Dialog z niewierzącymi w polskiej rzeczywistości

Abstract

A Committee on the Dialogue with Non-Believers, which operates as part of the Council Conference of the Polish Episcopate on Religious Dialogue issued in July 1999 a document „Non-Believers in a Parish – Pastoral Suggestions”. This document lists four categories of people termed as non-believers. These are: atheists, people who are indifferent, doubtful and those who are searching for faith. A dialogue with atheists is nowadays impeded by the fact that in the majority of cases they do not show any doctrinal interests but only a pragmatic orientation to reality (their atheism is pragmatic as opposed to practical, where a man preoccupied with consumptive attitude does not even think about solving existential problems in social dimension, but only about settling down as comfortably as possible, and he lives as if God did not exist). Atheists react on a „different wave” and hence so many difficulties of a dialogue with them. Equally difficult is the dialogue with indifferent people, because having assumed a passive attitude towards religion they do not see a need for dialogue. This passiveness has to be changed if dialogue is to 26 Por. NP., s. 318. 324 be made possible. It is necessary to make these people sensitive to transcendental matters. Most frequently the dialogue with non-believers includes those who are in doubt or searching for a religion. The way catholics act in the dialogue with the doubtful can be described by a triad: listen, understand, give evidence o f faith, and in the dialogue with those who are searching for a religion: accept people, positively justify faith, help grow in it. Two matters are of primary importance in the dialogue with nonbelievers: a permanent formation to such a dialogue and decentralization of dialogues with non-believers by taking up the dialogue by these catholic circles (dioceses, parishes) in which non-believers live.