The Pontifical Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum in collaboration with the University Finis Terrae of Santiago de Chile, the University Francisco de Vitoria – Spain, and the Society of Consecrated Lay Apostolic Life of Regnum Christi promotes a new online training course in Spanish.
This course will confer the Chilean civil title of Magíster en Doctrina Social de la Iglesia. Reflexión y vida, a second-cycle academic degree for the Chilean university system.
This program confers two degrees: Master’s Degree in Social Doctrine of the Church. Reflection and Life (The University Fines Terrae – Chile) and Título Propio (The University Francisco de Vitoria – Spain).
In this sense, the Master’s Degree is promoted with the purpose of covering the need for solid formation in the subject, having as its main audience Catholics with professional, management, and leadership responsibilities who wish to deepen in the social doctrine of the Church (reflection) and in the connection of this thought with concrete realities (life), to acquire skills that help them to develop their functions and concrete tasks according to the principles and criteria of the social doctrine of the Church. In addition, the course is also aimed at formators, teachers, catechists, priests and consecrated persons, to acquire skills that will help them to develop their functions and concrete tasks according to the principles, criteria, and values of the social doctrine of the Church.
The program aims to foster and project the apostolic conscience of Christians, offering formative tools for the evangelization of temporal realities. To this end, it seeks to provide an overview of the content of the social doctrine of the Church and to facilitate the deeper study of an area of interest. These intentions are expressed in the following objectives:
To provide a rigorous and up-to-date formation in the unity and in the various areas of the Church’s social doctrine, oriented to research in the multiple spheres of social life, from the family to the international community, in interdisciplinary dialogue, and for the edification of the civilization of justice and love.
To contribute to the development of lines of research on problems in the different areas of the Church’s social doctrine in order to cooperate in the academic advancement of this field.
To teach a vision and a methodology of approach to social problems capable of transforming personal and social life with the Gospel.
With a course load of 60 ECTS, to be taken in two years, distributed in four semesters, the academic program of studies is structured in a Common Module with 20 obligatory credits; three optional itineraries, each of which consists of 28 ECTS. The student chooses between:
Optional Itinerary 1: The Person and the Environment;
Optional Itinerary 2: The Social Role of Private Initiative;
Optional Itinerary 3: Public Administration and International Society.
The entire Master’s program is conceived as a dialogue between faith and reason, with an intentional focus on the evangelization of temporal realities, that is, the Christian transformation of the spheres of social life.
It is possible to follow the study remotely (in Spanish). Activities and synchronous classes by videoconference.
The Director of the Magister is Prof. Emilio Martinez Albesa, Extraordinary Professor of our Faculty of Theology.
The 2Oth Bioethics Summer Course “Bioethics, Death, and Immortality” will take place July 4-8, 2022. The course will be taught in Italian and English, with simultaneous translation available in both languages. The course is organized by the Faculty of Bioethics in collaboration with the UNESCO Chair in Bioethics and Human Rights established at the Pontifical University Regina Apostolorum and the European University of Rome.
This Summer Course will address the themes of human mortality and the aspiration to immortality in light of current bioethical issues. Death is a reality common to all of us. Philosophers have reflected on the question of suffering and our eventual demise over the centuries. Many cultures and religious traditions have also addressed the quest for immortality since time immemorial. Current debates about emerging technologies, health care costs, and transhumanism are more recent manifestations of these age-old bioethical questions.
Structure of the Course
The Course consists of lectures, question and answer sessions, seminars, film forums, and interactive group activities. Bioethics faculty members and other experts will participate as speakers and moderators of group dynamics. The course proposes an interdisciplinary study of the phenomenon of death and the search for immortality in order to promote knowledge and understanding of life span extension techniques, the benefits and risks involved in such techniques, and their impact on the vision of human nature today and for future generations. The course will offer participants the opportunity to acquire the necessary skills for the proper ethical evaluation of these cutting-edge technologies and effective guidance for wise use of these technologies in the context of the life sciences and the medical profession. In addition, the course will provide orientation for the use of this knowledge in the daily professional practice of those who work in the scientific, medical, political, legal, social, communication, or educational fields.
The objectives of the course are especially important for doctors and health personnel; biologists, psychologists, psychiatrists, and psychotherapists; educators, especially secondary and high school teachers; priests, catechists and other agents of pastoral care; lawyers, jurists, journalists, communicators, and sociologists and all those who are interested in the cultural and social dynamics of the present day and wish to have an informed and critical perspective on the cutting edge issues in the ethics of biotechnology.
Topics are covered by members of the Faculty of Bioethics and external experts from different countries.
All participants in the full sessions will receive a certificate of attendance.
Attendance is mandatory for 80% of the course to be eligible for a certificate of attendance (upon request).
The webinar is worth 1 ECTS credit.
Simultaneous translation is available in Italian and English.
For other language groups, simultaneous translation will be offered if the number of students is greater than 10.
Academic Fees
The payment is made once the student has registered and according to the instructions that will be provided by e-mail. Payment can be made by credit card, bank transfer, or at the Athenaeum desk by appointment.
Standard Fee:
Five sessions (5 days)
270€
Five sessions (5 days) + 1 (ECTS) through an exam
275€
Special Category: Priests, Religious, APRA Bioethics Students, APRA Alumni, PhD in Bioethics, RIU Professors
“And, certainly, to him life itself was the first, the greatest, of the arts,
and for it all the other arts seemed to be but a preparation.”
by Oscar Wilde
The Bioesthetics Study Group of the UNESCO Chair in Bioethics and Human Rights is an interdisciplinary and international network that works as part of the “Bioethics Global Art” project of bridging art and bioethics. While Bioethics moves us to confront ethical challenges, the arts enable us to reflect on the human condition and on ourselves by triggering a change in moral attitudes and inspire us to embark on a journey of inner transformation. Thus, the universal values within bioethics are opening to aesthetic explorations due to a growing recognition of the arts as an effective way of engaging people in a stimulating debate and an interdisciplinary search of social, cultural and ethical issues around contemporary science and its more recent developments.
Throughout the history of human artistic expression we can observe how the issues concerning human health and its frailty have been visually depicted to engage the audience.
For instance, Byzantine and Medieval art were focused on representing moral values and virtuous actions through allegories or the delineation of figures in an idealized, flat form. Moreover, subjects of artistical expression were biblical characters, placing emphasis on the relationship to the divine and manifesting the glory of a heavenly world.
Renaissance artists introduced new degrees of realism; indeed the realistic depiction of the material world mirrored the corporeality of the human body, thus exposing the fragility of human psycho-physical constitution by portraying physical flaws that we can today recognize as a medical condition. Among the stigmata of disease afflicting the subjects of portraits, we can notice syphilis, tetanus, disability, hypertrichosis, Paget’s disease, mental insanity, plague and Spanish flu.
Finally, Modernism and contemporary art exposed all the limits of the human body and the separation of the mind from the body. More recently, hybrid and bio artists experiment with their own bodies and seek to engage audiences in challenging ethical dilemmas and assumptions about life and existence. By deconstructing the embodied nature of the human being, contemporary art has shaped the concept that “the human body is obsolete”, as in, it is just a vehicle of the mind and therefore can be used as a canvas for art on the very edge of human experience.
Among the numerous perspectives and methods to express and analyze bioethical issues as well as ethical concerns, it is through the language of art that such topics emerge not only as a rational process but as an experiential process and emotional internalization.
The central role of education, the need for integrated knowledge, the development of new skills and the commitment to a joint and shared ecological transition. These are some of the issues of the meeting of the Italian UNESCO Chairs with the Ministries of Education and University and Research.
The meeting was opened by the Minister of Education, Patrizio Bianchi, and the Minister of University and Research, Maria Cristina Messa. Franco Bernabè, President of the Italian Commission for UNESCO (CNIU), and Stefania Giannini, Unesco’s Deputy Director General for Education, also participated.
The Italian Unesco Chairs, with the project “Dialogues of the Unesco Chairs: a laboratory of ideas for the world to come”, have started a path to propose themselves as a collective subject with a high scientific profile and as a community of knowledge to contribute to the challenge of sustainability and socio-economic transition. The meeting is the synthesis of a year of confrontation and dialogue between the holders of the Italian UNESCO Chairs engaged in the development of education and knowledge in relation to global environmental and social challenges and for the achievement of the goals of sustainable development of the UN Agenda 2030.
To this end, the Italian UNESCO Chairs are working to provide a laboratory of ideas and knowledge for future generations, to implement a transdisciplinary and transnational educational approach, to contribute the introduction of the environmental challenge in school and university education, to develop tools for sharing and dissemination of knowledge by acting as bridges between academia, civil society and policy makers.
