Dialogical Apologia. Archbishop Józef Życiński Towards Contemporary Culture

The purpose of this article is to present the apologetic elements of the thought of Archbishop Józef Życiński (1948-2011) in the context of current cultural challenges. The author presents significant apologetic threads on the basis of the Archbishop’s statements expressed in interviews and in thematic introductions to the Congress of Christian Culture at the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin (Poland) in 2000, 2004 and 2008. The apologia for Christianity formulated by the Archbishop has a dialogical, contextual and aspectual character. In the substantive aspect, his apologetic thought is focused on the search for traces of God in the times of metaphysical ignorance, on the defence of the primacy of the dignity of the human person against the ‘dictatorship of success’ and on showing the actuality of Christian values in a culture affected by the virus of indifference. In its formal aspect, on the other hand, it takes the shape of a benevolent concern for the preservation of Christian values in a changing European culture that is increasingly pluralistic in terms of worldview and religion.