Śleszyński, Przemysław, Sadłoń, Wojciech, Kowalski, Mariusz, Łysoń, Piotr, Żukowski, Tomasz, and Prażmo, Łukasz
The work detailed here has sought to clarify whether and how historical factors may play a role in shaping current religious practices, and what role modern urbanisation and modernisation may play in this. Specifically, questions posed were as follows: a) how large are the differences in levels of religious practice from one historico cultural region to another? b) how large are the differences in levels of religious practice within given historico-cultural regions? c) what are the regularities to levels of religious practice as seen in relation to processes of urbanisation? d) if there is an influence of the above historical and contemporary factors, is it directly proportional to city-size (and thus implicitly intensity of urbanisation)? Our analyses used unique data on attendance at Mass in the years 2016-2018, as noted in all 10,000 parishes in Poland by the Institute of Statistics of the Catholic Church. The data were analysed by reference to the country's historically-conditioned regions, and by contemporary types of area, by reference to the intensity of processes of urbanisation and metropolisation. First, to relate to the historico-cultural context, Poland was divided into four large regions determined historically, hereinafter referred to as 'historically determined regions' or 'historico-cultural regions'. These were: (A) the Congress Kingdom of Poland; (B) Galicia; (C) Greater Poland and Pomerania (within the borders of the Second Republic) with all of Upper Silesia attached; (D) the Western and Northern Territories. Second, a distinction was made between: (1) the most strongly developed metropolises of the so-called 'Big Five' (Warsaw, as well as Krakow, Poznan, the Tri-city (of Gdańsk-Gdynia-Sopot) and Wroclaw); (2) other large and partially medium-sized cities (50,000 inhabitants and more); (3) suburban zones of cities in groups 1 and 2; (4) medium-sized and small cities (of less than 50,000 inhabitants, but not less than 3,000 and 5,000. - cf. subsequent items 5 and 6); (5) rural areas (rural and urban-rural municipalities with an urban centre of less than 5,000 residents and with intensive development of the agricultural function, and (6) rural areas with extensive development (rural and urban-rural municipalities with a locality of fewer than 3,000 residents and underdeveloped agriculture). The achievements of research pursued in the above way were discussed when it came to territorial differences in religious practices (relatively limited by the lack of source data at low levels of geographical aggregation). Presented in particular are the results of addressing variation in the so-called dominicantes index (participation in Mass), in line with various different approaches to regions and means of classification. More-detailed discussion of results provided a basis on which to propose a model explaining the degree of variation in religious practices noticeable today. The article concludes with synthetic cognitive and methodological conclusions, including suggestions for further research. It proved possible to confirm the phenomenon of the level of participation in religious practices being rooted (embedded) historically in the local environment, being highest in areas in the east and south of today's Poland (the former Galicia and the Congress Kingdom). Furthermore, most of these regions are characterised by participation that is progressively lower as urbanisation and metropolisation continues, even as there are significant differences between regions conditioned historically - in the context of a similar degree of urbanisation, including between large cities. On this basis, a model for spatial (historico-geographical) determinants of religious practices in Poland was developed. These analyses amount to the first detailed study of the diversity of Catholic parishes to be based on such a large and geographically-detailed research sample. They further represent the first comprehensive study of spatial variation to religious practices in Poland, and since the work of Gabriel Le Bras (1940s and 1950s) - as discussed further below, and considered one of the few in the world. The extensive and detailed data set of several years' duration allows for an empirical analysis that can clarify causal relationships related to historical factors, as well as finding contemporary determinants, particularly as related to urban and metropolitan processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]