's teaching was, paradoxically, adopted by the very empire that put him to death. The Christianization of the Roman Empire was accompanied by the imperialization of Christianity...and things went downhill from there.
So this should be fun?
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