Duszpasterstwo młodzieży w Polsce według dokumentów Komisji Episkopatu do Spraw Duszpasterstwa Młodzieży

Abstract

The paper attempts to present some documents that witness to the Church's Care for the youth the communist period of 1945-1989. From the 1930s on and shortly after World War II the Pastoral Care for the Youth was conducted within the framework of Catholic Action. The Polish Episcopate suspended the activities of Catholic associations and organisations in 1949 under the pressure of the communist authorities. In 1957 the so-called "priests-scouts" were created who, on the basis of the method of scouting, tried to conduct the pastoral care for the youth. In 1958 S. Wyszyński, the Polish primate, created the Country Pastoral care for the Male and Female Youth. A subcommission of the Episcopate which worked since 1984 on behalf of the Polish Episcopal Conference was made the Episcopal Commission. It was the Commission's aim to aid the Church in Poland within the scope of the pastoral care for the youth. It was concerned both with the youth at school and those who graduated from school. The author has divided the affluent, yet untidy, documentation of the pastoral activity among the youth into: reports, protocols, programmes, questionaires, correspondence and others. One can distinguish the pastoral care for the urban and village youth on the basis of those documents. In view of a specific character of the groups embraced by the pastoral care there was a pastoral care for recruits, for those who are going to establish their own families and a pastoral care for the "absent" youth. There was a great diversity of methods and means as regards the conditions and needs of a milieu. And so, for instance, organizations were given up for the sake of movements because of increasing repression. Those movements which got roots among the youth turned out to be efficient. The materials included in the Episcopal documents which documents were not published, proved to the Episcopate's prudence in giving aid needed for the preservation of religious and national identity of the youth and as such made up the basis of resource for pastoral research.