"Living Fully"
A Leader's Guide to pro-life education
Sarah Karchunas '15
Political Science and Theology, CST Minor
Advisor: Professor Bill Purcell
"After doing research into the prolife movement in the Church, I found that a gap existed in prolife education for young adults in Catholic schools. While all but three archdioceses in the country had prolife offices, only five of the thirty-two archdioceses in the nation had prolife education programs.
Given statistics that show Catholics uncertain about the morality of abortion and critical of the Church's teaching on the sanctity of life, I decided that developing a program to educate 8th graders in Catholic schools on prolife issues would make an important impact in the Church.
For my capstone, I developed a full Leader's Guide to the prolife education program I designed, called "Living Fully". The Leader's Guide includes lesson plans for five classes: three in a classroom setting, one as a service immersion at a prolife agency and one as a concluding prayer service to tie the message back to our Catholic faith. These lesson plans are interactive and include links to videos to show in class, websites to explore, discussion questions to engage the class, small group work and ample study of the Bible and documents of Catholic Social Teaching such as Evangelium Vitae and Sollicitudo Rei Socialis.
In addition, the guide contains instructions on how to plan the service trip and the full prayer service. Lastly, the guide also includes helpful materials such as a Letter to Parents inviting them to a meeting with the instructor, a letter to the instructor explaining the reasoning behind the project, and a page of prolife resources for further research. As I graduate and pursue service in the Church alongside a Master's in Theology, I hope that this guide might be put to use to educate today's Catholic youth!"