Pokuta w ujęciu protestanckim

Abstract

This paper is conceived as an attempt to acquaint Polisch Catholic moralists, gathered at their annual symposium, with the Protestant approach to the subject of penance First, the author presents the standpoint of M. Luther (point 1), of the Lutheran symbolic books „Liber Concordiae” (point 2), of Lutheran orthodoxy and pietism (point 3); and than shows the modern Protestantism exemplified by Evangelical Lutheran Church in Polish People’s Republic (the Old Protestantism) and the Polish Church of Christian Baptists (the New Protestantism). After having exposed the Protestant standpoint, the author formulates a number of questions adressed to the Catholic theologians, eg.: (1) the question of contrition and confession of sins: do the Catholics in the practice of penance see the difference between them clearly enough? do not they overestimate sometimes confession to the disadvantage of contrition? (2) the question of treating the sacrament of penance as legal procedings does not the Gospel oblige us to understand the sacrament of penance rather as a scence of God’s mercy? what does await the sinner in the confessional: a righteous judge or the Forgiving Redeemer? would noth it be necessary to shift the emphasis? is the picture of the court trial really a suitable analogy here? (3) the question of combining spiritual guidance with the sacrament of penance: does the sacrament instituted in order to be, according to the fine expression of the Fathers, „another anchorage after shipwreck” , develop in the right direction? not questioning the need for spiritual guidance, one should ask whether it must be right in the sacrament of penance, and whether its development, particularly in some circles, does not change too much original sense of the sacrament? (4) the question of the changeable and unchangeable in the Dogma of Trent: what, in the Tridentine exposition of the sacrament of penance, is a dogma and what is a historical shape of the institution? whether not too much is considered non-reformable, and whether it is not why deep concern is sometimes expressed when new forms of performing this sacrament are proposed?