The Bulletin of the Polish Academy of Sciences: Technical Sciences (Bull.Pol. Ac.: Tech.) is published bimonthly by the Division IV Engineering Sciences of the Polish Academy of Sciences, since the beginning of the existence of the PAS in 1952. The journal is peer‐reviewed and is published both in printed and electronic form. It is established for the publication of original high quality papers from multidisciplinary Engineering sciences with the following topics preferred: Artificial and Computational Intelligence, Biomedical Engineering and Biotechnology, Civil Engineering, Control, Informatics and Robotics, Electronics, Telecommunication and Optoelectronics, Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering, Thermodynamics, Material Science and Nanotechnology, Power Systems and Power Electronics.

Journal Metrics: JCR Impact Factor 2018: 1.361, 5 Year Impact Factor: 1.323, SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) 2017: 0.319, Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP) 2017: 1.005, CiteScore 2017: 1.27, The Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education 2017: 25 points.

Abbreviations/Acronym: Journal citation: Bull. Pol. Ac.: Tech., ISO: Bull. Pol. Acad. Sci.-Tech. Sci., JCR Abbrev: B POL ACAD SCI-TECH Acronym in the Editorial System: BPASTS.

The primacy of the Bishop of Rome is the term for the highest office in the Church. It consists in carrying out a mission appointed to St. Peter and his successors by Christ. The truth about the primacy is a theoretical plane, dogmatically defined at the I Vatican Council in 1870. It also has a practical dimension, which depends on the individual popes and the particular historical context. A characteristic feature of the pontificate of John Paul II was the implementation of the reforms of the II Vatican Council and the Church’s preparation for the Great Jubilee of the third millennium. John Paul II realized the primacy function in accordance with the tradition of the Church, on the grounds of the biblical image of Peter the Apostle, and continuing the line of his predecessors – John XXIII and Paul VI. The leading element of his pontificate was the openness to the world, to man and his dignity, or sensitivity to the signs of the times. The priority at the level of ecclesial unity was a concern for the community at all levels, including the ecumenical field. John Paul II realized the primacy ministry as Servus servorum Dei, in the ancient formula – priority in love .

This paper takes into account questions formulated by the Holy Mother. Her thought and consideration on the revealed word serves as pattern of theological thinking and key to understanding of the relationship between theology and other sciences. This study is based on the Church’s magisterial documents, papal teaching, as well as theological and philosophical statements. The matter of theology determines its principles, start point and methods. Its criteria consider the universal requirements of reason but, unlike in other sciences, are deeply and indispensably enrooted in ecclesial community. The purpose also distinguishes theology in the scientific world and confers particular meaning concerning its pragmatism, benefits and importance.

The Catholic image of Martin Luther in the course of the centuries evolved from the literally negative one during the time of the Reformation and the centuries that followed, through the theological attempts and historically in-depth analyses inspired by the ecumenical movement up to contemporary acceptance of several theological postulates. Contemporary movements of Roman-Catholic thinking of Luther well summarize historically vulnerable and dogmatically deepened opinions of the recent popes: John Paul II, Benedict XVI and Francis. Following the agreement texts of the Lutheran-Catholic Commission at the world forum, ecumenically open popes can find out in Martin Luther a profoundly religious man, the witness of the Gospel whose theological thought is still relevant and a challenge for the presently secularized world.

This article was prompted by a joint declaration made on 28 September 2015 by the Archbishops of Cracow and Warsaw and the state authorities of the two cities that they would provide means for publishing project ‘A Critical Edition of the Literary Works of Karol Wojtyła – John Paul II’. This decision, marking the 100th anniversary of the birth of Karol Wojtyła in May 2020, signalizes the importance of the project which goes beyond a standard publication of an author’s complete works. The series was inaugurated by the publication in 2018 of Volume One (Juvenilia, 1938–1946), whose editors are expected to continue working on the following volumes. The author of this article takes a look at the first collected works edition of The Poetry and Dramas of Karol Wojtyła – John Paul II, published in 1979 (it actually went to press in 1980) under the directorship of Jacek Woźniakowski and authorized by John Paul II himself. It was in fact a complete edition as its editors succeeded in collecting all of Karol Wojtyła literary works from the moment he enrolled at the Seminary until his election as Pope in 1978. All the texts used for that edition were collected at source and in that respect can hardly be surpassed. For over forty years it offered a reliable store of Karol Wojtyła’s poems and plays to ordinary readers, translators, producers of plays and public ceremonies. In this article we can find a first-hand account of the story of that first edition from its inception, the role of the editors of the weekly Tygodnik Powszechny, the decisions taken at the Znak head office and the author’s own contribution as editor. It is at this point that he explains the decision to exclude from their edition Karol Wojtyła’s juvenila from his student years.

In 2020, in Poland, a national commemoration of two eminent religious philosophers was celebrated: it was dedicated to the memory of Friar J.M. Bocheński O.P. and Pope St. John Paul II. In the paper, I recapitulate fundamental ideas of The Logic of Religion (1965) by the former author and sum up the key issues of the doctoral thesis The Doctrine of Faith in St. John of the Cross (1948) by the latter. I also mention St. John Henry Cardinal Newman’s Grammar of Ascent (1870), because in Polish translation this book is entitled A Logic of Faith. In order to compare those heterogeneous conceptions of religious faith I reach out to logical semiotics, and using its tools I try to find a symbolic meaning of religious speech that could be accepted equally by religious thinkers and by non‑believers. I propose to understand religious speech as having not only literal sense, and not only a metaphysical meaning, but also, as I claim, the power to activate values that guide human behavior. I hope this is a conciliatory proposition because it places semiotics on a neutral footing among religious dogmas. In this perspective, mysticism can be described as a pragmatic aspect of language that emerges when a user refers to a transcendent reality.