Polish Parish Abroad as a Pastoral Institution. Its Structure and Function

Abstract

The parish constitutes the basic social unit of religious life, being the place where the mystery of Christ, the God and Man is fulfilled in the commonwealth of people led by their pastor.

The notion of parish includes sociological elements: the people as a social group, the church and its ideology as the group centre, the pastor as a leader and representative of power, certain activities common for the group, institutions and organizations. In each of these aspects, however, there is something of religious character, a mystery that cannot be expressed solely in sociological terms: the faith of the people, the „sacrum” (the word of God and Sanctissimum), the pastor as the vicar of God and the „sacred” activities. Thus, the parish cannot be included in some social system and indiscriminately analyzed by means of some sociological theory of social group. It also is impossible to consider its problems entirely from the purely formal viewpoint of theology or canon law. This attitude seems to be proved by the very existence of ethnic parishes. Under certain circumstances the links with the own society or factors of native culture may be prized rather than religious dogma and regulations of canon law.

Poles have set up nearly 2000 parishes outside their own country and this fact must have influenced the development of religious culture of various nations. It would be worth while to undertake sociological studies' of this problem with particular stress being laid on the structural and functional analysis of the parishes. This means correlation of religious and economic structures to socio-ethnic structures with subsequent analyses of religious and non-religious functions of these parishes in Polish ethnic environment as well as of the role of the environment in maintaining these institutions.