SUMMER
STUDY ABROAD
Junior
Semester Rome Program
The
vision of the Summer Study Abroad Program is inspired by the seminal
work of the Catholic historian, Christopher Dawson, who wrote in The
Historic Reality of Christian Culture:
The tradition
[of Christian culture] exists today, for though the Church no longer
inspires and dominates the external culture of the modern world, it
still remains the guardian of all the riches of its own inner life.
. . . If society were once again Christian . . . this sacred tradition
would once more flow out into the world and fertilize the culture of
societies yet unborn. Thus the movement toward Christian culture is
at one and the same time a voyage into the unknown, in the course of
which new worlds of human experience will be discovered, and a return
to our own fatherland-to the sacred tradition of the Christian past
which flows underneath the streets and cinemas and skyscrapers of the
new Babylon as the tradition of patriarchs and prophets flowed beneath
the palaces and amphitheaters of Imperial Rome.
Inaugurated in
1992, the Christendom College Study Abroad Program offers three weeks
of intensive study during which students achieve an integrated understanding
of Catholic culture in the Catholic regions of Europe. As part of the
program, two courses totaling six semester hours of college credit are
offered. The program begins with one week of introductory orientation
lectures on the Christendom College campus at Front Royal, followed
by two weeks of travel and immersion in the European Catholic culture.
Each Summer, the Christendom Study Abroad Program offers, in an alternating
cycle, one of the following:
a) Christendom in Rome As an expression of the College’s
loyalty to the Holy See, Rome has been selected as the center of its
study of Catholic culture, as it is the center of the Church. The Christendom
College Study Abroad Program, Christendom in Rome, offers two courses
in History and Theology “at the heart of the Church.” Included
also are tours of “Christian Rome” as well as “Classical
Rome,” a General Audience and Angelus with the Holy Father, and
day trips to Assisi and Siena. Christendom in Rome enables students
to experience first-hand how the Faith can form a culture.
b) Christendom in Ireland The Christendom Study Abroad program
offers three weeks of intensive study of the Catholic culture and history
of Ireland. Travels include visits to early monastic sites highlighting
Ireland’s contribution to Western Civilization. Emphasis is placed
upon how the living Catholic Faith can deeply form a people’s identity.
Six hours of college credit are offered in Irish history and literature.
c) Christendom in Europe The Christendom Study Abroad Program
plans additional summer programs in Spain (1999 and 2002), and perhaps
as well in France, Bohemia and the Catholic Alpine regions of Germany,
Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Italy. Christendom in Europe
will examine the development of Catholic culture in Western Europe,
with special emphasis on the monastic foundations of the Catholic Faith
in the early Middle Ages, the flowering of Romanesque and Gothic art
and architecture before the Protestant Revolt, and of Baroque art and
architecture following the Counter-Reformation, as well as the continuity
of a Catholic musical culture from Gregorian Chant to Renaissance Polyphony,
Baroque, Classical and Modern sacred music.
