"Przyszłość ludzkości idzie przez rodzinę!" : konstruowanie kryzysu rodziny w wypowiedziach Kościoła rzymskokatolickiego w Polsce : treści i funkcje

The family crisis thesis constitutes a significant element in the discourse of the Roman Catholic Church (RCC) in Poland in the recent years. Public debates over the ratification of The Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence, in vitro fertilization, contraception, abortion, as well as events such as the Synod on the Family have reinforced this trend. The diagnosis of problems threatening the family refers not only to the private sphere. The RCC puts the family crisis in a broader context of society, citizenship and nation. The family crisis thesis plays a significant role in the RCC’s narration on human sexuality (it strengthens heteronormativity) and gender roles (it petrifies the conservative gender contract). The article aims at reconstructing fundamental arguments and narrative schemes that the RCC uses to legitimize the thesis about the family crisis. It provides answers to such questions as: what is the function of the “family crisis” for other semantic fields in the RCC’s discourse and what role does it play regarding the presence of the RCC in the public sphere in Poland? In the article I refer to the results of the qualitative content analysis of the Polish Bishops’ Conference documents and public statements of the RCC’s hierarchs in Poland from 2012-2017.