St. Irenaeus Ministry

The Catholic Church claims almost 2,000 years of unbroken tradition. Certainly, the Church has had high and low points, and there are times when the continuity is difficult to find. Nevertheless, the Church can credibly declare itself to be the oldest continuously functioning institution in the world today.
 
How different the Church is today from the time of the house churches of the first century, the politically powerful church of the Middle Ages, or the often-forced mass conversions in the New World. Yet, despite all the dramatic changes, the Church today faces many of the same problems that it has faced for most of its two millennia: persecution (there may be more martyrs from the 20th century than from any previous era), division and scandal.
 
This course is devoted both to continuity and change. The Church has had martyred popes and at least one "rock star" pope. It has been persecuted and has acted as persecutor. Its saints include hermits and social activists, the illiterate and the scholarly, the rich and the poor. However, it is a belief of the Catholic Church that those now alive and those who died long ago and far away are in a fundamental and real unity as parts of what Catholics call the "pilgrim Church on earth."
 
In a general sense, this course is a narrative of 2,000 years. However, there is no attempt to give equal coverage to every division of time or every sort of thought or institution created within the Church. We will focus on certain key moments—for example, the fourth century when Christianity went from persecuted religion to the principal religion of the Roman Empire. We will devote several lectures to the 13th century - the time of Pope Innocent III, Saint Francis, the Fourth Crusade, and Thomas Aquinas, just to name a few of the highlights. Of course, we must examine the 16th century, which saw almost half of Western Europe withdraw from the Roman Catholic Church. Finally, we will consider several facets of the Church in the 20th century.