Course Catalogue 2025-2026

Each SPE Practicum provides students with the opportunity to acquire the knowledge and skill necessary for providing competent spiritually integrated psychotherapy. The course explores both theoretical and applied aspects of SPE. It is located at the intersection of the theology of caring, grief and loss, and social sciences. The course emphasizes multidimensional assessments and teaches interventions that are spiritual, therapeutic, supportive, and/or educational. Professional identity and professional ethics as well as the place of spiritual care and counselling in Canada are also examined. The course highlights significant aspects of the theologies of psycho-spiritual care and therapy.

For over thirty years, “Nothing about us without us” has been the cry of resistance from disability activists worldwide, yet disabled, neurodivergent and mentally ill people are rarely consulted or collaborated with regarding the policies, treatments and caregiving that will directly affect their bodyminds. This has led to ableist, neurotypical, and “sanist” theories and practices being normalized within the fields of medicine, psychiatry, theology, and psychotherapy. Whether or not a psychotherapist or faith leader is disabled, neurodivergent, or living with mental distress themselves, they are still often trained in models of psychotherapeutic and spiritual care that arise from and/or replicate ableist and neurotypical cultural norms to varying degrees of damage for disabled and neurodivergent individuals. This course engages with “mad” and “crip” frameworks to interrogate ableist, neurotypical, and sanist theories and practices, and to equip psychotherapists and spiritual care providers to provide treatment for disabled, neurodivergent, and mentally ill clients in more culturally appropriate ways. It also equips spiritual caregivers who may have internalized ableism and neurotypical normalizing tendencies to move deeper into their own self-understanding for this work. The course will invite those with lived experience of disability, neurodiversity and mental distress to apply their lived experience, learn to maintain appropriate boundaries and engage Safe and Effective Use of Self (SEUS).

Each Clinical Practicum (A and B) provides students with the opportunity to acquire the knowledge and skill necessary for providing competent spiritually integrated psychotherapy. Course A provides the basis for course B. The course explores both theoretical and applied aspects of Supervised Pastoral Education (SPE). It is located at the intersection of the theology of caring, grief and loss, and social sciences. The course emphasizes multidimensional assessments and teaches interventions that are spiritual, therapeutic, supportive, and/or educational. Professional identity and professional ethics as well as the place of spiritual care and counselling in Canada are also examined. The course highlights significant aspects of the theologies of psycho-spiritual care and therapy.

Each Clinical Practicum (A and B) provides students with the opportunity to acquire the knowledge and skill necessary for providing competent spiritually integrated psychotherapy. Course B builds on course A. The course explores both theoretical and applied aspects of Supervised Pastoral Education (SPE). It is located at the intersection of the theology of caring, grief and loss, and social sciences. The course emphasizes multidimensional assessments and teaches interventions that are spiritual, therapeutic, supportive, and/or educational. Professional identity and professional ethics as well as the place of spiritual care and counselling in Canada are also examined. The course highlights significant aspects of the theologies of psycho-spiritual care and therapy.

Each Clinical Practicum (A and B) provides students with the opportunity to acquire the knowledge and skill necessary for providing competent spiritually integrated psychotherapy. Course B builds on course A. The course explores both theoretical and applied aspects of Supervised Pastoral Education (SPE). It is located at the intersection of the theology of caring, grief and loss, and social sciences. The course emphasizes multidimensional assessments and teaches interventions that are spiritual, therapeutic, supportive, and/or educational. Professional identity and professional ethics as well as the place of spiritual care and counselling in Canada are also examined. The course highlights significant aspects of the theologies of psycho-spiritual care and therapy.

This course will engage the questions of interreligious dialogue and comparative theology on the theology on the theological issues of redemption and salvation by comparing the work of some key Christian thinkers with themes in Buddhism. We will also engage comparative questions such as desire, imitation, prayer, mediation and responses to suffering and violence.

The Acts of the Apostles is our main source of information about the first Christian decades. It covers the movement's initial efforts to regroup following the death of Jesus, as well as its earliest expansion into the Mediterranean world beyond Judea. In this course, we will read through the Acts and reflect upon both what it tells us about Christian origins and also its continuing relevance for contemporary Christianity.

In this course, students will explore the historical debates and the doctrinal formulations of the seven ecumenical councils (325-787 AD). This course will address the development of fundamental themes in trinity, Christology, ecclesiology, sacramental theology, and the theology of iconography. Students will be introduced to the historical context of these debates and attend to the relationship between the early church and its relationship to secular authority. The course will further examine the theological method of early and late antique Christian thinkers that gave rise to these doctrines as well explore the enduring contribution of these conciliar debates for ecumenical dialogue and contemporary theology.

The course will examine the portrait of Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels as it conveys three themes of justice: 1) the exercise of power, 2) economic issues, and 3) human worth. The course will place Jesus's actions and teachings in the social and political conditions of first century Galilee and Judea while also considering their relevance to contemporary events and circumstances. Special attention will be given to the parables, economic teachings, and the phenomena of healings and exorcisms as responses to the conditions of daily life and political rule in first century Palestine.

Within the Old Testament the depiction of, and context of trauma is frequent and present in different genres across the whole corpus. Traumas include those arising from warfare and/or forced migration/exile, family conflict, abuse of power, sexual violation, and adverse psychological, social and economic realities. Such depictions may be explicitly negatively evaluated, but even so raise complicated questions for those who hold these texts as Christian scripture and/or theologically, ethically, and pastorally formative. The nature of justice, the character and work of God, and the pastoral use of texts of trauma name some of these questions, particularly when these texts of trauma are read within a Christian context.

Within the Old Testament the depiction of, and context of trauma is frequent and present in different genres across the whole corpus. Traumas include those arising from warfare and/or forced migration/exile, family conflict, abuse of power, sexual violation, and adverse psychological, social and economic realities. Such depictions may be explicitly negatively evaluated, but even so raise complicated questions for those who hold these texts as Christian scripture and/or theologically, ethically, and pastorally formative. The nature of justice, the character and work of God, and the pastoral use of texts of trauma name some of these questions, particularly when these texts of trauma are read within a Christian context.

This course will offer a foundational introduction to the realities of ecumenism and interreligious dialogue within the Catholic Church. The theology and principles of interreligious dialogue will be considered in relation to Biblical, Patristic, and modern sources. Attention will be given to the foundations and history of Catholic ecumenical engagement, the nature and work of dialogue, models and levels of ecumenical work. Both historical and contemporary dimensions will be considered, and special focus will be given to the Catholic Church’s magisterial documents in these areas.