Monasticism, Education and Formation Symposium
The Monastic Institute of the Faculty of Theology of the Pontifical Athenaeum Sant’Anselmo in Rome organizes an International Symposium every four years, dedicated to different themes related to monasticism. After discussing the themes of culture and of economy, this time we propose focusing on education and formation which are the themes partially connected to the previous ones. However, above all, the problems of education are currently very relevant, for various reasons, both in the modern world and in the Church, which dedicated the last Synod of Bishops to youth, and was crowned with the post-synodal exhortation Christus vivit.
The theme we propose includes four integrated and interwoven dimensions of monastic activity:
- education as teaching both of knowledge and competences and as forming attitudes (Erziehung);
- formation as an explicit activity focused on spiritual growth, both as religious education and as educating a sense of the religious dimension of experience;
- external activities of monasteries, developed in different schools run by Benedictine monks and sisters as well as in other social contexts;
- internal activities directed to the members of monastic communities as well as to oblates and guests visiting monasteries and their Guest Houses.