RASCEE Religious Authority Online: Catholic Case Study in Poland Marta Kolodziejska, University of Warsaw, Poland Alp Arat, Lancaster University, United Kingdom ABSTRACT: Drawing on a popular Catholic online forum in Poland, this study examines the interaction between top-down (traditional institutional) and botom-up (informal expert) forms of religious authority. In adapting Campbell’s concept of online religious authority, this study shows how both forms of authority emerge in varying contexts and serve distinct yet mutually supplementary functions. Top-down authority occurs in relation to the general topic and background of discussions and appears mostly through references to religious doctrine. Informal experts, in turn, emerge through groups of the most active users and gain status through the recognition of fellow patrons due to their expertise, experience and interpretation skills. The aim of the later is less to undermine or replace traditional religious authority, than to intervene in those areas where the institutional representation of the Church may fail or disappoint the expectations of fellow believers. KEYWORDS: Catholic forums, religious authority, religion and the internet, online Christianity. Introduction Media continues to have an unquestionable impact on religion, religiosity, and religious communities around the world (Campbell 2010; 2012; Bunt 2009; Dawson and Cowan 2004; Hoover et al. 2004; Lövheim 2004; 2011; Knoblauch 2008). These studies have shown that the online and the oline worlds are strongly interconnected. Treating online processes as separate from the oline can lead to the creation of artiicial social worlds, which operate within a diferent technocratic logic (Rheingold 1993). While atempts have been made to create “online religions” or “online churches” (Jenkins 2008), they remain a small fraction of online religious activity. Most online churches take the form of a website with no ambition of forming a Durkheimian moral community and, in contrast to earlier predictions, the motivations for going online for religious purposes remain limited and conservative (Hoover et al. 2004; CBOS 2014). This is not to say that the internet has litle inluence on how religion is conceived and lived out in practice. It has played a vital part, not least in blurring the boundaries between Kolodziejska, Marta, and Alp Arat. 2016. “Religious Authority Online: Catholic Case Study in Poland”. Religion and Society in Central and Eastern Europe 9 (1): 3-16. Please direct all correspondence to Marta Kolodziejska. E-mail: ma.kolodziejska@gmail.com