New Shepherds

Krzysztof Pawlina presents in his book a profile of a candidate for the priesthood who enters a seminary in Poland. The study was first conducted by survey method in 2000 and then repeated twenty years later. In the former period, the survey covered seminarians born and partly brought up during the communist rule in Poland, while in the latter, the survey subjects were young people who were brought up in the conditions of a democracy and the free market economy. The research captured the change that had taken place in regard to the social identity, lifestyle and mentality of candidates for the priesthood. The study covered aspects such as the geographical and social sources of priestly vocations, the cultural background of priesthood candidates, their religiosity, their world of values, their motivations, their understanding of the priesthood and the Church. This change in question was explored in the context of social transformations, especially the secularisation processes taking place in the last two decades of Poland.