Aktywność charytatywna Kościoła w Polsce w świetle dokumentu roboczego II Polskiego Synodu Plenarnego „Dzieło miłosierdzia Kościoła w Polsce”

Abstract

Diaconia caritatis is an integral part of the Church’s mission of salvation, along with koinonia, martyria, and leiturgia. The traditional idea of the Church’s mission of charity insufficient in the light of contemporary theological thought. Works of charity have more than just a therapeutic value for the alleviation of poverty and its effects, but they are also preventive, averting the various causes of human misery, and procoptic („ameliorative”, from Greek πϱοϰόπτω to advance, to promote), working for a future in the spirit of the „civilisation of love”. This concept of „merciful love” should be the principle underlying the life of society, as the source of social justice on the one hand, and as the complementary principle to that justice on the other. Charity is thus part of Catholic social teaching, but also a vital element of the Church’s pastoral work and social apostolate. It should be the basis of in terpersonal relationships not merely in the proximus (‘neighbour’) dimension, but also the agency transforming and perfecting the life of society in the socius dimension, of the individual man as a member of society. Clearly, interpersonal relations of the proximus category constitute the primary and fundamental domain of mercy. This is the concern of postconciliar theology emphasising the ‘preferential option for the poor’ which underlines the need to place the poor — both those drawn to God by their misery (such as illness, disability of want) and those separated from God by other types of misery (sin) — at the centre of the Church’s and the world’s life. The former group enriches the Church’s store of merit, winning God’s mercy and restoring spiritual balance in the world; while the latter group is the subject of the Church’s special salvatory cure, a challenge for the world testing the authenticity of its aspirations and actions. „Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I came not to call the righteous, but sinners” (Mk 2:17). It is for all these reasons that the document issued on the subject by the Second Polish Plenary Synod deserves thorough academic attention.