Caitlin Shaughnessy Dwyer (College Professor)

My THEO101 class changed my life.  I came to Notre Dame with plans to major in Political Science and from there to pursue a career in politics.  I wanted to change the world for the better by changing laws.  My first theology class at Notre Dame gave my life a whole new trajectory.  

I still remember the content of that class quite well.  We studied Plato's Republic, passages from the Old and New Testament, and St. Augustine's Confessions.  The professor made connections between Theology and Philosophy, showed the way the different books of the Bible worked together to give a cohesive message of God's love for and desire for relationship with his people, and discussed the nature of conversion, insights I had yet to encounter despite my previous 15 years of Catholic education.  Through that class, I fell in love with theology, chose it as my major (I completed my degree in 2006, the year I won the Gertrude Austin Marti Award in Theology), and to this day I have never tired of studying it.  

In fact, I chose to go to pursue the study of theology at the graduate level.  In 2010, I received my M.T.S. from the John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. I am now an adjunct professor of Theology at Thomas More College in Crestview Hills, KY where I live with my husband and three children.  I am not changing any laws, but I still believe I am changing the world through sharing my theological education with my students, my family, my friends, and my children.

I recognize that most students will not choose to major in Theology after their THEO101 class.  However, I do think the majority of future University Notre Dame students will be robbed of potentially life-changing insights and fundamental knowledge about themselves and their Maker should you choose to deprive them of two required courses in Theology.