Late career seminar

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A late career seminar is a Roman Catholic educational institution that leads those interested in the priestly profession on the second educational path to the Abitur ( Matura ). Graduates should be able to study theology at a state-recognized university and become priests - for a diocese or a religious community . A late career seminar usually consists of a boarding school , to which a school of the second educational path is either directly connected or at least assigned as a free cooperation partner.

history

There are late career seminars mainly in the German-speaking area. Because the local school system : Hauptschule - Realschule - Gymnasium proved to be extremely impermeable in earlier decades. Subsequent advancement to a higher school form was difficult. And anyone who had completed vocational training with a high school diploma and still wanted to acquire the Abitur at an advanced age had no real chance.

The first support structure for later professions was founded in 1920 by Pastor Bernhard Zimmermann : the Clemens Hofbauer aid organization for late professions . Zimmermann himself had been a late caller and had to fight his way through to graduation without any support. He now had a new type of school in mind that had never existed before: especially for adults with professional experience. In 1922 he founded the St. Klemens student home in Warstein- Belecke . The bishops were initially skeptical because they feared a flood of priests, but then took over his idea when they saw the enormous influx and success in schools. In 1926 Zimmermann set up a branch in Aschaffenburg for southern Germany, and in 1928 he moved his facility to a new building in Bad Driburg . In 1927, the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising opened the St. Matthias late-career seminar in Fürstenried Castle near Munich . In Ebikon , Switzerland, the Pallottines founded a late vocational school and named it after St. Klemens Maria Hofbauer .

In the post-war period after the Second World War in Germany , the pioneering work of the church in educational policy was taken up and the state established the second educational path for the Abitur almost everywhere , especially in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia . Today you can “catch up” your Abitur at so-called collegiate schools in almost every major city . For this reason, too, the demand for church seminars for later professions has plummeted since the mid-1980s. Since around 1970, students in the second education path have been financially supported in accordance with the BAFöG, regardless of their parents' income .

In the GDR , critics of socialism and the state , especially those committed to Christianity who renounced the youth consecration, were denied access to higher education and to university. Here the church helped through so-called proseminars like the Norbertinum in Magdeburg.

In Austria , a trans-diocesan late career seminar was set up for the Austrian dioceses in Rosenburg in Lower Austria in 1954 , which moved to a newly established center in Horn in 1959 .

high school
College

Educational program

Students from Hauptschule , Realschule or other branches of education are taken through the Gymnasium , students with vocational training through the college for the Abitur Allgemeine Hochschulreife . Corresponding preparatory courses for the adjustment of the educational level are offered. The lessons are specially designed for adults. Since knowledge of ancient languages ​​( ancient Greek and Latin ) is a prerequisite for studying theology , it is usually a humanistic grammar school or college.

Extracurricular support

In addition to school lessons, the late-career seminars offer an excellent school of life. A comprehensive range of programs focuses on the whole person: sport, speaking, singing and instrumental lessons, cultural offers and excursions, religious education, biblical studies, etc. Social skills are strengthened through community life and targeted support. In this way the student can find out whether the priesthood is actually an option for him.

Well-known late career seminars

Closed late career seminars

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.centrumhorn.at/haus-geschichte.php Historical outline on the website of the center in Horn