Ewa Chomicka
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Since the collapse of Communism, Poland has experienced steady progress in its transition. Since 1989, social, political and economic institutions have undergone radical transformations on the path to democracy. After years of dependence, mass media, the education sector and churches could start inculcating their own programs and opinions, uninfluenced by the state.
The end of the socialistic regime has precipitated certain changes in the area of religion, manifesting both as religious revival and as religious decline. The example of Poland, for a long time perceptible as a bastion of traditional Catholicism, reveals ongoing transformations, which are fundamentally modifying relations between the state and the Church and between the Church and the postsocialist population as well. The case of the Polish Catholic Church shows how systemic transitions can patently change the context of some occurrences, while redefining or revaluating the significance of cultural or religious aspects of old, but after 1989 new, social phenomena (see: Verdery 1999).
The Catholic Church has always had a very strong position in Poland, mainly because of its long tradition; one thousand years of Catholic history made this faith the natural carrier of the national identity. In Polish mentality, Catholicism is entirely connected to the Polishness, what appears inter alia in a well-known phrase: “Pole means Catholic”. This kind of social identity creates a special kind of common consciousness, the nation as the solidarity of faith.
As Anderson has noted, nation is an “imagined community”, which stretches beyond the immediate experience of any of its particular members and makes a social image of collective experiences (Holy 1998: 123). These collective experiences can be based on different areas; nevertheless, people who have become consciousness of their common characteristics and the peculiarities of their own culture have a very strong desire to conserve them. Identity values define the substance of collective representation and the criteria for membership. They can take their roots from different areas: as Holy has figured out, evoking the Czech case, national identity can be based on linguistic criteria, and as the Polish case shows, religious aspects can play a crucial role in formulating a sense of communal membership, especially in the context of historical changes.
As Byrnes has pointed out, the prominent role of religion and the Church in Polish society is mainly a result of three historical developments. The first one is the baptism of Poland in 966. Second is the association of the Church with Polish nationalism during the partitions and foreign dominations, and the third reason is the creation of a nearly homogenous nation during the Second World War by the murder of Polish Jews and by the ethnic migrations involved in Stalin's movement (see: Byrnes 1996). These activities made the Polish population overwhelmingly Catholic and strengthened identification of the nation with the Church. A momentous event in defining the role of the Church was the series of partitions (1795-1918) that ceased Poland’s existence as a dependent state. The Church then played a central role in the survival of the Polish nation and resistance to Austrian, Prussian and Russian rule. Rituals and religious practices served as an occasion for the expression of Polishness when Polish schools and language were suppressed. In efforts to keep the nation together, the Church was helped by the intellectuals, especially writers. Polish romanticist works of such authors like Adam Mickiewicz, Juliusz Słowacki and Zygmunt Krasiński strengthened the consciousness of being one nation, using spiritual interpretation of the Poles’ torment. They preached, “Poland is the Christ of the nations”, with a special universal challenge: to suffer on behalf of all oppressed nations just like Christ suffered for all humanity. Thus, “the Pole’s suffering was justified because they were fulfilling God’s Will; the nation would be redeemed, and Poland would rise again” (Osa 1989: 279). Using religious metaphors, for example, comparing Poland to Christ on the cross resounded with sanctification of the term “nation” and its power.
This messianic narration, during that time widespread among Polish citizens, was kind of a national myth, making possible to link the past with the present and the hope for a better future. Nevertheless, the nineteenth-century increase of Polish national identity and redemption myths was not a separate occurrence. National feelings arose after the Napoleonic wars and gripped the whole of Europe (see: Eller 1999: 257-267). Similarly, historical circumstances, especially national tragedies, determined not only Polish national mentality; not only Poles, seeing themselves as the objects, not the subjects of history, used to feel like victims of historical changes (Wehling1996: 58). The idea of “tormented nation” until today is very common in most of postsoviet countries. For example, Russia, Hungary, Serbia, Estonia and Romania each has its own version of the extraordinary martyrdom of its society in the history of humanity. Looking into the past, evoking national tragedies and sufferings in connection to religious values have formed common, oppressed East European national identities.
As Dunkan has noted of these national myths, the process of telling and remembering them has a special significance in strengthening the feeling of community membership. National sentiments, reinterpreted by collective memory, can help to survive during various historical occurrences, especially because they can function as a site of resistance, a space of political opposition. The identity of the “imagined community” of the nation is “structured and reproduced through variegated and temporally extended representational strategies” (Dunkan 2003: 69); it is used and reproduced in a different historical context.
Regarding Poland, post-war historical occurrences brought a continuation of the nineteenth-century pattern of creating a tormented national “self” by connecting national and religious values. After the Second World War, Poland was an independent country, but oppressed by the Communist regime; the socialist state, dependent on Soviet strength, did all it could to control the population (see: Verdery 1991: 420-432) and disrupt, compromise and weaken the Catholic Church. The socialist authorities that tried their best to create a secular society generated tense relationships between the Church and the state. Nevertheless, these relations lacked a monolithic character; they changed several times, taking variable, more or less fortunate, forms.
Ronald C. Monticone has marked four basic stages in the Church-state relationships: 1. Deterioration of Church-state relations (1948-1956); 2. Amelioration in these interactions (1956-1970); 3. Period of Accomodation (1970-1980); 4. Term of the Church mediation (1980-1985) (Monticone 1986). The first one period was characterized by very strong anticlerical activities led by the Communist monoparty PZPR. During this term seminars were closed, the state interfered with ecclesiastical appointments, and members of the clergy were imprisoned. The state activists even formed a quasi-catholic organization, PAX, which was a tool of harassment of the Church by publishing misinforming, supporting political system books and periodicals. The communist government also sponsored a group called the Patriotic Priests, who adhered to the Church, but who supported the regime. The 1949 excommunication by Pope Pius XII of all Catholics who were members of the Communist Party was a pretext for the Polish government to announce Catholicism as opposed to the system and to carry on sharp struggle against it. This bilateral agreement, dividing the state and the Church and securing the Church’s independence, signed in 1950 and reaffirmed in the Polish Constitution established in 1952, was not observed by the politicians; religious education was still limited, priests insubordinate to the state, including Wyszyński, were arrested, religious press and publications strongly censored.
1956, at the beginning of Gomułka era, brought amelioration of the Church-state relationships; the head of the country needed the support of the dissident elements within the society to create image of a strong nation. Wyszyński, like other priests, was released, the restoring of free religious life was started, and many groups of Catholic intelligentsia arose, such as the Więź group, Catholic Intelligentsia Club, Christian Social Association. Nevertheless, an improvement of the Church’s position in Communist Poland alarmed the soviet authorities, who begun to press Gomułka to set the anti-religious gestures. These anti-Catholic activities were established very soon and intensified in the 1960s, especially in the 1965 and 1966. The first date is associated with the letter of the Polish Bishops to the German Bishops, in which the following was declared: “We forgive you and ask you for forgiveness” – words, which were found by the state as very inappropriate and were, thus, strongly criticized. 1966, the year of millennial celebrations for the establishment of the Polish state and Polish Christianity, clearly showed bilateral antipathy: the state and the Church marked both occasions separately.
A new period in Church-state relations started in 1970, when Edward Gierek came in to the power. He was born into a very religious family, and therefore decided to normalize relations between the religious and political areas. At this time, however, Gierek’s plan of rapid economical development of Poland, which the Church recognized as menacing to the religiosity and propagating extensive secularization of the Polish society, appeared to be a moot point. Then, although Church-state interactions were better than in the Stalin or Gomułka period, they were quite tense until 1978, when Karol Wojtyła, archbishop of Krakow, was elected as Pope. The Polish government realized then that John Paul’s II election would have the immediate consequence of increasing the influence of the Church in Poland. They were not mistaken; the papal visit to Poland in 1979 involved both the state and the Church’s energy during the long period of preparations. The papal visit also enabled the Church to strengthen its position through the direct links connecting it to the Vatican. This change provided a few Catholic deputies in the parliament and noticeable emergence of Catholic organizations. Karol Wojtyła’s election opened the doors to the new role, which the Church had to play in the next decade: the role of the mediator.
The beginning of 1980 marked a deep economical crisis. Labour strikes were commenced, mainly in Lublin and in Gdańsk. The Roman Catholic Church clearly backed up the protesting workers, concentrated around the “Solidarity” movement, in which were involved not only workers but also intelligentsia and many individual priests, strongly rooted in Catholicism; the vast majority of the members of Solidarity were practicing Catholics. Making clear the Church’s entrance into the political arena was just-elected First Secretary Kania. He declared openness for dialogue with the Church and the conviction that believers should be given full rights in order to share in public life. Normalization of Church-state relations was framed in this context, a process that was revealed especially in 1981 during Wyszyński’s funeral, when all of the top authorities in the government and the party were present. After Wyszyński’s death, the primate’s successor, Józef Glemp, participated in dialogue between Solidarity leader Lech Wałęsa and the next head of the state, Wojciech Jaruzelski. During that time, economic crisis was still deepening, social dissatisfaction was increasing, labour protests intensifying. Crisis seemed to be impossible to surmount; in December 1981, general Jaruzelski proclaimed marital law, which suspended labour unions, introduced a curfew, closed down all communications, outlawed strikes, and banned both domestic and international travel. Solidarity activists, including Wałęsa, and insubordinate intellectuals were arrested. Before December 1982, when the Sejm cancelled marital law, people who had been arrested were gradually released. After cancelling marital law in December 1982, authorities still intended to limit the influence of religion in the state’s public life, meaning that those priests who were too active on the political stage were then seen as a threat the social stability. Until 1989, the year of triumph of “Solidarity”, the state limited the public presence of religious rights and claims; the case of father Jerzy Popiełuszko, brutally killed in 1984, warned the Church against encouraging anti-establishment activities.
As Shlapentokh has pointed out, evoking the Soviet case, the socialist order intended to be the only admissible and compulsory one. The party, monopolizing power, intimidated the nation into subordination. The state propaganda created a happy image of social welfare; nevertheless, the inflexibility of the state’s claims and the difficult social situation still provoked semilegal and illegal private activities, incompatible with the state’s conditions. This kind of action enveloped all social fields: economy, education, health service, culture (Shlapentokh 1989). Shlapentokh’s point of view has joined Verdery, who has described socialist economical system as a pyramid, in which the top (the party’s activities) accumulated power and goods. The down part of the pyramid was society, which, having limited access to consumer goods, constituted an unofficial web of reciprocal commitments and created a “second” or “informal” economy, including either “black market” or “private plots” (Verdery 1991: 423). The paradox of the socialist order was that the unofficial economy or other illegal activities were in some sense the result of the organization of the formal state, and more, that the legal activities were essential for the informal sphere of production. The illegal economy used the official economy in parasitic way as a source of goods, tools, and materials. Illegal social activities involved using the legal organizations against the official policy and ideology. A vacuum between the state and the ordinary man created the possibility of using the flaws of the socialist order not only to make a certain existence, but to fight with the regime as well, to make an opposition against it. As an example, Shlapentokh has evoked the bard movement, along with which the intelligentsia managed to create centers of political activity promoting liberal ideas in various scientific institutions (Shlapentokh 1989: 201). In Poland, the Church played the key role in the initial mobilization of the opposition against the socialist order. Its organization was public and its recourses considerable, so it successfully absorbed people contesting socialism, mainly because it provided a safe space for free speech. Contestation of the socialist order was then expressed in everyday religious practice and in the wider actions of the Church, especially strong in the 1980s, when attending mass or pilgrimages became a form of provocative political rebellion (see: Galbraith 2000). In that time the Catholic Church strongly supported “Solidarity” movement activity, especially through the local Church structures, like village parishes, which in many cases provided facilities for the existence and activities of various semi-legal peasant groups and organizations.
Many cultural factors, such as music, literature, and film supported the Polish Catholic Church in its fight against the socialist state. Its position was supported by the highest church dignitaries as well. John Paul II, in his speech during his first visit to Poland in 1979, declared: “The future of Poland will depend upon how many people are mature enough to be nonconformists” (Anderson 2003: 144). John Paul II, the first Pole on the papal throne, always has had great authority among his compatriots, and millions of believers have consistently flocked to meetings with him during his pilgrimages. The Polish Pope provided a hope of freedom for the nation and, on the other hand, he was the best “messenger” to the world, representing to the whole world oppressed by Communism Polish nation. His words, criticizing the Communist system, were a confirmation of the Church standpoint and its efforts in guarding the nation and the Christian tradition.
The monocentric party, controlling all institutions, culture and even language, made efforts to eliminate voices of discontent or opinions contradictory to the voice of the party. That is why some “suspicious words”, which were able to present social dissatisfaction (”meat”, “coffee”, “cold” or “dark”) could not exist on public sphere without censor’s permission. One of the most important words, which in the state’s opinion should have been excluded from the public discourse, was the word: God (Verdery 1991: 431). Thus, as Rivkin-Fish has figured out, communism was more than an economic or political system; it was a moral order as well, created by the party, which had a monopoly on valid knowledge (“The party knows the best”) and linked to the eligible values like honesty, veracity or responsibility. The model of morality created by the state was entangled in socialist discourse, dictated by and appealing to the top of socialist communist state. Adapting to this moral model meant adapting to the system. Nevertheless, socialist society “often rejected the direct dictate to make personal needs coincide with state interests. In fact, the state’s efforts to colonize personal life led many to see personal issues as holding primary importance; a specific kind of «private sphere» became constituted that was to be distinct, separate, and free from the public, the formal, the bureaucratic, and the institutional” (Rivkin-Fish 2000: 32).
Choiced Poles made concerning religious life and the Church were a kind of contestation of institutional, untrustworthy, unauthentic order. In spite of daily life, which took place on the public stage and which demanded subordination, individual needs and values were created in private sphere, in separation to the inculcated model of collective, socialist ideals. The Church's relationship with God caused the people to feel that the clergyman preaching was as a part of an honoured, true-to-life discourse. People needed very much this kind of consolation. As opposed to its counterparts in Slovakia and Croatia, the Polish Catholic Church had never taken advantage of the regime and, therefore, had a strong moral position. This gave the Church an advantage in the relation to the state; in the people’s minds, the Church was connected to freedom, justice, and the hope of democracy, and the state was linked to the regime and injustice. Thus, using Rivkin-Fish’s words, dissonance between the discourse of Church and that of the state showed “clear distinctions between the realm of ideology and the realm of truth and authenticity, between the public and the personal, the political and the moral” (32).
The parallel – the Church siding against the state – became a type of national hope; as during the partitions period, it constituted a kind of national identity against the dominance of foreign powers. As Dunkan has said, societies explore their nation myths and collective memory in dependence on historical circumstances (Dunkan 2003). In communist Poland, as in the nineteenth century, voices appeared, led by Wyszyński, evoking the special, messianic role of Polish nation suffering in rescuing other nations (see: Osa 1997: 352-354). Common among the many religious symbols adopted by the opposition to state “Solidarity” are effigies of the suffering Christ – a symbol of torment Polish nation (see: Ekiert 1997: 329). However, the most heavily exploited symbol was that of the Black Madonna, whose icon is situated in the monastery at Jasna Góra in Częstochowa. The Black Madonna has particular significance in Poland, since it is associated with the nation and with the struggle for national sovereignty. Częstochowa, each year visited by enormous number of pilgrims, is characterized as the guardian of the Polish nation and is said to have miraculously resisted occupation by foreign armies.
As Osa summarizes, during Communism, “the state reigned supreme in the official sphere of coercive political power, the Church dominated in the realm of national symbols and historic authority” (Osa 1997: 365). Before the democratic changes, the Polish Church was a very important part of a dualistic social structure. It played the role of religious consolation and political contestation; black-and-white socialist reality was divided on the “bad communists,” associated with Communist Party and characterized by the materialistic point of view, and “good Poles”, patriots, associated with the Church. Relations between the state and the Church during Communist period suggest the well-known anthropological opposition between the sacred and the profane, universally conceived by the human mind as two distinct classes. Good Poles (“We”) perceive themselves as a virgin community of faith and Communists (“They”) were seen as tarnished sinners, publicly distancing themselves to the spiritual needs of the Catholics. Living in the Communist reality for many people was living in profane times, “ultimately concerned with suffering, ‘this doleful state of being’.” Being among followers of the Church and Catholicism carried them to sacred times, “an attempt to deny ‘the definitive character of historical event’” (Stirrat 1984: 202). The ‘sacred’ community of the Church’s followers developed an image of themselves as a contemporary representation of Christ’s crucifixion.
The year 1989 brought meaningful changes. The end of socialism, confronting ongoing transitions, brought a total reordering and redefining of social and cultural phenomena. The monocentric PZPR has been replaced with a broad spectrum of new parties, nongovernmental organizations, and a legal private sector emerged within the economy. Simply, black and white reality has been changed by complicated, pluralistic significations. As in other socialist countries, in Poland, a transformation of the system has caused fundamental changes, also in relations between the Church and the state and Polish Catholics.
In The Political Lives of Dead Bodies, Katherine Verdery has explored the change of meanings entailed by the post-socialist transition. As she has noted, after the collapse of communism, the remains of political heroes, leaders and artists started to be relocated from abroad or other burial places to special honored graves in their homelands. These returns, as the author has claimed, have a strong meaning: “dead bodies (...) have properties that make them particularly effective political symbols. They are thus excellent means for accumulating something essential to political transformation: symbolic capital” (Verdery 1999: 33). This symbolic capital, capital of meanings, represented in the statues of past, is redefined and re-accumulated in new capital resources or circumstances. Dead bodies, i.e. named and famous statues, corpses and the anonymous dead (4-22) make an opportunity for postsocialist societies to identify with specific aspects of the dead person’s biography. Dead bodies cannot talk, but that only helps. Particular nations or organizations can use them as emblems for competing causes, entangled in the symbolic meanings, feelings, connected to the sacred, ideas of morality and a nation.
By turning to the sacred, symbolic order, Verdery offers a picture of the politics of enchantment, expressed through the cultural forms of the past. In most countries of Central and Eastern Europe, in Poland as well, the collapse of socialism brought a restoration of the past, a revival of nationalism, an upswing of free religiousness, a rise in church adherence, and a visible increase in the role of religion in public life and politics. In Poland, these positive changes on the religious stage were possible because of the official support of the Church to “Solidarity” in its struggle during the Communist regime. Interception of political rule by the “Solidarity” activities let the Church authorities to play a key role in assisting the transitions. The Church entered the transformation period with considerable reserves of respect and trust from society. At the beginning of the system change the Church still functioned as a clear provider of a new, unoccupied ideology; nevertheless, as the socialist world gave way to a new democratic reality, the Church was very quickly obligated to redefine its shape and its social role.
Systemic transformations have provoked both internal and external changes in the Polish Catholic Church. Surprisingly, shortly after the events of 1989, religious liveliness crumbled. Though Polish Catholics still have one of the highest rates of religious identification among European countries (more than 90%), after the collapse of Communism the reference numbers fell off and the percentage of those claiming to trust the church declined from 87.8 percent in 1989 to 40.5 percent in 1994 (Pollack 2001: 151). The Church started to lose its position as a spiritual leader and as foundation of the whole population. Although today’s Catholic priests still identify themselves as guides of society’s moral values and mental foundation, the Catholic Church is no longer the main moral institution as it was during the communist period. Cotemporary Polish society, even Catholics, refuse to let the Church make decisions in all aspects of their lives, such as family life, moral values and especially politics. Among modern Poles, the Church should not have too much social power, it should not engage in politics and attempt to influence non-religious areas of society. Instead, it should permit individuals to take responsibility for their own personal behaviour and opinions (cf: Rivkin-Fish 2001: 36-37). The new pluralist mentality treats the Church as just one interest group among many (see: Pollack 2001: 158). This important displacement of the Polish Catholic Church exemplifies the “cosmic scale” of postsocialist transformation, involving the redefinition of everything: morality, social relations, and meanings, thus, “reordering of people’s entire meaningful worlds” (Verdery 1999: 34-35). The end of the Communist system posed fundamental dilemmas to the Church; it brought dilemmas in finding and accumulating new symbolic capital resourses inside a strange, postsocialist reality.
Since 1989, the Church has made efforts to strengthen its institutional position. After the regime’s collapse, it has obtained many rights; in the 1990s, the Polish constitution declared the separation of the Church and state, making them independent and autonomous. Relations between the Church and the state have been regulated in their specifics by a concordat agreed with the Vatican. It guarantees inter alia the autonomy of the Polish Church and all church members, ensures the Church its role as a supervisor of religious education in public schools and includes provisions governing Christian marriage (see: Byrnes 1996, Anderson 2003: 145). The Church in Poland has been asserting itself with tangible success; abortion has been severely restricted, divorce has become more difficult to obtain, an opportunity to preach its views in public media has appeared and TV and radio have been obligated to ensure their conformity to the Christian values. A great change beside the term before 1989 is the presence of catholic intelligentsia, voices of such priests like Tischner, Życiński, Chrostowski, Salij feature in public discourse. It is a very important change, because formerly Polish intelligentsia took roots from laic circles and intellectual debates were usually stripped of religious perspective.
The Polish population accepts the appearance of the Church and the Catholic faith in the public sphere, and, for example, crosses or religious pictures in public places are not rejected. Similarly, there are rarely words of protest against religious education in public schools or the religious character of the military vow. The only sphere of public presence, which a majority of Poles criticize, is the Church’s excessive intervention into strict political matters. Nevertheless, separation of the Church from the state does not mean that the Church has resigned from political influence. Since 1989, it has made many efforts to translate its strength into substantial influence in the Parliament to maintain an active role in Polish politics. For example, the Church very strongly expressed its political opinions during the presidential elections in 1995, warning against the election of candidates whom its authorities saw as antithetical to its own interests and the interests of the nation. It is significant that in spite of the Church’s efforts, Aleksander Kwaśniewski, the candidate of the socialists, defeated Lech Wałęsa, whose candidature promoted the Church (see: Anderson 2003: 148). The 1995 presidential elections were a test of sorts over whether the Church can still count on a close relationship between religious identity and political choice, which should have been dictated by wanting to preserve Christian values. Kwaśniewski's subsequent victory in the face of the Church's clearly expressed displeasure was the major political setback for the Church after 1989. Both Wałęsa and the Church were symbols of anticommunism, and rejecting them denoted the leaving of a painful past and concentrating on a future of challenges. Reappearance of representative of the right wing, Lech Kaczyński, on the position of president, which took place in 2005, did not change much in the chosen by society future course.
The Church has been led to accept the differentiation of society and gradually to progress toward modernization tendencies. Nevertheless, there is still battle between critics of the Church and religious forces, which underlies tacit fight for the respective field of influence. Especially prominent in this struggle are issues such as abortion, euthanasia, and references to Christian values in state acts. The issue of abortion is still unsolvable, because the Church established its position during the first decade of democracy, and its uncompromising position in this debate has frozen legislation (Anderson 2003: 148). Since 1993, abortion is permissible only in cases of fatal deformities, as a repercussion of rape or when the mother's life is threatened. This abortion law is, along with Ireland’s, the strictest in all Europe and it redounds to an abortion underground. The Polish Church’s success in restricting the legal possibility of abortion, totally legal during the Communist era, is one of the moot points in Church-state relations. It is also among the arguments of Church critics, pointing out the endless and unconscionable power of the representatives of the religious point of view, accenting “clericalisation of the institutions,” which affects the whole society, even the secular parts of it. Thus, the question of abortion is in Poland a strongly political subject, and it is heatedly debated before parliamentary elections (see: Mateja 2004).
The Church’s position regarding abortion is a part of wider problem: the question of the Catholic Church’s attitude to the West. Seen during the socialist period as a promoter of communication with Western Europe, the Church became a critic of westernization tendencies in Central and Eastern Europe after 1989. Restoring freedom initiated the Church’s “hermeneutic of suspicions”. Looking for signs of treason and the omnipresence of spreading sins turned against recent allies. Western Europe started to be identified by Catholic authorities with the Communist system - both of them, according to the Church discourse, appeared to be decadent and depraved. Depravation of the West was tied to the idea of freedom, with which Polish reality could not cope and which generated great mistrust and even fear to the western trends (see: Pollack 159). This question was the next symptom of displacement of the Church’s role; from advocacy of progressive values, with which it was identified during the dependency period, the Church became a supporter of traditional, even conservative, beliefs. The Catholic religion started to take the shape of a religion of resistance. A radical example is the case of “Radio Maryja” – a radio program hosted by charismatic father Rydzyk, who propagates radical and anti-semitic version of Catholicism, and who has as many fans as opponents in Poland. “Radio Maryja” functions as a spiritual icon for conservative Catholics among whom theological orthodoxy gives place to desperate efforts to keep a status quo from before 1989.
The Catholic Church’s criticism against the West has a specific source. In Western European countries, Church and state manifest a strong tendency toward complete alienation and, accordingly, religiousness is still decreasing. The rapid process of modernization and industrialization in Eastern European countries slowly steers them towards the path of Western, common called as laic, communities. Processes of industrialization are usually pointed out as a primary reason for the alienation from the Church (Pollack 2001: 139). The Church’s fears probably relate to the frequent opinion that the most modern society is the most laic, pluralized, rationalized, unbelieving (see: Ellison, Sherkat 1999: 364). For the same reason – fear of rapid secularization and westernization tendencies, many of these, who through “Solidarity” opened the doors to the democracy, voted against including Poland in European Union structures. Nevertheless, current scholars draw back from a one-way reflection negating inevitability and irreversibility of laicization. Modernization and secularization do not go hand in hand, as Peter Berger, a leading scholar of secularisation trends, has claimed. Today explorers of religiousness accent the religious nature of the human and appeal for an entombment of secularisation theories, pointing out the inadequacy of them. As Stark demonstrates in his text, demystifying “the myth of past piety”, the modernization process, which is most often defined by terms like industrialization, urbanization and rationalization, does not have to mean religious decrease. Modernization processes implicate mainly differentiation in religiousness trends, which primarily include a weakening of the institutional religion and an emergence of the deep individual piety (Stark 1999: 252).
Regarding the Polish case, great part of Polish society still adheres traditional religious interpretations and beliefs. That is why the Western press often describes Poles’ religiosity as “Catholicism with the cart in the background”, which is an offshoot of backwardness. Indeed, in Poland, migration from the villages to the towns has not been very rapid; this social stagnation has helped to preserve the traditional village environment, traditional popular beliefs and special affection toward the Church. In spite of habitat differences, peculiarities of traditional folk religion survived the XX century, mainly in rural areas. For a long time, it was possible to describe the image of Polish religiosity by the terms of religious nationalism, the communal character of religiosity, a veneration and respect for the official representatives of the Church, and the strong ritualism or sensualism of religious experiences. Of course, there are noticeable changes in this model of religiosity; nevertheless, the main elements, especially religious consciousness and moral principles remain alive, in the main, as I have said, in rural areas of Poland, where cultures of thought change slowly.
In reference to secularization tendencies, we can claim that in Poland they appear mainly by the displacement of religion’s manifestation from the common sphere to the private, intimate world (see: Pollack 2001; Need, Evans 2001). As I have mentioned, present social expectations seem to suppose the Church should allow individuals to create their own morality. Reduced acceptance for the Catholic dogma bears peculiar fruits: creating an individual religious system, connecting different spiritual fields, thus yen of self-making decision regarding confessed religion and acceptable values. An individualisation of the religious position does not mean a weakening of the social role of religion, but rather merely a transition of its form; the ”inherited” religion reforms to the religion of choice. Therefore, in spite of the fact that 90% Poles still declare themselves as Catholics and a large percent of them attends regularly mass, concurrently many Poles believe that euthanasia and abortion should be legal and that divorce should not be so tightly restricted. As for Catholic country, such high percent of worshippers contesting fundamental for the Church points of its moral science can be astonishing. Many Catholics, even strongly practising, have been choosing the road of selectivity of the religion and choosing these points, which suit them from their subjective point of view. Hence such a meaningful importance of small religious communities and small sects or missionary movements has occurred, where faith can be experienced either as deeply individual or collective. The National Church reacts usually by attempting to exclude these movements, but these "refreshing trends" reach even the Church itself, creating small Catholic – but redefining Catholicism – groups. In Poland, such a case was "The Neocatechumenal Way", for a long time grappling with the stigma of being a sect in the womb of Polish Catholic Church (see: Pollack 2001: 144-145).
As Poland’s history shows, religious involvement tends to be high when the church is involved in resistance against the regime. Under conditions of repression, nationalist sentiments are kept alive and passed through primary socialization in a religious –nationalist value system. During the period of dependence, the Church played the role of the moral guide, providing spiritual support. Its enormous strengths emanated from social vacuum between the ordinary man and keeping monopolize power communist party (see: Verdery 1991). By religion acting under the conditions of state socialism, the Church simultaneously had a political effect with a large degree of political importance, so new adherents to the Church were siding themselves against the unwanted regime. The Church in the period of Communism was an unguent for national hurts and made an answer to the commonly discontent, promising to solve earthly problems. But the first years of transformation constituted a challenge for the Church. The year 1989 brought a situation of special attention. After the transformation sentimental yearning has weakened, daily reality forced facing new kind of problems. The former place of authorities, either the church or intelligentsia, has been faltered and submitted especially its devising role and sense of national mission. After surviving discrimination under Communism, when the enemy has been buried and governmental enmity weakened, the Church’s social power weakened as well. The system transformation brought breakdown of dominative ideology but also rapid pluralisation, which exhibited complexity of Polish culture and problem of Polishness. It would be possible to talk about paradox of change: victory of democracy, which the Church was fighting for, became the initiation of its failure and brought experience of its useless. According to this point of view, the Church could be noticed as either hero or victim. Numerous financial or paedophilic affairs in the womb of Polish Church, problems with settlement of communist past of many priests, commercialization of the religious festivals like for example the First Holy Communion, all this things has rattled the public opinion and redounded to decrease of the trust and dispiritedness to the institutional church. Despite the fact that after years of transformation Polish Church is named as still looking for his own identity, it is nevertheless potentially influential player, which still has considerable moral capital sticking in the word: tradition.
As the famed case of Polish artist Dorota Nieznalska showed, traditional religious values must not be touched without limits on the Polish public sphere. An artist made an installation, exhibiting a penis hanging on the cross. This installation, which in Western world would have not excited the public opinion, in Poland broke the thunderstorm from the Church’s side and many Catholicism believers. This situation beard public debate on profanation of religious symbols, artistic expression freedom, social reactions for this kind of activities and Catholic self-esteem. A rapid reaction from the Polish Catholic Church and a cloud of scandal around Nieznalska, who has been accused of hurting religious feelings, still makes it possible for the Church to speak in the name of all, even if not Catholic, Polish society. The Church’s critics attempt to reduce its appearance in the public life and on the political stage, but the Polish Church grew too heavily into social structures to stop suddenly their building. Despite of the fact it is rarely a dominant actor in conflict with the state today, it is not passive in the face of state regulations either.
As a comprehensive worldview related to the cultural system, religion can provide both legitimation and critique of various systems of power and systems of community. The Polish Catholic Church’s main activism is not an apology of the status quo, but protest and willing to change going with resistance against the surrounding reality. During Communist period the Church rose up against the regime and oppression, today it takes a defensive position against westernization. Activism and quiet battle against the state seem to be the main concept aspects of its role and reasons for accusing it of sticking in the discourse of the past. The still ongoing process of transformation is a great challenge to the Church, especially after traumatic both for Polish hierarchs and ordinary believers death of Pope John Paul II. The Catholics and the Church still search for definitions of themselves and still find themselves in an uncomfortable position: for the conservative part of Catholics, as mentioned group collected around radio station “Maryja”, the Church’s opinions and decisions are too progressive and not radical enough. For new outgoing circles, like intellectuals or more open groups of the Catholics, the Church position appears to be too conservative and not adequate to the contemporary problems. This part of Catholics is against political and prophetical role of the Church in their new state; they assert that priests should concentrate not on rigorous critique of infirmity of democracy, defensive pose and permanent admonishing, but go over to formulating some positive propositions and creating atmosphere of inspiration to take advantage of chances brought by democracy.
Polish Catholicism after the transformation presents as a very complicated and heterogeneous one. Relations between the postsocialist world and the Catholic Church, or the religious realm in general, are both paradoxical and complex. On the one hand, according to the modern tendencies, Polish religiosity is an individual choice, on the other hand, as showed European Union debates on the constitutional tractate, consciousness of the importance of the common Catholic values still strongly determines Poles’ identity. These tensions create an ambivalent image of contemporary Polish religiousness, which tries to combine new social needs and new historical occurrences with long and strong Christian tradition, from which all Poles bring up.
Bibliography:
Anderson, John. 2003. Catholicism and Democratic Consolidation in Spain and Poland. In: J. T. S. Madeley, Z. Enyedi (eds.): Church and State in Contemporary Europe. The Chimera of Neutrality. London: Frank Cass, p.137-156.
Billings, Dwight B., Shaunna L. Scott. 1994. Religion and Political Legitimation. Annual Review of Sociology, 20, p.173-202.
Byrnes, Timothy A. 1996. The Catholic Church and Poland’s Return to Europe. East European Quarterly, 30 (4), p.433-448.
Duncan, S. A. Bell. 2003. Mythscapes: Memory, Mythology, and National Identity. British Journal of Sociology, 54 (1), p.63-81.
Ekiert, Grzegorz. 1997. Rebellious Poles: Political Crises and Popular Protest under State Socialism, 1945-89. East European Politics and Societies, 11 (2), p.299-338.
Eller, Jack David. 1999. Bosnia: Of Myths and Maps. In: From Culture to Ethnicity to Conflict: An Anthropological Perspective on International Ethnic Conflict, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, p.243-285.
Galbraith, Marysia. 2000. On the Road to Częstochowa: Rhetoric and Experience on a Polish Pilgrimage. Anthropological Quarterly, 73 (2), p.61-73.
Holy, Ladislav. 1998. The Metaphor of “Home” in Czech Nationalist Discourse. In: N. Rappaport & A. Dawson (eds.): Migrants of Identity. Oxford: Berg, p.111-137.
Monticone, Ronald C. 1986. The Catholic Church in Communist Poland 1945-1985. Forty years of Church-State relations, Boulder: East European Monographs.
Need, Ariana and Geoffrey Evans. 2001. Analysing Patterns of Religious Participation in Post-communist Eastern Europe. British Journal of Sociology, 52 (2), p.229-248.
Osa, Maryjane. 1989. Resistance, Persistence and Change: The Transformation of the Catholic Church in Poland. East European Politics and Societies, 3 (2), p.268-299.
Osa, Maryjane. 1997. Creating Solidarity: The Religious Foundations of the Polish Social Movement. East European Politics and Societies, 11 (2), p.339-365.
Pollack, Detlef. 2001. Modifications in the Religious Field of Central and Eastern Europe. European Societies, 3 (2), p.135-165.
Rivkin-Fish, Michele. 2001. Personal Transitions and Moral Change after Socialism: The Politics of Remedies in Russian Public Health. Anthropology of East Europe Review, 19 (1), p.29-38.
Shlapentokh, Vladimir. 1989. Civil Society: Semilegal and Illegal Private Activity. In: Public and Private Life of the Soviet People: Changing Values in Post-Stalin Russia. New York: Oxford University Press, p.190-202.
Stark, Rodney. 1999. Secularization, R.I.P. Sociology of Religion, 60 (3), p.249-273.
Stirrat, R.L. 1984. Sacred Models. Man, New Series, 19 (2), p.199-215.
Verdery, Katherine. 1991. Theorizing Socialism: A Prologue to the “Transition”. American Ethnologist, 18 (3), p.419-439.
Verdery, Katherine. 1999. The Political Lives of Dead Bodies: Reburial and Postsocialistic Change, New York: Columbia University Press.
Wehling, Hans G. 1996. A Historical and Regionalist Approach: National and Regional Dimensions of Polish Political Culture. In: A. W. Jabłoński and G. Meyer (eds.): The Political Culture of Poland in Transition, Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego, p.53-63.
