Problem wyznania win Kościoła popełnionych w mijającym tysiącleciu

Abstract

Several questions were taken up in the article: In what sense can we talk about the Church’s guilt since both Sacred Scripture and Roman law, as well as the Church's teaching, all state that, strictly speaking, sin or crime can be committed only by an individual? Can we confess sins that we not only did not commit but also could not have caused in any way since they had happened long before we were born? Will, in answer to the Pope's appeal, false confessions not abound; will various personages of the Church not confess, in the Church's name, sins which she has never committed, and which are attributed to her in various anticatholic black myths? Why are Catholics, it seems, the only social group, and the Catholic Church the only institution, that are held responsible for sins committed one hundred, five hundred, and even a thousand or more years ago? The article is written in a tone of unequivocal support for John Paul II's initiative that the Church should publicly confess the greatest sins she has committed in the passing millenium.