You will read more of the women’s stories
According to the CBOS report from January 2020, the religiosity of Poles has changed significantly in recent years. The study analyzed, inter alia, frequency of participation in masses, services and religious meetings. It turns out that regular apprenticeships were fairly stable from 1997 to 2007 and then began to decline sharply.
Although the report shows that 91 percent. of our society are committed Catholics, only over half of them regularly participate in religious ceremonies. We decided to check how Polish women explain this phenomenon.
“I don’t want to have anything to do with the Church”
– I associate the institution of the Church with rot – explains Magda from Gdańsk. – Years of covering up pedophilia, amassing wealth and meddling in politics. When I found out that the priest who walked after the carol writes down the amount of donations from specific residents in the table, I realized that this is not what preaching the faith and creating a place where the faithful are supposed to feel good – he adds.
As our interlocutor said, she does not want to have anything to do with the Church, even though she has not ceased to be a believer. – I can pray at home, because God is everywhere. I don’t hurt anyone and I try to be a good person. I hope that the fact that I don’t go to church doesn’t make me crossed out in God’s eyes, she says.
Rape of privacy during confession
One of our readers, who prefers to remain anonymous, admits that she is sick of confessing sins in front of priests.
– I remember the paralyzing fear at my first confession. Here the child is to tell the old man in the confessional why he is wrong and how he is sinning against God. Older girls have to make excuses for extra-marital sex, masturbation and living with their boyfriend. After all, it is entering an intimate life with shoes – he explains. In her opinion, talking about these topics aloud to a stranger in the confessional does not bring us any closer to salvation.
– Once I was very active in the life of the Church. I sang in the choir, played the guitar, and was eager to read during mass. Today I think that forcing children to blame themselves for their sins and mortify themselves does not build their conviction that the Church is a community in which they can feel good and safe – she adds.
“I lost my faith through an affair with conservatism”
Natalia, 29, from Warsaw, is Orthodox. – My mother baptized me in this faith, and thus, as a teenager, I had no contact with all the “Catholic absurdities” that make people leave the Church. I did not go to communion or confirmation, so I never went into the details of the Catholic religion – he admits.
She treated faith in God intuitively. – For me, she has always been inside, I was simply guided by my conscience – she explains.
The situation changed when she went through a severe depressive episode. – Then I got closer to various details, they began to seem illogical to me. I noticed that the man is placed in the center, even though we should be equal before God. I grew up in a feminist home and did not accept a patriarchy that puts men at the center in all cases, she says. Natalia adds that she was also unable to understand the clash between free will and God’s absolute control. – As a teenager, I thought that everything was destiny and God’s will. And this led to a terrible frustration when I noticed the unused life chances after a while – he explains.
Natalia was also unable to understand that God theoretically loves everyone, but from the narrative of people associated with the Church, one can get the impression that this is not the case at all. – Because of this love affair with ecclesiastical conservatism, I lost my faith for two years. It was only when I came to my senses that I did not want to get rid of it. I just had to cut myself off from some views that, in my opinion, are not for everyone and can sometimes hurt someone, he concludes.
Source: Gazeta
Tristin is an accomplished author and journalist, known for his in-depth and engaging writing on sports. He currently works as a writer at 247 News Agency, where he has established himself as a respected voice in the sports industry.
