Reverend Marian Pirożyński as a Propagator of Catholic Education in Poland between the World Wars

Abstract

Over the years people fulfilling the honorable task of helping, especially youths, to develop, used definite conceptions of education. In preparing the society to live according to the truths of the Christian faith, the Church invariably ascribed a great role to education. The way education and its character were understood developed during the 2000 years of Christianity and became the basis for the tradition of the European education in general. Especially in the period between the two World Wars foundations were laid for the theoretical basis of the Catholic education. It should be stated with all certainty that Father Marian Pirożyński of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer, commonly called Redemptorists, is one of the people who can be numbered among the propagators of the Catholic educational thought.

The Church's thought focused on such a direction of education that would make the pupil strive after forming a true and ideal Christian in himself, that is after achieving a fully human character; hence the views inspired by these thoughts – as in the case of Rev. Marian Pirożyński – may be called Catholic pedagogy. Pirożyński eagerly propagated elements of the Church's official teaching in his writings. He opposed pedagogical naturalism that reduced education to using only natural means, in this way excluding or limiting Christian formation by negating the existence of both sin and grace. The Catholic conception of education realized in schools between the Wars had an integral character not only because it took into consideration the supernatural aim of pedagogical activities, but also through physical, intellectual and spiritual development of the pupils. From today's point of view it can also be called open pedagogy that, without blurring the man's multi-aspect relation to the world of nature, recognizes man's transcendental dimension and his relation to God.

Pirożyński turns out to be not only an ardent propagator, but also a decided defender of such education.