The Church in Poland in the Mirror of the Press

Abstract

The present study attempts to present the synthetic picture of the Church, which has emerged in the Polish papers of the 20th and 21st century. It aims at answering questions: How has the image of the Church changed in the papers, depending on the historical epoch and socio-political situation, and to what extent was it connected with them? How diverse was the image of the Church at one time, regarding press titles which mentioned it, their program line, an editor, etc.? What are the possible specific dimensions and subjects of the potential studies in this area? It needs to be stipulated already in the introduction that the submitted publication shall not encompass the detailed analysis of the changing image of the Church in the papers in the discussed time period. It is impossible; such a detailed analysis must have been included in numerous monographs of sizable length. It is rather aimed at arranging already conducted research in this field, presenting some long-term processes and the main change factors, which occur in the aforementioned image as well as factors, which shaped it. The additional goal – as already indicated – can be providing an inspiration for the more specific research in this area. Before the author would proceed to explore the formulated subject, he would present the preliminary concepts, i.e., he would briefly discuss the specificity of understanding the Church nature in terms of a divine-human institution, the very concept of the media image and the possible ways of its examination. The situation of the Polish press in a given epoch as well as the historical background would be analyzed together with the conducted study. In the last chapter describing the situation after 1989, the object of the analysis also considers other media and it is due to the increasingly universal phenomenon of convergence and also ownership and capital links between the particular media concerns.