Search

The dynamic secularisation of Polish young people and the fact that many of them are opt­ing out of religious classes prompts a critical analysis of the current model of Religious Education and the development of proposals that respond to contemporary socio-cultural challenges. In others words this article will seek to outline potential directions for modifying the current Religious Education model intended for secondary school students in Poland. This paper attempts to provide a synthetic answer to the following questions: Why is Religious Education in secondary schools today not leading to the expected results? What elements of it are inadequate for contemporary conditions? What should the model of Religious Education for young people look like in the context of a decline in religiousness? Where and how should catechesis be provided? This paper contributes to the discussion on the shape of Religious Education for young people in a changing society.

This article aims to show the connection between the current crisis of adults and the changes that can be observed in the level of religiosity/spirituality of today’s youth. The Roman Catholic Synod on Young People held in Rome highlighted the need to understand young people and their religiosity. Un­derstanding and interpreting the religiosity, ecclesiasticism, and spirituality of today’s youth is necessary if we wish to answer their religious and spiritual questions properly. Nonetheless, this paper considers only one specific aspect of youth religiosity, that is, the connection between the world of adults, espe­cially the crisis that has affected many of them, and the development of young people—especially of their spirituality/religiosity. The first part provides a basic outline of young people’s religiosity and their rela­tionship to the Roman Catholic Church based on the research. The second part reflects on the crisis of intergenerational transmission of faith, critically evaluating the existing channels used for this purpose. The third part is a critical evaluation of some aspects of the life of adults, especially in light of the crisis that has affected adulthood. The last part, containing results and conclusion, emphasizes the necessity and importance of the formation of adults in the Roman Catholic Church. The research is based on a literature review, analysis of data obtained from research—carried out especially in the Republic of Croatia—as well as directions that come to us from the Roman Catholic Church documents.

What Pope Francis describes as “the culture of temporariness” are all the changes taking place in communities and the broad anthropological and cultural context of the Western world. According to the pope, they include new ways of creating and maintaining relations, zapping, consumerism, individual­ism, the culture of rejection, unemployment, and NEET generation. In search for the Church’s response to secularization, the authors decided to explore Pope Francis’ instructions addressed to young people concerning marital and family life in the era of the current culture of temporariness. This is the major research objective of the article. To achieve it, using the method of literature review covering the topic, the authors first present the manifestations of the culture of temporariness among young people. Next, the consequences of the culture of temporariness in catechesis for marriages and families are indicated. In the last part of the paper, Pope Francis’s instructions for young people regarding the threats of the cul­ture of temporariness in their lives and activities of marriages and families are elaborated on.

The article essentially aims at answering who were the Polish young men wishing to become priests in 2020 as compared with the candidates who entered Polish seminaries in 2000. The answer was based on quantitative and qualitative surveys conducted in 2000 and 2019 among seminarians at the very beginning of their priestly formation. The questionnaires, though exposing great cognitive possibilities, cannot measure what concerns the mystery of vocation or faith. Despite these limitations, the obtained results have allowed us to find out, for example, where the seminarians came from and what their backgrounds were. They also show their interests, the level of their general and religious knowledge as well as their values. Of importance was to get to know their visions of the priesthood and the Church. The present paper, as a synthesis of the study published in book form, gives a profile of the contemporary candidate for the priesthood. The results of the research can be used by formators and all those who make arrangements for the introduction of the new Ratio Institutionis in Poland.