The Catholic Church in Relation to Poles’ Collective Memory. Continuity and Change (original) (raw)

2012

Abstract

The paper attempts to present the leading objectives and motives of the ‘Church’s policy of memory’ before and after 1989. The author states that, like many other institutions of public life, the Catholic Church implements its own policy to shape the collective memory of Poles, both in terms of legitimization and content. At the time of the Polish People’s Republic, the first and foremost objective of the ‘Church’s memory policy’ was to counteract the activities of the communist authorities, which were carrying out a project to restrict the Church’s influ- ence to the narrowly understood field of the priesthood and which ultimately aimed at the atheization of Polish society. The emphasis on the historical symbiosis of Polishness and Ca- tholicism served the purpose of defending the traditional form of Polish religiousness and pro- viding the Church with social support in the struggle to maintain the public dimension of its influence. Despite the change in language, the present objec...

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