In a commemoration of the Jubilee Year of Mercy which was declared by Pope Francis, and at the occasion of 25 years of free activity of the Catholic Church in Slovakia, there was a collection of texts on the situation of the Church in Slovakia (editors: František Mikloško and Karol Moravčík) published in 2015. It was given a title The Joy of Gospel in Slovakia. This title was chosen, in order to point to the Pope's program expressed in the
document Evangelii gaudium (The Joy of Gospel) released in 2013, while the delving into various areas of life of the Slovak Church should reveal our closeness or our alienation with regard to Pope Francis’s program for the present-day Church.
The book was not met with a positive understanding by the leaders of the Slovak Church, though many people who care about the fate of the Catholic Church have shown joy, gratitude and willingness to cooperate with Pope Francis´s program. Misunderstanding on the part of Catholic public on one hand, and the enthusiasm of many others on the other, led the authors and their colleagues to continue to analyze the situation of the Church in Slovakia, as they compare domestic circumstances with the worldwide situation of Christianity and focus even more on the Francis’s Reform Program. The result of their efforts is a book The Joy of Gospel in Slovakia II with a subtitle Facts and Opinions.
The title of the book points again to the Program of Pope Francis. In the first three chapters, Karol Moravčík devotes himself to naming and evaluating problems and challenges that have emerged in the world and Slovakia over the past 50 years since the II. Vatican Council - a special milestone in the modern history of the Catholic Church. The next chapter, written by Pavol Tomašovič, depicts a picture of the acceptance and rejection of the book The Joy of Gospel in Slovakia. In the following three chapters, Jozef Žuffa deals with the methods, processing and content of particular researches, which should help to evaluate the situation of the Slovak Church most objectively. The essay of the Czech theologian Michal Kaplánek on the crisis of priesthood in today's Church is also added. The co-authors of the final chapter, which compares the program of Pope Francis and the state of the
Church in Slovakia, are Karol Moravčík, Július Marián Prachár and Pavol Zat’ko.
As in other European post-communist countries, the present-day Church in Slovakia faces the challenge of overcoming the fear of the contemporary post-modern world and, at the same time, finding a courage to handle current ways of thinking and acting, which she adopted in these countries so innovatively during the Communist persecution. This work aspires to help fulfill this challenge.
