182 times. He did not want to create a “parallel society”. The Association of Christian Workers, for which he wrote the Statutes, was not a society for confessions. It tolerated a variety of political and world-view opinions. When Fr. Matulewicz left this Association, they abandoned his principles, which negatively presaged its future. 7. Father Matulewicz based his concept of serving the Church on the experiences of the Church, in which he was destined to live and to serve. “Is it now our duty to go wherever we can gain more for God, where we can save more souls, that is, where godlessness, immorality, a lack of faith, and indifference toward the Church abound? Should we not try to get in, even to force ourselves into any place where it is possible to gain something for Christ and for His Church? If we fi nd one road blocked, let us look for another. If one door is closed to us, let us make another; if one window is nailed down tight, let us break open another to let the light in.” Being friends with Fr. Honorat Koźmiński, the Renovator became fascinated with the idea of using the Congregation to penetrate (infi ltrate) the various environments in which people live and work daily. Such was, for example, his idea of the role of the religious brothers. Also, the rejection of the habit and other external “religious attributes” was dictated by the then political situation, but also was something more that just a form of temporary intrigue: it was the breaking of barriers between the Church and the “outside” world. The Renovator did not want to build a parallel Christian society, a clerical world. He dreamed of the presence of winesses to the Gospel in the mainstream of human life, wherever it was really dynamic. Following the fall of Communism, questions were asked of the Congress of Theologians of Eastern and Central Europe in Lublin (1991), the Synod of European Bishops in the same year, as well as many men of the Church about the experiences which the Church had brought out from the times of persecution and the way they could enrich the Church of the free world. What conclusions were drawn out of the Church’s underground work when she was pushed to the margins of society and dispossessed, not only of her privileges, but even of basic rights? I believe the answer has not been found. Meanwhile the countries, where the Church was persecuted now see a dominant trend of not only drawing conclusions, but trying to establish the status quo ante, to rebuild the old structures, regain former infl uences, possessions and privileges—securing material and legal stability. 8. From the times of our Congregation’s founding, and even from the times of its renovation, the world has changed tremendously. The manner of the
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