Search Results (5)

Russia’s war against Ukraine as a result of the Kremlin’s aggressive policy has caused a number of catastrophic material consequences, but most dramatically, the suffering of the Ukrainian people. Millions of people at risk of death were forced to leave their previous places of residence. In a short space of time, they had to make the crucial decision to leave the war-stricken country without the prospect of an exact return date. They were accompanied not only by the uncertainty of finding a safe and friendly place to survive but also by the fear of whether they would have anything to return to in the future. From the first days of the war, huge migrations began inside and outside Ukraine. This dramatic situation of an unprecedented wave of refugees in 21st-century Europe has mobilized societies and governments in many countries to provide unprecedented assistance to the citizens of Ukraine. The largest number of refugees reached Poland. In addition, a significant number went to Slovakia. This article, the result of a collaboration between Polish and Slovakian researchers, attempts to illustrate the response of Catholic Church parishioners to the influx of refugees from Ukraine using the example of the St. Joseph parish in Chorzów and the Holy Spirit parish in Kátlovce, Slovakia. The parishioners communities undertook charitable activities, and an informal aid group was immediately organized in the Polish parish. The aim of the research process carried out was, on the one hand, to identify the forms of aid implemented, its scope, and the difficulties encountered, and, on the other hand, to try to grasp the motives for involvement in helping refugees. An important aspect of the research was to verify the reactions of the parishioners in the context of the guidelines of the social teaching of the Church, especially the teaching of Pope Francis on helping migrants and refugees. Full article

Religion can determine how people perceive socio-political reality, especially in a cultural context in which religious affiliation is an important part of national identity. This has a special significance in the Polish cultural context, in which Catholicism is considered the national religion, and its institutional dimension plays an important role in the Polish socio-political domain. The purpose of this study is to analyse how religion affects the socio-political attitudes of Poles abroad. This analysis focuses directly on evaluating the influence of the spiritual leaders of Polish community organisations in the UK on the knowledge and opinions of Brexit among Polish post-accession emigrants to the UK. The study was conducted on a sample of 620 Poles living in the UK (62.6% male) using a group-administered questionnaire. The study found that the Polish Catholic clergy did not play an important role in opinion-forming, i.e., in shaping what Polish emigrants to the UK know and think about Brexit. What proved to be the most powerful factor in terms of opinion-making was the British mass media. The influence of the Catholic clergy on the knowledge of—and opinions on—Brexit among Polish emigrants was only evident among elderly people who did not know English very well, and who regularly participated in religious activities. Full article

Endowed with an in-depth and insightful analysis of the Church’s reality and the charism of reading the signs of the times, one of the greatest Polish pastoralists, founder of the Light-Life Movement, Fr. Franciszek Blachnicki (21 March 1921–27 February 1987) insistently postulated making the “Copernican turn” in the Church’s saving ministry. On the hundredth anniversary of his birth, it is worth looking at the guiding principles of the Congregation for Clergy Pastoral conversion of the parish community in the service of the Church’s evangelizing mission (29 June 2020) and analyze to what extent Blachnicki’s concept of pastoral conversion regarding the renewal of the parish is still valid and estimate whether it can still be an inspiration in pastoral discussions on the realization of the Church hic et nunc. Full article

The main aim of the paper is to discuss the scale and nature of the practice of transmitting Holy Mass by parishes of the Roman Catholic Church in Poland through online live-streaming in spring 2020. The authors analyse these issues in a multifaceted and interdisciplinary way, mainly within the framework of communication and media studies and theology. The methodology of the paper combines practical theology (its four stages: “see-judge-act-review”), scientific methods applicable to social studies (especially social communication and media studies and sociological studies), and the technical aspect of communication activities (in the form of live video streaming) performed by parishes on the Internet. As it turns out, 40.8% of Polish parishes carried out online Mass broadcasts. In most cases, the main sources of broadcast signal were YouTube (18.9%) and Facebook (18.7%), while less than 5% of the parishes conducted technically independent broadcasts. The research showed a statistically significant correlation between online Mass broadcasting and the region of Poland. There was a statistically significant difference between the parish size and Mass broadcasting—the larger the parish, the more often such activities were performed; a similar correlation was observed between urban and rural parishes. Research has shown that in the dioceses where bishops directly encouraged parish priests to broadcast from their parishes, the average percentage of broadcasts was higher (46%) than in those in which there were no such incentives (38%). There was a statistically significant relationship between having a website and conducting online Mass broadcasting. Similarly, there was a statistically significant relationship between the type of parish (conventual–diocesan) and online Mass broadcasting. Conventual parishes did this much more often than diocesan ones (68.6% and 38.9% respectively). Full article

This paper is based on sociological quantitative studies carried out in 2019 on a sample of 620 Polish Catholics living in London, Swindon, or Oxford. Those studies and their findings are limited only to those Catholics who make up the communities around major Polish institutions in the UK, such as Polish parishes, Saturday schools, and community houses. The goal of this paper is to describe selected aspects of Polish migrants’ religiosity in the new social and cultural milieu. What we focus on here is how Poles themselves describe their faith, how they understand and evaluate their membership of parishes or other religious communities, and how they approach religious practices, especially Sunday Mass attendance. We address the following questions: how do the Poles living abroad describe their attitudes towards faith? How many of them are active members of Polish parishes? What do their religious practices and membership of other community organisations look like? How do specific factors affect the results across these areas? Full article