The challenges of faith

Four years after the death of Pope Woityla, Poland’s Bishops address the question of the religiousness of the Polish people. A number of surveys show that faith still plays an important role in the life of the population, but at the same time there is evidence of a drop in Church and liturgical life attendance that raises a number of hanging questions regarding future developments. The Poles and faith. The bishops are concerned for the moral crisis that appears to involve all areas of Polish society, as affirmed by the Archbishop of Katowice Msgr. Damian Zimon in the Letter for Lent. The archbishop reminds the faithful of the validity of the sacrament of reconciliation. Recent findings show that the faith and the religiousness of the Poles has not changed much over the past 20 years. However, a more detailed analysis explains the reason for the Bishops’ concern. 95% of the Polish people consider themselves Catholic, and over half claimed they attend the Eucharistic liturgy “at least once a week”. Only 9% never go to church while 2% define themselves atheist. According to 30% faith gives a meaning to life; 42% pray every day while over 25% do so at least once a week. Only 5% of the sample said they never pray. Recent findings regarding attendance to Sunday Mass (38% of the faithful) show a negative trend compared to the previous year (6% less). To this regard, Edward Ciupak from the University of Warsaw noted that “In the Polish Church there isn’t an outstanding personality, there isn’t a leader, and this negatively affects the presence of the faithful in churches. The Polish pope led the Polish faithful to develop a special bond with religious faith, but Benedict XVI can’t take on this role”.“Religious but with no faith”. Msgr. Zbigniew Kiernikowski, bishop of the diocese of Siedlce, claims that ours has become a post-Christian era. “Without formation and Catechesis, that was once conveyed in the family, only the rite remains, while compared to the Gospel, contemporary Christian life is a caricature. This is often the case of church marriage between non-faithful spouses who often, after a short period of time, decide to separate”, the prelate remarked. As shown in the surveys, half of Poland’s faithful are not against divorce, and therefore Msgr. Kiernikowski said that today “there is a need to separate faith from religion. The same person can be religious and have no faith. It is possible to participate in the liturgy not being able to understand its significance. There are people that go to Church just to fulfil a duty, to pacify their conscience. And it happens that some priests view the faithful only according to the amount of their offerings. Since the separation between faith and religiosity involves the priests too”. The Poles and confession. According to the analyses conducted by the Statistics Institute of the Catholic Church, 56% confess to the priest several times a year while 11% perform the sacrament of reconciliation at least once a year. But many do so in order to obtain the necessary requirements for a religious marriage or in order to Christen their child. “An increasing number of Poles view confession as a therapy. In the confessional they expect understanding, help and support, as they would be given by a psychotherapist”, claimed f. Jacek Prusak SJ, who claims that analysing one’s decisions and behaviours with the confessor is the result of profound social changes. “Remorse has been replaced by discomfort”, said f. Prusak. And according to a survey published by the magazine Newsweek, a large number of practising faithful interpret the sins in a very different way from Church Catechism. The Church and her past. Statistics also show that while in 2004 78% of the Poles said they had full faith in priests, last year’s figures amounted to 65% (greater trust is reposed in the army and in state and private television networks). Maria Libiszowska Zoltowska from Warsaw’s University, claims that the widening gap separating ecclesial hierarchy from the faithful is a result of the scandals involving the clergy, which are given major emphasis by the media along with the cases of apostasy on the part of a few renown priests. Recent findings indicate that 46% of the population, half of whom are young people, believe that the Church did not reckon with its past in an adequate manner. Msgr. Tadeusz Rakoczy, from the diocese of Bielsko and Zywiec, said, “in the present atmosphere of false freedom, the press and the television networks feel free to scorn the Magisterium of the Catholic Church and accuse her servants of collaborating with Communist secret services or of other alleged crimes in the public arena”.