The Tasks of the Church Towards the Nation in Primate Wyszyński's Teaching

Abstract

In the article the main motifs of Primate Wyszyński's teaching concerning the tasks of the Church towards the Nation are presented. At the beginning the way is shown in which the Primate of the Millennium understood the Nation, the Church and the State. Then the tasks are discussed that the Church should carry out towards the Nation and which were divided by the Primate into the Church's own ones and substitute ones.

The Church's own tasks have a universal character; they ensue straight from the Church's salutary mission. The tasks are teaching the truths of faith and morality, sanctifying people and saving them from sin.

The substitute tasks follow from the fact that the Church is rooted in the life of particular nations and they are to serve the common good of the particular Nation. They are first of all: forming the conscience of the Nation, taking care of man's good and of the good of the family as the foundations of the Nation, as well as of social groups mediating between the man and the state, which the man, as a social being, has the right to set up voluntarily and in which he should perfect himself and develop until fullness of humanity.