Kolegialność Kościoła wobec wyzwań współczesnej demokracji

Abstract

„Democracy is an important sign of the times for the Church” – this is a crucial statement of the article. However, the author admits that it would be much easier for him to say such a thing 5 year ago. New Polish experience with democracy is a rather bitter one and Poles feel now strongly that democracy is not just the best regime of the world, but the best solution out of bad ones. Collegiality is treated here as a feature of the Church as a whole („responsibility for the Church realisaed in the community” - Y. Congar) , not just as collegiality of the bishops. The author analyzes „Centesimus annus” and other writings of John Paul II to order to find out that democracy is good inasmuch it realizes the idea of „subjectivity” of the human society. „Subjectivity” is a new word – invented in the communist Poland instead of censored word „independence”, but now a word present in the encyclicals – for the right of every human person and of the society to be a subject of one’s life, not an object of decisions taken by anyone else. Subjectivity should be then realized also within the Church as a community. The author presents Polish discussion on the notion „subjectivity of the laity in the Church”. His conclusion is that now it is better to speak of the subjectivity of the whole God s people. New Polish Church structures for lay people are presented in the article. The author stresses that the new structures will renew the Church only if they are accompanied by the new spirit. Finally ecumenical aspects of the Church’s collegiality are discussed.