Diakonat stały w warunkach Kościoła w Polsce

Abstract

The introduction of permanent diaconate calls for an appropriate theology to initiate this office and ministry. For the purposes of this study, the author has outlined its European and Polish contexts. When it comes to the European context, he has presented the approach to diaconate in the theological reflection of K. Rahner and H. Vorgrimler (the creative conception of the diaconate of the future), Y. Congar (Diaconate – an expression of special devotion to ministry), H. Kramer (Diaconate – a new style of the Church’s presence in the world), and A. Altana (Diaconate – a sign and recollection of ministry). It seems that the Polish context is marked by peaceful and slow transition form the popular Church to the Church of fellowship, that is the Church aware of its responsibility for the assumptions and consequences resulting from a fellowship, i.e. for the brotherly service out of Christian love. It is the Church concerned not only with the pastoral care of “conversion,” but the pastoral care of the “converted” (catechesis of adults). The latter is designed to make the faith of the faithful more profound, and the recreating of habitual and traditional religiousness. It is the Church which seriously takes the significance of charitable ministry as one of its essential dimensions and signs that the fellowship is alive, and it is concerned with an appropriate organization of a charitable ministry, so that the Church could be an ancillary fellowship.