Morning lesson planning.

I have an hour. What can I do in an hour?

Priorities:

• Write quiz for summer reading discussion today
• Record grades for Freshmen homework
• Compress remaining goals into abbreviated lessons for today(46 minutes) and tomorrow (37 minutes)

For the Juniors I have a little more time (46 minute prep before period C; lunch and lab monitoring for the remaining three periods).

• Give general credit to C-period juniors who turned anything in (theirs was the period that bombed yesterday).
• Generate Paschal Mystery research worksheet for use with all Junior periods.
• Introduce central concepts of the Incarnation in a rote way.
• Introduce the Catechism and how to use it with more depth.
• Have the class complete same exercise as other periods, with the Paschal Mystery instead of the Incarnation.

For the Junior classes that had a successful day yesterday:

• Open the class by having a recorder generate a sheet of notes based on student answers to yesterday's research questions.
• Repeat exercise with the Paschal Mystery research worksheet.

Morning thoughts

Wow, this thing is almost becoming a twitter with the frequency of updates.

First, personal thoughts. Two issues have been occupying my mind.

• Cognitive dissonance.

If it was one thing I prided myself on during my seminary years, it was my unyielding attachment to sheer consistency of belief, thought, and action. Now, that does not imply that my thoughts were always based on sound judgement, nor that my actions were never subject to human weakness. But nevertheless, I relished the notion that my Catholic faith was like a hot iron, pressing out the wrinkles of intellectual obscurity. I still hold on to the conviction that real faith is the archimedian point for the life of the mind. But one effect of my living as a layman is that much of my anxiety about personal failings has decoupled and slowly fallen away. The failings are there; the sense of urgency and guilt about them is not. The iron is not has hot as it used to be. Is this a sign that I am allowing cognitive dissonance into my own framework? This was always the most irritating thing I observed in liberal Catholic authorities and pundits. Or is the ability to accept failure a sign of growing maturity?

• Contraposition of belief vs. neurology as motivators.

The MSN website ran a couple of cheesy articles on how differences between the male and female brain can affect behaviors and explain certain habits. I'm not at all opposed to the idea that we are substantially moved by biology. But the articles highlighted for me the wonder that the human organism is governed by such a thing as "belief" at all. That a mammal should have access to rational thought, and through the science of logic gain entry into being (at all! let alone well), is to me the most fascinating and wonderful thing. Perhaps it is a red herring, in the "homo sapiens are special" debate, to look for essential differences between humans and animals on the natural plane. Still, it bears reflecting: an ape can learn sign language. Can an ape worry about whether he is allowing cognitive dissonance into his motivations?

Mayday! Mayday!

Lesson plan failure! The plane is going down!

All right, so I introduced a few resources for theological research and described what they were used for, and then I set the class to the task of answering a few questions about the Incarnation using those resources.

That was dumb.

Let's recover.

1. Review three branches of theology.
2. Present PowerPoint on resources for theological research
3. Incorporate in-class assignment into PowerPoint. Give specific locations in CCC and Bible in order to answer questions. Include a question about love.

UPDATE: Evasive manuevers successful! Class now productive and educational. Must apologize to period C tomorrow.

Little snag in lesson planning

First of all, the good news: I finished the preliminary UbD process for the first two weeks of the Sacraments class.

That means that, for all intents and purposes, my lesson planning is done, but... I've hit a snag. I've set aside Wednesday and Thursday to introduce the Incarnation and the Paschal Mystery. But I don't want to revert to lecture. I thought I could work around this by introducing the students to theological research, and essentially having them come up with central concepts through research. Yet this introduces an element of risk.

And on top of that I wanted somehow to connect all of this with love. *sigh*. How to do this?

• Write quiz for Friday so I know what my students absolutely need to know.
• Break the quiz down into two worksheets with questions and fill-in-the-blank to be filled out with student research.
• Include on the worksheets a personal response section in which the student is prompted to connect the "love lyrics" presentations to the patterns discovered in research.

Sacraments lesson planning, Part 5: Assessments

The second of the UbD book on assessments is thankfully brief--just two chapters--so we will see what assessments emerge from the previous work here.



What previous work? First, we sketched and prioritized the various subject matter of the first unit.

Outer: Worth Being Familiar With

• Divergent beliefs of Catholics and Protestants about Christian
  fundamentals


• Alternate theories of Soteriology


• Avery Dulles' Models of the Church


• Importance of Paul's letters for Christian theology.

Middle: Important to Know and Do

• Terms: agape, eros, incarnation, grace, paschal, pentecost, mystical


• Look up passages from Scripture; read for understanding


• Look up passages from the Catechism; read for understanding

Center: Big Ideas and Core Concepts

Big ideas: authentic love, incarnation, Paschal Mystery, atonement, participation, Pentecost, Church

Big ideas framed as understandings:

• To call God "Love" both respects God's mysteriousness and summarizes his self-revelation to human beings.


• The Paschal Mystery is the linchpin of God's love and of Christian
  salvation.


• The Church is the visible continuation of the presence of Christ and the Paschal Mystery throught the power of the Holy Spirit.

Core tasks:

• Critically examine uses of the word "love" in popular discourse and in theology.


• Explain how the Paschal Mystery fulfills Jesus' promise of eternal life.


• Interpret data about the Catholic Church according to the distinction between its human and divine dimensions.

Then, we took the "answers" from the textbooks and turned them into a small group of "essential questions":

• 
  

  
  

  (Topical, Open) How exactly does the Paschal Mystery "work"? What does the
  political execution of a 1st century Palestinian Jew by the Roman Empire have to do with me?

  
  

  (Overarching, Open) What do God's actions reveal about love? What does love
  look like for Catholics?

  
  

  (Topical, Guiding) Why is a Church necessary? What are the alternatives? Why
  didn't Jesus simply stay on Earth?

  
  

  (Overarching, Guiding) What is the best way to represent ("re-present") the
  person, love, and saving power of Jesus of Nazareth in an accessible way to
  people today?

(I am axing the whole issue of "mysteries and paradoxes" because of time constraints and audience limits).

Next, operating from the "Essential Questions" and the criteria for "Understandings," we established the basic understandings that the students should come away with in the end (these have been greatly reworked).

• 
  

  
  

  (Overarching) For Christians, Jesus embodies God's love for particular human
  beings and his desire to lift humanity to himself.

  
  

  (Topical) Two of the most prominent soteriologies of Jesus Christ are the
  soteriology of "atonement" and the soteriology of "participation".

  
  

  (Overarching) The Church is a visible, organic community of graced sinners
  that embodies Jesus' presence, love, and salvation on Earth.

  
  

  (Topical) The Church has a human and divine dimension.

  
  

  (Topical) The Biblical names for the Church--Body of Christ, Bride of
  Christ, People of God--reveal its role in salvation.

Now I am in Stage 2 (finally!) - Assessments.

Step 1 & 2: Consider evidence of the understandings in Stage 1; Use the six facets to identify needed evidence of understanding.

The basic question: What kind of evidence do we need?

UbD offers a list of types of evidence:

• Performance Tasks


• Academic Prompts


• Quiz and Test Items


• Informal Checks for Understanding

UbD strongly emphasizes performance tasks as the creme-de-la-creme for assessing understanding--other assessments are important for basic concepts and skills. It also offers a helpful graphic organizer that aligns understandings and questions with measurable skills.

IF the desired result is for learners to...

UNDERSTAND that:

• For Christians, Jesus embodies God's love for particular human beings and his desire to lift humanity to himself.


• Two of the most prominent soteriologies of Jesus Christ are the soteriology of "atonement" and the soteriology of "participation".


• The Church is a visible, organic community of graced sinners that embodies Jesus' presence, love, and salvation on Earth.


• The Church has a human and divine dimension.


• The Biblical names for the Church--Body of Christ, Bride of Christ, People of God--reveal its role in salvation.

And thoughtfully consider the QUESTIONS:

• How exactly does the Paschal Mystery "work"? What does the political execution of a 1st century Palestinian Jew by the Roman Empire have to do with me?


• What do God's actions reveal about love? What does love look like for Catholics?


• Why is a Church necessary? What are the alternatives? Why didn't Jesus simply stay on Earth?


• What is the best way to represent ("re-present") the person, love, and saving power of Jesus of Nazareth in an accessible way to people today?

Then, you need evidence of the student's ability to...

EXPLAIN

• Aspects of God's love


• The Paschal Mystery


• The nature of the Church

INTERPRET

• Passages from Scripture


• News articles about the Catholic Church

APPLY, BY

• Designing/presenting a creative way for people to experience the Paschal Mystery today


• Evaluating these relative to the experience of going to Mass

SEE FROM THE POINTS OF VIEW OF

• The first Christians


• Various kinds of "lovers" (i.e., parents, old couples, small children, pets, new marriages, troubled marriages).

EMPATHIZE WITH

• Good people who suffer

REFLECT ON

• Personal participation in the Paschal Mystery


• Attitude toward, and behavior as regards love

So the assessments need to require something like...

• Develop a lesson capable of giving 3rd graders an idea of how God's love works in the Paschal Mystery.


• Create a venn diagram listing statements from Scripture and other texts in either the "divine", "human" or "both" sections.


• Design and evaluate creative ways to experience the Paschal Mystery for the purpose of sharing with Christians who are unable (health) or unwilling (belief) to go to Mass.


• Compare student stories of human love, Scripture passages, and writings of saints to answer the question, "What is love?"


• Interview someone who is disavantaged or vulnerable to learn their story; write a modern "Paschal Mystery" story in which this person's suffering becomes God's instrument to save the world.


• Reflect: To what extent do you share in the Passion and Resurrection of Christ? Evaluate your skill as a lover of human beings.

Step 3: Use the GRASPS elements to design authentic performance tasks.

In doing so, I will also organize the above items to reflect a realistic progression of understanding through the first two weeks.

"What is Love? (Baby Don't Hurt Me)"; Your task is to write song lyrics that answer Haddaway's question. ROLE: You are a group of singer/songwriters that like to answer other songwriter's questions in your lyrics. But your "thing" is that your answers are based on real stories. Your audience is the record label, so keep your lyrics cool and hip while still referencing story details to back up your intelligent mojo. The challenge involves describing love as some combination of actions and choices from your story sources, in order to provide an inspiring and accurate piece of music. You will produce lyrics to a song integrating parts of both your stories and Biblical passages that have been handed to you. You work will be judged by the consistency of its message, your incorporation of actions and choices from multiple (including Biblical) texts, and an oral presentation of the meaning of your song and the reasons for your decisions in the creative process.

"What's Love Got to Do With It?"; Your task is to teach 3rd graders about the Paschal Mystery. You are the newly hired Sunday School teacher at St. Joseph's Church in Tucson, AZ. You are taking over a 3rd grade class in the middle of the year because the previous teacher quit suddenly. The students were supposed to be learning about the Paschal Mystery and the love of God, but you quickly find out they don't know anything. The challenge involves helping 3rd graders connect three ideas: God's love, the death and resurrection of Jesus, and salvation. You will create a lesson, activity, or visual aid (or a combination of these) no longer than 7 minutes in order to help the 3rd graders understand a correct relationship between these things. Your lesson will be graded on the age-appropriateness of the lesson, the adequacy of the connections made, and remaining within the time limit.

"What if God Was One of Us?"; You have been commissioned to contribute to a project called "The Modern Bible," a book that takes Bible stories and rewrites them using real modern images and contexts. Your task is to learn the story of someone who is truly disadvantaged or vulnerable, and then write a modern "Paschal Mystery" in which that person is the Christ, whose suffering becomes God's instrument for salvation. Your audience is the editor of the book who is evaluating your contribution . The challenge involves telling the story of a real person in a way that their suffering becomes redemptive, not only for themselves, but for others. You will write a short fictional story based on a real person you have interviewed, in which his/her problems come to bring "new life" (however you interpret this) to him/herself and to others as well. Your work will be judged by its portrayal of a real person that you have interviewed, your style and word choice, and your faithfulness to the spirit of the actual Paschal Mystery.

"Paschal Mystery for the Unchurched";

"People are Talking"

"Where You At?"

Always remember, class:

The Word of the Lord is PWNAGE.

Sacraments Course design, part 4

This is based on UbD's chapter 6, "Crafting Understandigns".

I have "Big Ideas" and "Essential Questions". Now I need to establish the basic understandings I want the students to come away with. Here are the qualities of "understandings":

• important inference, drawn from the experience of experts, stated as a specific and useful generalization
• transferable, big ideas having enduring value beyond a specific topic
• abstract, counterintuitive, easily misunderstood ideas
• best acquired by "uncovering" and "doing" the subject (using ideas in realistic settings and with real-world problems)
• summarizes important strategic principles in skill areas

UbD also adds:

• has endured over time and across cultures because it has proven so important and useful.
• endures in the mind of the student because it will help the student make sense of the content and it will enable transference of the key ideas.

Understandings are also topical and overarching. Again, they should be small in number; I will use the 2-5 standard again.

Step 1: Mindful of my B.I.s and E.Q.s, what are some "understandings" that I want students to walk away with?

I should be mindful of student misunderstandings. Some of these might be:

• A mystery is something we can know nothing about and do not question.
• Paradoxes are contradictions.
• Love is never angry; it does not punish; it does not set boundaries to freedom.
• God desires our love out of personal need.
• Jesus saves us by receiving the punishment that we deserved for our sins.
• The Church is primarily a group of people who agree that Jesus is God.

Using a design tool included in the text, I come up with the following. Students should understand that:

• Mysteries are "beyond us" only in the sense that we can never be "finished" learning about them; they are not unsolvable problems, but realities to be loved and served; they cannot be mastered or controlled. Human beings are mysteries.
• Paradoxes prevent us from treating a mystery like a problem by denying our minds easy ideas to work with, but they also invite us into a deeper understanding through meditation.
• The doctrine that "God is Love" is illuminated by recognizing (a) patterns in the way he acts as revealed in nature, Scripture, Jesus Christ, and tradition and (b) the way "love" unfolds in my life.
• The Paschal Mystery has been popularly understood to save us in numerous different ways throughout Christian history, no one of which is the absolute explanation.
• Christ instituted the Church to be the visible continuation of his presence, love, and power; and to be the inauguration of the Kingdom of Heaven, which is both already, and not yet here, as can be observed in the Church's characteristics and history.

OK, this is too much. I need to narrow these down to four.

1. Mysteries and paradoxes help us to respect life realities that are misunderstood when they are treated like problems requiring solutions.
2. Love is illuminated by recognizing (a) the concrete ways love manifests in my life, and (b) patterns in the way God acts as revealed in nature, Scripture, Jesus Christ, and Tradition.
3. The Paschal Mystery has been subject to various competing and complimentary understandings throughout Christian history.
4. The Church is the continuation on Earth of Jesus' presence, love, and salvation embodied by a visible, organic community of graced sinners; as such it has both a human and a divine dimension.

Sacraments Course design, part 3

In the last post (just now updated), I identified the Big Ideas around which the first unit will be based.

Outer: Worth Being Familiar With

• Divergent beliefs of Catholics and Protestants about Christian fundamentals
• Theories of soteriology and their contributors
• Avery Dulles' Models of the Church

Middle: Important to Know and Do

• Terms: mystery, paradox, agape, eros, incarnation, grace, paschal, pentecost, mystical
• Look up passages from Scripture; read for understanding

Center: Big Ideas and Core Concepts

Big ideas: mystery, paradox, authentic love, "incarnation" and religious representation, Paschal Mystery, Pentecost, Church

Big ideas framed as understandings:

• To call God "Love" both respects God's mysteriousness and summarizes his self-revelation to human beings.
• The Paschal Mystery is the linchpin of God's love and of Christian salvation.
• The Church is the visible continuation of the presence of Christ and the Paschal Mystery throught the power of the Holy Spirit.

Core tasks:

• Critically examine uses of the word "love" in popular discourse and in theology.
• Explain how the Paschal Mystery fulfills Jesus' promise of eternal life.
• Interpret data about the Catholic Church according to the distinction between its human and divine dimensions.

The next step in Stage 1 is: "Select and develop Essential Questions to guide inquiry into the big ideas"

Questions can be topical or overarching; open or guiding. There should be a balance of open vs. guiding questions; and topical questions should be explicitly matched to overarching questions. A unit should have approximately 2-5 essential questions. They should: cause inquiry into the B.I.'s; provoke deep thought, discussion, and inquiry; lead students to consider alternatives, weigh evidence, support ideas, and justify answers; stimulate ongoing rethinking and self-questioning; lead to meaningful connections; and naturally recur and transfer.

Step 1: Start with the textbook. If the text provides "answers," then what are the questions? What are the "answers" of my textbooks?

From Celebrating Sacraments Teaching Manual by Stoutzenberger:

• Christians believe in the Incarnation--that God became human to communicate love for us.
• Jesus is the primary sacrament of God tot he world, revealing God's kingdom in his life and ministry.
• Jesus dying to free us from the bods of sin and death, and his rising to bring us into a new life with God in the Spirit, is known as the paschal mystery.
• We witness [the Paschal Mystery] often in everyday life as a cycle of life, death, and new life.
• Jesus models humanity as its best, faithfully responding to God's offer of grace.
• On Pentecost the Holy Spirit empowered the disciples as the Christian [C]hurch to be the sacrament of Jesus Christ to the world.
• The [C]hurch can be understood as the people of God, a community of believers in Jesus; the Body of Christ, whose members combine their individual gifts to bring Christ to the world; and the temple of the Holy Spirit.
• The [C]hurch, empowered by the Spirit as both a sign and an instrument of the Kingdom of God, carries on Jesus' work.
• The [C]hurch is called to be oen united whole with Jesus as the center.

From Our Sacramental Life Teacher's Manual by Driedger:

• In order to understand how the sacraments are the work of Christ and continue Christ's work on earth, we must understand more about his Church.
• The Church is a multidimensional reality. Two aspects of this reality are the Church as Body of Christ and the Chruch as the Sacrament of Christ.
• As members of the Chruch we are united to one another.
• Christ is the head of the Church; all members of the Church strive to be like Christ.
• Christ and the Church are not the same. The head and members of one body have a distinct relationship. The image used to the describe this relationship is that of a bride and bridegroom.
• The Church exists to point others to Christ.
• The Church is both Christ's instrument and the visible sign of God's plan for all humanity.
• The Church has botha visible and invisible or spiritual dimension.
• All members of the Church are called to carry on Christ's work.
• Christ establish the Chruch as a visible organization with a hierarchical structure through which he communicates truth and grace.
• By her relationship with Christ, the Church is called a sacrament.
• Christ himself is the prime, or primordial sacrament.

Also, let's not forget my "fake standards":

• the meaning of the phrase, “God is Love”.
• patterns in the actions of God in creation, revelation, and salvation.
• “incarnation” as referring both to Christ as the presence of God and to the experience of God in tangible things.
• how the Paschal Mystery fulfills Christ’s promise of eternal life.
• how the event of Pentecost characterizes both the power of the Holy Spirit and the Mission of the Church.
• Biblical images of the Church as the Body of Christ, the Bride of Christ, the People of God, and the Temple of the Spirit.
• qualities of the human and divine aspects of the Church.

All right. Step 2 is to brainstorm questions. Specifically, I want about 3 topical questions.

• Why would God have chosen to save humanity through the Incarnation and the Paschal Mystery? Could he have done so in other ways? How would the first Christians have answered this question? (Guiding)
• How exactly does the Paschal Mystery "work"? What does the political execution of a 1st century Palestinian Jew by the Roman Empire have to do with me? (Open)
• Why is a Church necessary? What are the alternatives? Why didn't Jesus simply stay on Earth? (Guiding)

OK, these are more like "question clusters," but each bullet is ultimately a single question.

Next, I need to broaden these questions into overarching questions.

• What does love look like for Catholics? (Open)
• Is there a pattern to the way God does things? Why does he work the way he does? (Open)
• What is the best way to represent ("re-present") the person, love, and saving power of Jesus of Nazareth in an accessible way to people today? (Guiding)

Now I need to narrow. 2-5 questions. Less is more. Let's aim for four.

• (Topical, Open) How exactly does the Paschal Mystery "work"? What does the political execution of a 1st century Palestinian Jew by the Roman Empire have to do with me?
• (Overarching, Open) What do God's actions reveal about love? What does love look like for Catholics?
  
• (Topical, Guiding) Why is a Church necessary? What are the alternatives? Why didn't Jesus simply stay on Earth?
• (Overarching, Guiding) What is the best way to represent ("re-present") the person, love, and saving power of Jesus of Nazareth in an accessible way to people today? (Guiding)
  
• (Overarching, Open) How can we talk about mysteries if they are beyond human understanding?
  

(I edited these based on Part 4 above)

Rethinking John McCain

When a man is as loose with his words as this YouTube video seems to show, my immediate response is to stagger backward in disgust. Whatever else I write in this post, a degree of that disgust will always remain. But yesterday I came upon a revealing article by Adam Nagourney that shows some of the forces at work--and out of control--in McCain's campaign and in his own personality. Something about the article opened me up to a smidgeon of sympathy for McCain. As I read about his style of leadership and how his military experience influences his decision making process, I realized that it had more than a little in common with my short teaching experience.

“Soldiers are taught to expect the unexpected and accept it, and revise, improvise, and fight their way through any adversity," McCain says. Nagourney points out that "Mr. McCain’s style contains contradictions, veering between a shoot-from-the-hip tendency and assertions of damn-the-consequences authenticity on the one hand and a grudging acceptance on the other of the need to give in to the discipline of programmed politics."

It would be too convenient to blame all of McCain's contradictory gaffes on disorganized campaign strategy; but it would be too naive to overstate them as evidence of McCain's dishonesty or callousness in matters of truth.

What is more likely the case is that McCain's worst quality is a certain recklessness of the mouth. I have been known in the past to make statements with confidence that in my own mind were merely plausible. This is bad. But it would be a far worse sin were it not for the fact that McCain's thoughts are just as fluid and changing as his words--including when his words are flat-out wrong. The virtue in all of this--and yes, this whole post is an exercise in seeing a virtue inside of a flaw--is that McCain is exceedingly (perhaps excessively, by his campaign's reckoning) open to changing his course based on new inputs, and to do so quickly. To quote Nagourney again: "Mr. McCain hungers for information." Again, a chord of sympathy within me is struck.

Now none of this excuses McCain from flatly denying things that he himself said, even in the face of damning evidence. I have seen high school students do the same thing, and it is a repulsive dimension of human nature to try to contort reality to what suits me in this moment. But I am a little more open-minded about the McCain campaign as a whole. Opponents are cynical about the phrase, "Straight talk express." But as a theologian, I am open to the possibility that McCain, not wholly unlike God, writes straight with crooked lines.

Sacraments Course design continues...

A late post, but I am cutting some hours of sleep this weekend to ensure some basic goals for the semester. A colleague loaned me her copy of the actual UbD textbook, which I have been reading voraciously, making notes, and essentially cramming so that I can produce a curriculum I can be proud of.

Although the book says several times that it is not meant to be practiced in rigid "steps", I don't have time to be creative about my process. Essentially I must do the following to complete stage 1 of the 3-stage process for the first unit:

1. Establish what that unit will be.
2. Lay out and prioritize the "Big Ideas"
3. Identify 2-5 "Essential Questions"
4. Identify corresponding "Understandings"

What is the first unit?

Don't you just love that it's early Sunday morning and I don't have the answer to this question yet? To answer it, I need to look at my fake "sacraments standards" and ask some hard questions about content organization. I have already decided not to separate the units by individual sacraments; I believe that such a structure is a near disaster.

Consider what I already had:

1. God, Christ, and Church
2. The Catholic Sacramental Vision
3. Liturgy and Sacred Time
4. Origins, Purpose, and Effects of the Sacraments
5. Sacraments in Scripture and Tradition
6. Historical Development of the Sacraments
7. Ritual and Practice
8. Sanctification of Human Life

I could probably work with this, but there are glaring problems. #3, "Liturgy and Sacred Time," is a catch-all for topics I consider worthy, but it had little internal cohesion as a unit. It includes topics such as the Liturgy of the Hours and other liturgies beyond the seven sacraments; the liturgical calendar and the missal; the overal structure of the liturgy, sacred time, silence, blah blah. Let's see if I can't impose some better order...

All right. I've removed the unit called "Liturgy and Sacred Time", and moved elements of it into the unit "The Catholic Sacramental Vision" and "Ritual and Practice", as well as deleted a couple of elements. But I am not finished. First, there is a the big matter of order. Should I begin with #1 or #2? "God, Christ, and Church" as an introduction has the advantage of stressing the personal and religious character of the sacraments. "The Catholic Sacramental Vision" has the advantage of being the more direct and concrete of the two.

I'm starting with #1, "God, Christ, and Church". It will serve better as a review and a primer for everything that follows.

What are the "Big Ideas"?

UbD categories "big ideas" as follows:

• Concepts
• Themes
• Ongoing debates and points of view
• Paradoxes
• Theories
• Underlying assumptions
• Recurring questions
• Understandings or principles

Here are my "fake standards" for "God, Christ, and Church":

• the meaning of the phrase, “God is Love”.
• patterns in the actions of God in creation, revelation, and salvation.
• “incarnation” as referring both to Christ as the presence of God and to the experience of God in tangible things.
• how the Paschal Mystery fulfills Christ’s promise of eternal life.
• how the event of Pentecost characterizes both the power of the Holy Spirit and the Mission of the Church.
• Biblical images of the Church as the Body of Christ, the Bride of Christ, the People of God, and the Temple of the Spirit.
• qualities of the human and divine aspects of the Church.

Let's break this down according to UbD's categories:

• concepts: incarnation; experience of God; Paschal Mystery; Pentecost; Church;
• themes: God as love; fall and redemption; presence of God in creation; the admirable commercium; moving through death to life; grace of the Holy Spirit; Church as the Body of Christ; Church as the bride of Christ; Church as the People of God; Church as the Temple of the Spirit; Church as graced society of sinners
• ongoing debates: substitutionary atonement vs. mystical participation; Church as visible vs. invisible; church as sinful vs. perfect; grace as immediate (from HS) or mediated through the church; charismatic renewal and "pentecostal catholics"
• paradoxes: God is both merciful and just; God creates without needing us; Infinite eternal God wholly present in a 1st c. Palestinian Jew; God both totally beyond us and accessible to anybody; Christ's victory through defeat; salvation of the world through human vessels; Church both perfect and sinner
• theories: soteriology and models of atonement; Models of the Church (Dulles);
• underlying assumptions: faith in God's self-revelation in Jesus Christ; the Holy Spirit guides the Catholic Church and protects it from doctrinal error
• recurring questions: What is authentic love? How can we talk about God if he is a mystery? What is God like? Where can I find God? How is Jesus fully human and fully divine? How does salvation "work" in Christianity? Why was Pentecost necessary? Why is the Holy Spirit necessary? Why do we need a church? What do the Church's titles mean? Why do some texts call the Church "perfect" when it obviously isn't?
• understandings or principles: Love is not so much a feeling as it is a skill and a choice, based on virtue and freedom rather than appetite; Mysteries of faith are not unsolvable puzzles but supreme realities to be lived in; Paradoxes keep us from trying to "grasp" God in an idolatrous way; Paradoxes can lead us to deeper--but not complete--understanding by reflecting on them; God reveals himself in creation and in human beings, infallibly in the Scriptures and fully in the person of Jesus Christ; the Incarnation introduced a new economy of symbols because God allowed himself to be fully present as a creature; the Paschal Mystery is understood in various ways to be the linchpin of Christian salvation; Christ's salvation depends on his continued presence on earth through the Church as his Body, through the power of the Holy Spirit, and this mystery was initiated fully on Pentecost; the scriptural images of the church unveil God as the source of its holiness and the gaurantor of its mission; the Church is both a graced, organic, visible society of sinners and the unblemished, in vitro presence of, and access to the Kingdom of God.

Dang. That's a lot.

Let's break this down further into the three-tiered content priorities:

Outer: Worth Being Familiar With

• Divergent beliefs of Catholics and Protestants about Christian fundamentals
• Theories of soteriology and their contributors
• Avery Dulles' Models of the Church

Middle: Important to Know and Do

• Terms: mystery, paradox, agape, eros, incarnation, grace, paschal, pentecost, mystical
• Look up passages from Scripture; read for understanding

Center: Big Ideas and Core Concepts

Big ideas: mystery, paradox, authentic love, "incarnation" and religious representation, Paschal Mystery, Pentecost, Church

Big ideas framed as understandings:

• To call God "Love" both respects God's mysteriousness and summarizes his self-revelation to human beings.
• The Paschal Mystery is the linchpin of God's love and of Christian salvation.
• The Church is the visible continuation of the presence of Christ and the Paschal Mystery throught the power of the Holy Spirit.

Core tasks:

• Critically examine uses of the word "love" in popular discourse and in theology.
• Explain how the Paschal Mystery fulfills Jesus' promise of eternal life.
• Interpret data about the Catholic Church according to the distinction between its human and divine dimensions.