Duchowieństwo parafialne w józefińskim systemie polityki kościelnej cesarzy austriackich (1780-1790)

Abstract

Josephinism, which developed in the region of the Catholic Habsburg monarchy, boiled down to the State's reform of the Church in the monarchy. Such a policy of the lay authorities, apart from few positive aspects, subjugated the Church and disorganized religious life in the countries of the monarchy, mainly at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries. The chief architect of that policy of the Slate towards the Church was Emperor Joseph II (1780-1790). During his reign Josephinism reaches its peak and the Church's life is almost completely disorganized. The present paper is an attempt to show the State's policy towards the clergy in order to define anew its place within the framework of the Joscphinite conception of pastoral care as the most important function of the Church. The following questions have been discussed in the paper The Church and Her place in the Stale, a planned model of the parochial clergy, theological seminaries as a tool of the clergy's upbringing by the State, the number of the clergy, the crisis of the vocations to the priesthood in the Austrian monarchy in the beginning of the 19th century. The paper is part of a broader line of the author's study whose aim is to trace down the degree of the Church's disintegration and her subjugation to reasons of Stale on Polish territories which then belonged to the Austrian monarchy, first of all on the territory of the Lvov archdiocese of the Latin rite.