Czy nadchodzi post-chrześcijańska epoka? Analiza kulturowych zjawisk współczesności

Abstract

There is no need for detailed sociological analysis to realise that the currently dominant culture provides the basis for secularization and absolutizing of secularist paradigm. There is an ongoing effort of creating and maintaining the world without God and, as a result, we have to face relativism which destroys natural and evangelic values. In consequence we witness the secularization of public life as well as private and religious indifference and passivity in front of transcendental values and truths - God and Church. Religion, its symbolism and its strong cultural message, were forced to “emigrate” to the private sphere, playing increasingly marginal role in modem community. Over the last several years we have witnessed considerable cultural and social changes essentially caused by universality of consumerism (as many goods as possible for as many people as possible) as well as by freedom, understood as a possibility of choice of different but not equivalent ways people live and behave - that is, relativism. As a result, culture became a matter of choice and consumption. Therefore the present effort of Catholicism, its firm voice in public and moral matters is engaged in the ultimate struggle for the future of Europe. It may occur that in case Christianity is marginalized and its important in public debate voice disappears, “Europeism” of the part of the globe between the Ural Mountains and the Atlantic Ocean will vanish. Essential identity of this continent is not founded on a race or a language but on Greek theoretical thought (philosophy), Roman law and evangelical inspiration which constitute the foundation of our civilization.