Religiousness and Spirituality of Czech Youth

The author tries to find a possible basis for spiritual dialogue between the Church and today's Czech young people. In the first part he places the religiousness of the youth into a broader geographical and historical context. He focuses on the present reality in the Czech Republic and finds out that young people here are extremely atheistic in comparison with the youth in other European countries. At the same time, a lot of them admit that there exist some phenomena which are not possible to explain by scientific reasons. That is why the author pays special attention to the phenomenon of atheism among Czech youth. In the Czech setting we can also find the so called "religious supermarket", in which anybody can choose from the wide offer of various forms of religion. Catholics prevail among those young people who regard themselves as believers, although a great part of them have some objections against the practice of the Catholic Church and against some parts of its doctrine. At the end the author proposes two possible typologies: according to the young people's attitudes to faith in God and according to their relationship to the Church.

Keywords: Youth; Religiousness; Atheism; Catholic Church