„A ten zbrodniarz emigrant [Bóg] myśli o powrocie?” Czy proroctwo Adama Mickiewicza kiedyś się spełni?

Jacek Salij

Abstract

This is an argument with an idea that faith and religious practices are fading away, the influence of the Church on the life of society is coming to an end, and that it is a process that is inevitable and irreversible. The author shares Jose Casanova’s proposition that the ever increasing dechristianization of the hitherto Christian societies seems to be more of a hypothesis than an empirical fact. Moreover, on the one hand, he puts forward questions about the positive sense of the process of secularization that has been wearing down European Christianity for three centuries now, and on the other, he recalls cases, described in the Bible and known in the history of the Church, of a dramatic depopulation of God’s people. And   the question, whether we are to expect an increase of the secularization process, rather than its reversal, he answers with the following, specifically Polish, 17^th century, formula: Fortuna variabilis, Deus mirabilis (the world goes round at random, and God is admirable!).