Culture Making, Faith Film and Media, and Sacraments & the Liturgy (OCIA – Order of Christian Invitation for Adults) taught by Jon Yeager, Aly Garcia, and Danielle Jow respectively, expands the options for students looking for new and innovative theology courses in the Riordan hallways.
OCIA is a course designed to help students receive formation to receive the three Sacraments of Initiation, and it is open to all grade levels as Christ has perfect timing to calling people home to His Church.
In the past, seniors had two options for Theology courses: World Religions of East and West and Life and Times of Jesus Christ.
“Growing up in a Catholic setting all my life and then learning about different religions and how they can still connect to Catholicism was very interesting,” commented Jane Kelly ’26, a former World Religions student.
In that sense, new religion class Culture Making offers a whole new perspective on religion.
“The world is full of incredibly beautiful things, and I simply love thinking about these things. From local culture, like the Golden Gate Park, to global culture, like a bowl of ramen, humans across the globe have created such amazing things,” explained Yeager on his decisions for creating his class.
Through his class, Yeager hopes to teach students about the major spheres of culture (ethnicity, art, architecture, music, movies/media, etc.) “and, most importantly, tap into their culture-making potential by creating things that connect to goodness, beauty, and truth.”Similarly, another new religion class called Faith, Film, and Media has students look at modern and secular media through a Catholic lens. “We look at different types of media including visual arts, music, dance, radio, and social media, most of the class will focus on film,” said Aly Garcia, Faith Film and Media teacher.
Garcia hopes that students will be able to find God in all things, even something as ordinary as a secular film. Garcia continued, “It’s not just about watching movies, but I do think that it offers students the opportunity to encounter the Catholic faith in new and creative ways that perhaps they have not before.”
With these new Theology courses, the department can give Riordan’s ever-growing class sizes new perspectives on their own religions, with many rising seniors mentioning their excitement to enroll in such classes.
Finally, Yeager helped put these new classes, especially Culture Making, all into perspective, saying, “The world is full of God’s goodness, beauty, and truth. Train your eyes to see it, soak it up, and live a long life of creating things with it. The Church teaches us that God’s redemptive work through Christ is renewing the goodness and beauty of the world, and we get to participate in that. What a life!”
