A Christmas Pastoral Visit during the Pandemic in Poland: Changing Discursive Strategies and Communicative Scripts

Abstract

The aim of this article is to present changes in the Catholic religious discourse in the pandemic. The author carries out a detailed analysis of pastoral visits to parishioners. The article’s topicality is justified by the analysis of issues within discourse studies and genology. This study of religious discourse focuses on a set of communication practices typical of Polish Catholics making a discourse community united by a vision of the world created in this case by the Catholic Church. The parameters of the religious discourse presented in the article include ritualised communication scenarios, dynamically configured discursive roles and its immersion in both tradition and contemporary culture. The author refers to selected dialogue and monologue prayers promoted and recommended in parishes as a form of home prayer replacing pastoral visits forbidden during the pandemic. The event whose scenario is preserved in liturgy agendas provided for Polish dioceses, assuming contact between the rector of a parish church and specific home churches, changed both discursive and generic formulas. In 2020, this became a home prayer performed according to the scenario recommended to believers prepared in particular parishes. The genological analysis of selected prayers, including their structure, intentions, their vision of the world, and style, demonstrates the inclination of the institutional Church to promote and preserve traditional prayer formulas.