Teaching religion in postmodern society : some insights from the German “Carousel of Concepts” for the renewal of Catholic religious education in Poland

Kurzfassung/Abstract

Poland, still considered by some to be a bastion of Catholicism in Europe, is becoming more secularised every year, and its society resembles the postmodern societies of Western Europe. The changes in religiousness, which affect especially the younger Poles, are so strong that they call into question the validity of the current form of religious education, i.e. school catechesis, which is proving incapable of fulfilling its tasks, e.g. in the function of Christian initiation. Given the above context, the present article has a threefold purpose: The first step is to present the social and educational challenges of school catechesis in Polish schools. Based on these premises, the second step will outline the main similarities and differences in religious education between Poland and Germany, and then the German 'Carousel of Concepts' (H. Mendl) of the 1960s, which contributed to the emergence of a possible optimal model of religious education for a postmodern society. In the third and final step, ideas for the future will be formulated for the renewal of religious education in Poland, making it possible to characterise it in a guiding way as a dialogical-educational concept.