Students Take Theology Classes, Expand Their Minds

“USF requires all students to consider the transcendent, the God-human relationship, and the whole of creation as we encounter it,” said Interim President John Fitzgibbons, S.J. “We require some theology and philosophy courses that open up these topics and thus enhance students’ spiritual life.”

The Department of Theology and Religious Studies offers courses on many religions, including Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Catholicism, said Professor Jorge Aquino. Students get to choose.

“Just like the more Catholic and Christian courses, [we] put religious and theological perspectives into dialogue with matters of more secular provenance — culture, politics, and major human problems,” including human rights, war, genocide, colonialism, poverty, racism, and heterosexism, Aquino said.

USF’s curriculum “reflects Catholic values by design, without imposing Catholic identity,” he said.

Undergraduate students at USF come from more than 100 nations and ethnicities, Fr. Fitzgibbons said. They come from more than 20 faith traditions.

“My understanding is that only about 20 percent of our undergraduate students at USF are Catholic,” he said. “We need to meet students where they are as they come to us.”

Meeting students where they are includes offering them access to learning about many religions, including Catholicism, Fr. Fitzgibbons added.

Theology major Daniel Morgan ’26 was drawn to the subject because “whether God exists or not is, to my mind, the most important question to ask, and when we answer it, another question follows,” he said.

“How do we understand him?” Morgan said. “Theology is a lot harder and more complex than I thought. It’s not merely a subjective exercise. It’s a science, in the proper sense.”