Lay Divinity Degree

Students will read and discuss the best texts that the Catholic Tradition has to offer, including St. Augustine’s Confessions, St. Francis De Sales’s Introduction to the Devout Life, documents from Vatican II, St. John Paul II’s Evangelium Vitae, Pope Francis’s Laudato Si’, and many others.

Students will watch video lectures. A studio with professional video, audio, and lighting equipment has been built to produce visually stunning content by our world-class faculty. 

Students also will have the opportunity to discuss the readings and videos with their professors and fellow students.

Students synchronously will meet with the professor and other students in the course one day a week for class discussion.

The M.A. in Pastoral Ministry’s curriculum is grounded in the 2005 document from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) Co-Workers in the Vineyard of the Lord.  Students within our online lay theology training program will take courses that include:

• The Old Testament and Its Interpretation
• The New Testament and Its Interpretation
• Dogmatic Theology
• Church History
• Moral Theology
• Catholic Social Teaching
• Pastoral Ministry in Theory and Practice
• Liturgical and Sacramental Theology
• Spiritual Theology and Practice
• The Nature and Order of the Church
• Pastoral Care for Marriage and Families
• Practicum

These 12 online lay theology courses total 36 hours and students choose the timeframe for their coursework.

Click here for the entire list of the curriculum

Our M.A. in Pastoral Ministry is a lay divinity degree designed to prepare students for effective ministry in the Church and requires a minimum of four academic years of full-time work or the equivalent.
During your time in our Catholic lay divinity degree program, you will learn and master how to do the following:

• Convey the Catholic intellectual tradition clearly and coherently to people with little or no prior Catholic foundation
• Form the hearts, minds, and souls of K-12 students
• Develop youth, young adult, and college ministry programs
• Run an RCIA Program
• Prepare couples for Pre-Cana
• Guide parents on the baptism of their children
• Run a campus ministry program
• Lead a Bible study
• Network new and returning volunteers
• Develop administrative skills

Plus, we feel it is important that our students are able to complete this degree online, letting them do work on their own schedule and at their own pace. When students decide to pursue our online lay divinity degree, they can answer their calling without any challenges standing in their way. We are blessed to have a dedicated faculty and staff that have devoted their lives to the Catholic Church and wish to share this with our students.

Students called to pursue their Catholic master’s in lay divinity can expect the following program features:

• Students may join the program full time (three courses per semester) and complete the program in two years.
• Students may join the program part time (one or two courses per semester) and complete the program at a pace suitable to them.
• Students may take courses without pursuing the entire graduate program.

To Apply for the Online M.A. in Pastoral Ministry Programs in lay divinity: Click Here!

St. John’s Seminary is proud to play a part in shaping the next generation of religious leaders, and we look forward to giving you the tools you need to succeed within our lay divinity program.

For more information, email [email protected]

At St. John’s Seminary, we are blessed with a dedicated faculty and staff who have devoted their lives to the Church, so students considering the Catholic Master of Arts in Pastoral Ministry for lay divinity students can trust they are in the hands of men and women called to form the next generation of lay ministers.

It is also important to note that our Catholic master’s of pastoral studies for lay ministry students is a program that can completed 100% online, giving students the freedom to pursue and achieve their degree at their own desired pace. This means lay divinity master’s students can complete their degree in as little as two years or extend their studies and finish the program in six years.

When choosing our seminary for your Catholic Master of Arts in Pastoral Ministry for divinity students, our mission is to help our students improve their ministerial and leadership skills—as well as their knowledge of the wisdom of the Church— in order to be evangelists for the 21st century.