For a “quality” faith

Poland is one of the European countries where religiosity features most substantially: the majority of the population are Catholics, and Catholicity distinctly features in Polish history and culture. On behalf of the Bertelsman Foundation, Beata Zarzycka of the Catholic University of Lublin, based on a statistic sample of 1,000 people aged 18 to 70, developed a complex socio-psychological survey of the distinctive traits of Polish religiosity. The results were published in 2009 on the Foundation’s Religionsmonitor as part of a broader survey of Europeans’ religiosity, where 74% of respondents defined themselves as “religious people”, and most of them as Christians.The identikit of the Polish Catholic. In Poland, 95% of adults call themselves believers, 1/3 pray regularly (at least once a day), and over one half of them (53%) regularly go to Mass. However, 17% of Catholics attend the Eucharistic liturgy just a few times a year, while 2% do not attend it at all. Being so deeply rooted in Polish culture, religion plays a major role in it. 44% of Poles define themselves as very religious, 40% as religious, and just 15% reveal they are “not too religious”. However, Zarzycka points out, the gap between the objective assertion of faith and the way of understanding faith, or, in other words, the gap between the confessed faith and the believers’ conduct is becoming wider and wider. 68% of Poles do not believe in the non-existence of Satan, while 15% challenge the dogma on immortality, resurrection and eternal life. In addition, these surveys showed that the majority of Polish Catholics (61%) do not accept sexual ethic rules and reject at least some of the Catholic social ethic principles.Three groups of believers. A survey of Poles’ religiosity suggests there are three separate groups of believers. For 41%, the central role of religion remarkably affects everyday life and conduct. Most of those who call themselves believers (48%), however, regard religion as an external value, which is therefore conditional on other values. These two groups taken together, accounting for nearly 90% of Polish Catholics, even if for most of them religiosity only selectively affects their behaviour, may be defined, according to Zarzycka, as religious people who are connected with the institutional Church. For 57% of young Poles aged 18 to 39, religiosity is an external value. It is instead regarded as an independent, and therefore as an absolute, value by 29 % of young people. While, though, in 1988 17.1% of young Poles stated to be “deeply religious”, in 2007 just 6% of them stated as much. 53% of Polish Catholics have never engaged in meditation (only 8% of young people do). Just about 11% of young people (and just 18% of all Polish Catholics) are interested in learning more and exchanging views about religious matters. The majority of the whole sample (approximately 60%) are people who are only occasionally or selectively interested in religious matters. Just 27 % of Polish Catholics are interested in learning more about religion, while 34% of them have never read any book about religious matters, and just 10% of them read religious publications. So, Zarzycka concludes, even if 97% of the sample point out they have been raised in Catholic environments, it seems that faith in Poland is not studied in depth and is rarely based on personal experience.Signs of secularisation. Zarzycka comments that signs of secularisation are already consistently appearing and processes of individualisation – privatisation and secularisation of faith are taking place in Poland. 35% of Catholics adhere to the principles of faith only selectively, and just 16% acknowledge the importance of the apostolate. The selectivity of faith, which is evidence of non-compatibility between the lifestyle of many people who style themselves as religious and the model of life that is suggested by the teachings of the Church, the scholar points out, should be understood as creating one’s own religious systems and as the non-acceptance of some members of the ecclesial magisterium and/or as their own subjective understanding. More and more people, despite confirming the importance of God and going to church, state they have a different value system. And just 18% think that only the Catholic Church leads people to salvation. Therefore, the fundamental challenge for the Church in Poland is not so much the preservation of faith, but the form of Poles’ religiosity and their attitude towards the surrounding world, Zarzycka concludes. The key question here is not the number of believers, but rather the quality of their faith in terms of life experience.