Joe Wolf (Science Pre-Professional and Theology)

When I was choosing where to go to college, most people recommended that I go to one of the Universities that had offered me a substantial scholarship.  As a pre-med student, they believed, that it would not be wise to spend a large sum of money on my undergraduate education when I would also have to pay the substantial tuition charged by medical schools.  Despite this advice, I chose to attend the University of Notre Dame, knowing it would cost substantially more than my other choices.  I chose to come here for many reasons, but the most important to me was the university’s strong Catholic identity which permeated student life on campus. I felt that it would best prepare me to be a doctor capable of making a difference in the world by showing Christ’s love through his work.

As a freshman last year, I began to search for the aspects of campus life most inspired by this identity.  This led me to become involved in the Notre Dame Folk Choir, Notre Dame Vision, and the Center for Social Concerns.  I eventually realized that many of the people I was meeting, the ones who most cultivated the Christian spirit I experienced, were passionate about Notre Dame’s theology department.   At the time, this surprised me, because I was taking my Foundations course, and I honestly did not feel like I was getting a lot out of it.  It provided some great historical and textual analysis of the Bible, but I felt as if the professor kept this analysis separate from the beliefs and greater questions of Catholic faith I was so interested in.

At that point, I was not a theology major, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to become one.  This changed when I took my second theology requirement the following semester.  In this course, I found myself growing more in my faith than ever before.  I was asked difficult questions about life and faith, and I learned a new way of thinking about God, modeled after the words of Saint Augustine “credo ut intelligam.”  “I believe in order to understand.”  This way of thinking which is rooted in faith is different than anything I have ever learned in any of my other courses in high school or college.  It changed the way I thought about God and my own life.  Because of the positive impact this course had on me, I decided to pursue a supplementary major in theology.

Wherever I have felt Notre Dame’s Catholic identity most strongly, I have met people whose faith and inspiration have been profoundly shaped by the theology department.  For all of these people, their experience began with the university’s two required theology courses.  I attended Notre Dame looking for people inspired by faith, who wanted to make a difference in the world; when I found these people, I also discovered the amazing, often life-changing impact of a profound, well-taught theological education.

I believe that Notre Dame fosters a Catholic spirit and identity on campus which nurtures graduates to be prepared to share Christ’s love by changing the world we live in.  I also believe, however, that this would not be the case without the common foundation laid by coursework from the theology department which changes how people think about God and the world in a way that no other academic discipline can.  I hope that our future curriculum continues to inspire students by giving them exposure to the excellent faculty of the theology department, which understands the Catholic faith and its relevance in the lives of all college graduates.

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