Wizyta duszpasterska - kolęda: instytucjonalizacja kontroli w grupie parafialnej
Pastoral visit - Christmas-time visit: institutionalization of control in the parish Community

Summary/Abstract: The author intends to attract readers’ attention to the tradition of pastoral visit (Christmas-time visit), and to highlight its control function. In fact, the parish institution embarks on the practice of Christmas-time pastoral visits as an instrument to control parishoners, and namely their religious and moral attitudes. This control is intentional and markedly institutionalized. In this respect, we should distinguish between intended control (when the priest is aware of its goal, i.e. collection of relevant information and recording this data in the relevant form: pastoral visit sheet) and exerted control (when, sometimes, the priest decides to withdraw from such goal because he is not entirely comfortable in the controller role). At the same time, Christmas-time pastoral visits give parishioners an opportunity to practice their own, less institutionalized control in respect of parish leaders: priests who pay their Christmas-time pastoral visits, as well as self-control of their own relations with the parish.

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