Souls at the polls

The defeat of godless communism might turn out to be a somewhat bitter victory for the Catholic church in Poland. Exposure to the materialist west is producing unusual challenges for the church, which has enjoyed an ambivalent renaissance since communism began to collapse.

The church is now struggling to establish its authority over as many areas of public life as possible, and is directly involved in November's presidential elections.

"Let us be frank, the people in Poland have started to fear the priests, " wrote Czeslaw Milosz, the Nobel prize-winning poet, in 1991. Events during the past four years seem to have proved him right.



Historically, the church has always been strong in Poland. But over the past 50 years its popularity increased as it provided some shelter from oppressive regimes-first the German occupation, and then the communists. In 1978, the election of Cardinal Karol Wojtyla as pope signalled acceptance by the worldwide Catholic church of the anti-communist struggle of Polish bishops. This continues to define their identity.

In 1990, on the eve of the last presidential election, Bishop Jozef Zycinski called on the Polish people not to vote for ex-communist politcal parties. An archbishop, Jozef Michalik, said: "Let Catholic vote for a Catholic, Jew for a Jew, and communist for a communist."

Embarrassing statements such as these provoked protests. In the run-up to the current election, the Polish bishops have had to plan their strategy more carefully. Three months before the election the episcopacy issued a statement, The Word of the Bishops, which gave Catholics instruction on how to vote. (95 per cent of Poles are Catholic.)

In it the bishops declared that the episcopacy has a "moral responsibility" to warn voters against electing candidates who held "high positions of power" under communism-words aimed at Aleksander Kwasniewski, leader of the ex-communist Social Democratic Party of the Republic of Poland, and one of the most popular presidential candidates in the election.

Is the church interfering with politics? Not according to the bishops who insist: "All we are doing is defending the identity and continuity of the nation."

Many people in Poland are enjoying their newly acquired freedoms. It is widely felt that the country is more stable now than at any time in the past 200 years. But the church feels that Poland's identity is being threatened, both by the secular west and within Poland itself, by the ex-communist left politicians, who have a large majority in parliament.

In the 1950s the Polish church resembled a fortress besieged by the communists. They found they could not destroy the church; so they were forced to tolerate it. Sometimes they even tried to form alliances with it. For example, after the fall of Stalinism in 1957, the communist leader Wladyslaw Gomulka and the Catholic primate Stefan Wyszynski were released from confinement and the church encouraged people to participate in elections which, although far from democratic, sought to strengthen the reformed national brand of communism. But during the 1960s and 1970s, repression continued. In the 1980s it was directed not so much at the church as a religious institution, as at those individual priests who openly supported Solidarity.

As communism weakened, the position of the church became stronger. During the 1980s the church became a mediator between the communists and Solidarity. The powerful triumvirate of General Jaruzelski, Lech Walesa (then leader of Solidarity) and primate Jozef Glemp, represented the highest political forum: a unique opportunity for dialogue.

The years of declining communist power were golden years for the church: during that time more churches were built in Poland than in the rest of Europe put together; a Polish pope was in the Vatican; there were altars in the Gdansk shipyard and priests among the workers on strike; thousands came to greet Pope John Paul II during his pilgrimages to Poland. Some even thought that Poland would become the centre from which Catholicism would spread both eastwards (to Russia, the Ukraine and Belorussia) and westwards, leading to a revival of Christianity on the European continent.

But the collapse of communism put an end to such hopes: instead of Soviet domination there was now independence; instead of totalitarianism there was democracy; instead of the official jamming of Radio Free Europe and Voice of America, people had access to cable television channels; instead of organ concerts there was rock music.

The Vatican, once the sole source of wisdom, must now compete with the pluralistic values of the west. Priests are being prosecuted for sexual abuse, homosexuality is practised openly, intellectuals such as Husserl, Kung, Mounier, Drewermann and Heidegger have become fashionable. The church is looking fearfully at the future, says Bishop Tadeusz Pieronek, the secretary of the episcopacy.

The alliance between the church and Solidarity used to be very strong, but the source of this strength was their common enemy: communism. The churches attracted not only believers, but all those who sought to demonstrate opposition to the communists. The category of "practising non-believer" was born. According to opinion polls, about 20 per cent of "non-believers" attend mass every Sunday out of habit and social pressure.

Yet in post-communist Poland the church is losing its way. It is like a boxer who has grappled with an opponent for a long time; when the opponent falls, the boxer loses balance. Despite increasing its temporal power, it is losing its hold over people's souls.

There are signs everywhere of its growing worldly strength. Religion has returned as a subject taught in schools. Hundreds of properties which had been confiscated by the communists have been returned. Several church-owned radio stations have surfaced while private investors compete for scarce radio frequencies. The liberal abortion legislation of the communist era has been dramatically restricted. (While in the past Scandinavian women used to come to Poland for an abortion, now it is Polish women who book up for "abortion tourism" to neighbouring countries.) The church enjoys tax privileges, which have been abused by some priests. It has demanded that the new Polish constitution begin with a holy invocation and has opposed the principle of separation of church and state. Under prime minister Hanna Suchocka, the government even negotiated a concordat with the Vatican without consulting parliament.

This triumphant march of the church has caused some backlash in public opinion. The current parliament, dominated by the post-communist left, has postponed ratification of the Suchocka concordat because it offers too many concessions to the church. Approval of the church has dropped from 87 per cent of those polled in 1989 to 40 per cent in 1993 and 57 per cent now. Asked if the church serves society well, 50 per cent of those sampled said "yes" and 40 per cent "no." More than 50 per cent consider that the church is too involved in politics and only 3 per cent say they believe that the role of the church in public life is too small.

Voices critical of the church are growing louder. The well-known Solidarity activist Aleksander Malachowski, vice-marshall of the Sejm (lower chamber of parliament), has written recently that people can go on blaming the Jews, the communists and the Freemasons for the undermining of the church, but that the reality is different. "The church is harmed... by its unnecessary involvement in the brutal political struggle," he says. Adam Boniecki, a well-known Catholic priest and author, has warned that the church can regain many things-property, control of the media, even influence over political parties-but that at the same time it might lose "the biggest gain of the past: credibility."

The Polish church, which enjoyed mass support under communism, suddenly feels betrayed. It is now having second thoughts about some aspects of democracy. It blocked a referendum about abortion. "He who says that the church should deal only with private matters preaches-consciously or not-the programme of the destruction of Christianity," wrote Jaroslaw Gowin in the Catholic weekly Tygodnik Powszechny.

So is Poland becoming a theocracy? The answer is almost certainly no. Polish Catholicism is not fundamentalist, dogmatic or belligerent. It is more superficial and ceremonial. It is deeply rooted in the peasant tradition; its strength does not come from militant mullahs. Although about 95 per cent of Poles declare themselves to be Catholics, 56 per cent disapprove of the church's anti-abortion platform, 70 per cent disapprove of banning contraceptives, 54 per cent approve of pre-marital sex and 58 per cent believe that you can be a good Catholic without regularly attending church services. Only one in three believers goes to mass regularly. In the 1993 parliamentary election, the Christian National Union, a party supported by the church, received less than 5 per cent of the vote.

What is probable, and what is already happening, is the emergence of a Catholic democracy-a Poland governed by opportunistic politicians who grant favours to the Catholic church to secure themselves peace on earth.