Czy polscy katolicy rozumieją czym jest Kościół?

Abstract

The main problem of the present Church in Poland consists in the lack of understanding of the Church itself, of its mystery. The laic Catholics have a mis-shapen understanding of the mystery of the Church. People mostly observe the Church as all the other human institutions with the only difference that it is engaged in religious problems, enables people to fulfil religious practices that should improve them spiritually. Should a part of the Polish Catholics be able to look at the Church personalisticly, they would mostly identify it with the clergymen. There is an insignificant part of the laic Catholics in Poland who identify with the Church, and yet the laic people in Church are the fundanental problem in the understanding of the very mystery of the Church. The mystery of the Church is clearly mis-shapen in the consciousness of the Polish Catholics because it is determined by a personal bound with Christ. The Church is “degenerating, unless it realizes its mission of building links with God and of unification of people”, as it was said by Andrzej Czaja – the new bishop of Opole in an interview published in “Gość Niedzielny” First of all, the theological understanding of the laic people in Church is necessary in the Church in Poland, as well as in the local Church of the Warmian Archdiocese, because the essence of the ecclesial Christian faith is distorted by the prolonged influence of the communistic ideology, and nowadays by the liberal one. The laic people fulfil the first and the most important mission of the Church which is the sanctifying of the work of creationin in two ways: first, if they tive themselves by the mysteries of Christ both in their inner, personal lives and in the “little Church” which is formed by a Christian family, as well as by their participation in the apostolic mission of the whole Church in their appropriate personal ways. The vast range of the natural structures of the world or of the human society: broadly understood family life, cultural activity and entertainment, social and political relations aie the sphere of activity of the laic Catholics. All believing Christians, both clergymen and the laic should feel responsible for the expansion of the realm of God an Earth. The activity of the laic faithful and the evolution of their spiritual lives should be inseparable and in connection with their pastors. Priests and all leaders responsible for different groups and apostolic movements should therefore call their attention to their proper spiritual development, first of all by securing particular and formational care for them. The new situation that came into being in Poland and in the world in the political, social, economic and cultural lives creates new possibilities and a new challenge also for the laic Catholics because “passiveness, that always was unacceptale, becomes nowadays more and more a fault. It is unworthy for everybody to idle their time away” – as it was written by John Paul II in his adhortation Christifideles laid. In order to become an active and responsible for the work of the new evangelizing laic Catholic, one should be familiar with the mystery of the Church itself, feel as a subject in Church and sistematically strengthen one's personal bond with Christ and with His Church that is, in fact, the proper means of redemption.