CRIME OF INSULTING RELIGIOUS FEELINGS IN POLAND IN AN INTERDISCIPLINARY PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

The article is an attempt at an interdisciplinary analysis of the crime defined in art. 196 of the Act of 6 June 1997 – Penal Code (Journal of Laws of 2022, item 1138, hereinafter: the Penal Code) as an insult to religious feelings. It also draws attention to the emerging increase in this type of crime in Poland and the related difficulties in assessing the facts, repeatedly used in populist politics and discussions. The aim of the study was to find the sources of protection of religious feelings on the basis of positive law, common law supplemented by science in the field of psychology, philosophy and pedagogy. The article presents the genesis of the crime based on Polish penal codes and other selected legal acts. The current legal status in the field of protection of religious feelings was presented. An attempt was made to define the subjective and objective side
of this crime, the legitimacy of its inclusion in the Penal Code, what religious feelings are, and what they could be by their nature. According to the adopted definition, religious feelings are a mental state that expresses a person's attitude towards phenomena related to the world of his religiosity. The author concurs with the statement that religious feelings are no different from other feelings, and are "religious" only because of the uniqueness of the subject. According to the author, it is not possible to work out a unified position on the subject and subject of the crime of offending religious feelings, because it
all depends on who, for whom and for what purpose is to assess the actual state of affairs. The argument for maintaining Art. 196 in the Criminal Code, it is necessary to protect religious feelings as the dignity of a human person due to the professed faith or nondenominationalism, and to ensure spiritual social order. The argument in favor of regulating the issue of the protection of religious feelings under civil law is the fact that with such a large number of religions it is impossible to define the current Art. 196 of the Penal Code with regard to the subject of protection, assuming the implicit and implicit
knowledge of Poles, in a situation of unintentional offense against religious feelings, distinguishing which actions harm religious feelings and which do not.