Independence Day

Happy Belated Independence Day! I hope you were able to celebrate and enjoy a mid-summer break.  

The timing of the holiday was pretty perfect for us here at Notre Dame. We wrapped up our first module of classes July 5th. The day off on the 4th was a great opportunity to finish up papers, projects, etc. 

As always, my classes this term blew me away. Catholic Social Teaching has truly changed the way I look at the world. I realized how easy it is to look at situations objectively -- when we objectify the people involved. When we look instead at each person as a person, created in the image of God, with inherent human dignity that deserves to be protected, our view is suddenly much different. I think this really hit home to me when we were discussing the death penalty, and our professor had us read an excerpt from Sr. Helen Prejean's book about visiting prisoners on death row. I just started reading her first book, Dead Man Walking, and it’s been extremely eye-opening.

I’ll be posting more about this new module, as well as last weekend’s adventures in Chicago, soon, but I want to catch up on some of the other happenings here in South Bend. It’s been wonderful getting to know “the Girls” in the Catholic Extension program. A couple weeks ago we were able to go to Fiddler’s (one of my favorite places in the world) for some authentic live Irish music. Here’s a picture of almost all of us:

Another night, a group of us went to tour the “Four Horseman” brewery here in town. I’m not exactly sure what we were expecting, but our mental image definitely did not match up with the reality of this place. We drove up to what looked like an office building on the outside… and that trend continued on the inside. Here’s what we saw when we opened the door:

 

Despite the strange outward appearance, it ended up being a great place. We enjoyed our tour of the brewery and were able to sample some of their beers.

Now it’s definitely back to the grindstone for Module 2! Stay tuned… hopefully I will be more timely with the next posts!