Studia Paradyskie

Liturgical and pastoral perspectives of the sacraments of baptism and confirmation according to bishop Wilhelm Pluta based on the Gorzowskie Widomości Kościelne [Gorzów Church News] The purpose of this article is to present the pastoral project and its adaptation and liturgical-pastoral perspectives for the local Church of the Recovered Territories in Poland, described during the episcopate of Bishop Wilhelm Pluta (1958-1986). The phenomenon of Bishop Pluta, his liturgical-pastoral vision and wisdom as a shepherd in the so-called Recovered Territories, populated by Poles from the East, people whose families were victims of the Holocaust, victims of the Volhynian massacre, who had to leave their life’s work and go into the unknown in cattle wagons, and as a shepherd defending human identity and dignity during the persecution of the Church in Poland by the communist authorities, illustrates only in a telegraphic summary the geopolitical context to which Bishop Pluta was sent. The analysis of available materials (pastoral letters, various types of typescripts, instructions, decrees and orders published in the official church bulletin – Gorzowskie Wiadomości Kościelne) presents the actual undertaking of the liturgical and pastoral mission by Bishop Wilhelm Pluty. The materials, the total number of which amounts to four thousand pages, show not only the enormous intellectual work of the bishop of that time, but also the great demand and task of the pastors, who were responsible for the direct implementation of the bishop’s orders. Such a rich resource of information cannot be exhaustively described in one treatise. Therefore, in the article presented below, I have limited myself to discussing only the bishop’s liturgical and pastoral perspective on the sacraments of baptism and confirmation. The above article is therefore an attempt to present Bishop Pluta’s pastoral idea in the face of the historical and cultural changes in the Recovered Territories in the years 1958-1986, and at the same time a reflection on its [Pluta’s idea] adequacy, the fruits of which we can observe today, with hindsight, in the Zielona Góra-Gorzów diocese.