Tomorrow I begin teaching Theology 105 at the Colegio San Agustin-Biñan.  It is a three-unit course in theology offered to third-year students and intended to help the student integrate what they’ve learned from Theology 101-104 with questions bearing on politics, economics, Third World realities, family life, bishops who protest the questionable policies of the Gloria Macapagal Arroyo government,etc.  The course title is “Social Doctrines of the Church”, and we will be talking about Christian love and hope with a hard look at the question of the daily wage vis-a-vis the increasing number of migrant workers and the inability of a corrupt government to support the needs of  our people for health care, education and employment  We will also be talking of faith and the Gospel of course (otherwise, it won’t be Theology anymore), in an academic manner (with lots of reading) but geared towards a more active participation in the social concerns of the Diocese of Laguna.

With I taught the subject more than years ago at the University of San Agustin-Iloilo, I used Gaudium et Spes as my main text, plus the “Social Doctrines” article from the New Catholic Encyclopedia  with some brief looks at John Paul II’s “Sollecitudo rei socialis” and “Centesimus annus”.  Today, we have the Compendium of Social Doctrines and the two encyclicals of Benedict XVI, “Deus caritas est” and “Spe salvi.”  These aren’t social teachings proper, of course, but they are theology and lend particular light on a view of human history — the same human history that is the locus of reflection for the social teachings of the Church — that is particularly Christian.  Let’s say those two encyclicals give a nice philosophico-theological evaluation of human commitment, solidarity and praxis from a magisterial light.

The Compendium of Social Doctrines, on the other hand puts more than one hundred years of  Church teaching on social issues in the palm of one’s hands.  I have written about that at the Quaerere blogs, so I don’t have to write more here.

In any case, I am looking forward to the experience; I hope my students too are looking forward to the same.

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