Catholic Social Thought in the Polish Catholic Periodicals 1918-1939

Abstract

In the pre-war period there were many magazines interested in the Catholic social thought. The most important were: „Przegląd Powszechny”, Ateneum Kapłańskie”, „Prąd”, „Przewodnik Społeczny”, „Ruch Katolicki”, „Verbum” and „Kulturę”. Their common feature was the clearly marked catholic ideology. They accepted the catholic social doctrine and were interested in every manifestation of Christian social movement. They criticised strongly the liberal and capitalist system mainly from the position of the Polish economic reality. Their programme included, among others: introducing of a planned economy, changes in rural social and economic relations in the village, the struggle against a traditional type of the Catholic connected with social conservatism, the posulate of the separation of religious duties from social ones, disproving of limiting religiosity to religious practice and thus treating religion as support of the existing social „order”. They formulated the conception of a new system of a classless nation, a system respecting human dignity of man independently from his social status.