Kościół a społeczeństwo obywatelskie

This article attempts to answer the question of the contribution the Church has made to a civil society. However, what is to be established first, is its identity. Being a form of an organized Christian community, it possesses many paradoxical features. What constitutes its raison d`être is a religious mission, in both vertical and horizontal dimensions. As an institution, the Church is determined by the history and culture. In many EU countries its relation with the state is marked by autonomy and independence. A religiously neutral state does not treat it as a particular group of interest, but as a partner in the field of education, culture and social welfare. A “by-product” Church’s mission is the fact of strengthening of the civil society. In its social teaching it criticizes those ideologies which disrespect a human being and weaken his subjectivity. It encourages the faithful to undertake social responsibility. It also has an integration role. Secondary assemblies, including groups adopted by churches, render considerable services to accumulate social capital (which is something that a civil society cannot exist without). It applies in particular to local churches who cherish the so-called folk Catholicism. Celebrating religious holidays is, among others, an opportunity to generate social capital. In Poland, at the decline of the communist system, the visit of the pope John Paul II in 1979 was an impulse to develop a proto-civil society. It is precisely in a non-democratic environment that the western Christianity works in favour of creating an “ethical” civil society. It should also be noticed that in some circumstances religious faith e.g. that immigrants in an ethnically and culturally strange environment confess, may contribute to a social disintegration, or even segmentation of the society