A flowered field

“I look into the future with hope”, said Msgr. Jozef Michalik, Archbishop of Przemysl, President of the Polish Bishops’ Conference (KEP), vice-President of the Council of the Bishops’ Conferences of Europe. On Monday November 28, the prelate took part in a press conference on the occasion of the release of his book-interview “Report on the Faith”. The positive evaluation refers in particular to “the flowered field of the laity”, that participate, in increasing numbers, in Catholic movements and organizations that were restored in Poland after the fall of the Soviet Regime in 1989. The laity. “When freedom arrived – underlined the president of the Polish bishops -it brought with it occasions for intervention. And what came to the fore was the strong request of Church presence in the public domain”. The recovered freedom triggered a strong movement from the grassroots of the laity. Associations such as Catholic Action and the Association of Young Catholics were set up along with spirituality movements, whose activity in Western Europe has been ongoing since”. KEP president thus underlined the need to step up coordination of the various movements and associations for this mission “in close cooperation with Ecclesiastic hierarchies”. Speaking of the Poles’ religious faith, Msgr. Michalik said: “Very often our faith is ritual, and scarcely contemplative, lacking visible dynamics of witness towards the external world”. The prelate also spoke of “the new threats of pseudo modernity, which promote superficiality, lacking the profoundness of Christian anthropology”. A concern: the family. “The family is no longer the place for the transmission of the faith, where character is formed and values are preserved”, states the prelate, pointing out that “at the time of the Communist regime, the family was a bulwark of the Church, along with tradition, and the bond between priests and the people”. But while the bond linking priests to the faithful has remained strong even after the system changed, “today the family is experiencing a serious crisis in Poland and in the rest of the world”. “It my greatest concern”, says the KEP president, who considers the drop in priestly vocations in Poland since 2007 one of the causes of the crisis in family life. “If at home a youth hears only recriminations against priests, if nothing positive is said about them, it will be very hard for him to decide to devote his life to priestly ministry. And the decision will not be supported by his parents, as families units are growing smaller, often with a single child”.The media. If thus the family has lost its influence on the conscience and mind formation process, that role has been taken over by the mass media, which, observes the prelate, “by their very nature thrive on bad news, without considering reality as a whole” and they leave outside of their interests “the great spaces of goodness of which they never speak”. “The world created by the media is different from the real world”, says Msgr. Michalik, also referring to the voices that refer of supposed “divisions within the Polish Church”. As a reminder that the Church is made of the people of God, the prelate recriminates against the accusers. “When have there not been divisions within the people of God?” In reaffirming the uniqueness of the entire Polish episcopacy in the fundamental questions of faith and morals, faithfulness to the redeeming truth and to the Holy See, KEP President underlined the natural differences in the various methods of pastoral care at diocesan level. “As bishops we try to discern the specificity and the needs of our dioceses, in order to find appropriate tools such as sharing experiences and learning from our mistakes”.Criticism. The President of the Polish episcopacy, answering a question regarding the criticism that personalities and media have recently addressed to the Catholic Church, remarked: “all attacks against the Church may be useful, representing the occasion for conscience examination in a spirit of humbleness”. In fact, the prelate said, “If the attack is accompanied by slander and public opinion manipulation, the laity will be encouraged to seek the truth and defend it”. “We all realize that the Church isn’t merely made of the bishops and the priests, as it is often described by our critics. The community of faithful consists of lay people and religious”. Msgr. Michalik said he totally disagrees with the current opinion whereby the situation of the Church in Poland, after John Paul II has grown worse. “I firmly believe that John Paul II lives in Benedict XVI”.