The Big Guns are Coming to Teach at Trappist Cloister

German Trappists of Abbey Mariawald are returning to the Liturgy and the Discipline of the Fathers and are opening their own House Study.

Abbot Josef Vollberg has according to reports of the website of the Trappist Cloister Mariawald, that a House Study will be established in order to form Priest-Monks.

The organization and direction of the study falls upon the study director, Frank Erich Zehles. Zehles is the director of the 'Bernardus Publishers"

The House Study was established, so that the Monks could intensify their simple profession in the Community of the Cloister and so they might pursue their studies in the amazingly outfitted Library in moderate peace.

Today - on the feast of Candlemass - begins the Summer semester of the Scholastic Year 2010/2011.


The day's feast lecture for the inauguration was held by the New Testament Scholar, Klaus Berger for the Monastery and invited guests. He will teach exegesis at Mariawald.

Also the famous philosopher Robert Spaemann will have his own role as an instructor.

The Study Plan is directed upon Papal Encyclicals and Writings, those of the Popes since Leo XIII. to John Paul II.

Authoritative are the corresponding Canons of general Church law, the Constitutions, the Ratio Institutionis, the Provisions of the General Chapter and the traditions of the Order.

The program's requirements should require 10 semesters. The test times will be included in this time.

In Seminares, Lectures, Tutorials and Revision Courses, will provide a solid basis for the priests philosophical, theological, historical and rhetorical education.

If the Superior allows it, Monks in other Cloisters or clerical institutes of sanctified life could study at Mariawald.

The Abbey Mariawald was endowed with the Papal privilege to take steps back to the old use of the Trappist Order, according to the use of Monte Cistello from the year 1964.

Since then, the Cloister has had a throng of postulants, who in the meantime have become Novices.