Catholic Youth Associations’ Activities in All-Day Schools in Germany: Opportunities and Limits

Abstract

Due to the massive decline of religious traditions accompanied by a weakening of traditional settings of religious education like family and parish, schools in Germany are often considered to substitute for these social and religious institutions. In this perspective, schools develop into the predominant place of religious education and socialization. Because of the recent expansion of all-day schooling in Germany, this development gains in importance even more rapidly. As a side-effect, cases of enhanced cooperation between school administrations and extracurricular partners such as parishes and Catholic youth associations run by the major churches are proliferating. This article gives an insight into a qualitative empirical study that focuses on the cooperation between Catholic youth associations (i.e. Bund der Deutschen Katholischen Jugend/BDKJ) and Public all-day schools as well as Catholic all-day schools. The study is designed to test the basic hypothesis that such cooperation with all-day schools causes massive changes in the Catholic youth associations as well as in schools and requires new theories of Catholic youth associations’ work. The project investigates the opportunities and limits for Catholic religious education in this cooperation. The study aims for developing an (religious) educational theory of the Catholic youth associations’ work at all-day Schools as specific places of (religious) learning. Regarding religious matters, these developments call as well for new and revised concepts within the academic fields of Religious Education and Practical Theology. The following chapters outline in a first step the societal and religious changes in Germany. Second, the current challenges of Religious Education in school and Catholic youth association are elaborated. In a third step, initial findings of the empirical study will be presented.