The Catholic Church in Poland continues to be the Church with the greatest political influence in the Christian world. It has achieved most of its political goals, including the effective ban on abortion. Thanks to the support of the right-wing government (but also the ruling liberals in Warsaw), it is certainly even richer. What makes the Catholic Church so strong in Poland? And what price will it pay for it?
A story with Mother Mary and the third highest official in the (secular) Polish state
It really happened, but I am asking you to envision it well. It is February 2nd, 2022 (21st century!). A gray, cold day. We are in Czestochowa. The city in southern Poland on the Warta River is known for the famous Pauline monastery of Jasna Góra (Luminous Mount), which is the home of the Black Madonna painting, a shrine to the Virgin Mary. Millions of pilgrims from all over the world come to Czestochowa to see it. But keep in mind that the city also was home to the Jewish Frankist movement in the late 18th and the 19th century. So we are at Luminous Mount. There is also the Marshal of the Sejm (lower house of the parliament) Elżbieta Witek (the third most important person in the country), who kneels in front of the painting of the Black Madonna and says: „Queen of Poland (she really says so!), give us MPs and senators (she does not use female forms, although among the parliamentarians there are of course women) wisdom and responsibility in the decisions we make, make our consciences sensitive, so that we may consider the common good without exception (says a representative of the government that has been campaigning for years of hatred against sexual minorities or immigrants). We lay at Your feet our weaknesses, asking for strength to carry out the daily duties of parliamentarians. We hope to put the fate of our Homeland into Your hands, so that it develops materially and spiritually, and that it is safe from all threats.” Here is another of the many acts of entrusting Poland and the politicians in power to Mary, performed by a high state official in recent years. Perhaps this is standard procedure in a Catholic state, but since such events are presented in the public media on a par with other really important news, a much more serious issue comes to the fore: the influence of the Church in the affairs of the state.
The Church in Poland is an important political entity. Priests bless football matches, but also supported Poland's accession to the European Union in 2004. Nearly 33 years after the fall of communism, the Church continues to demand that politicians and secular governments (regardless of political side) follow its demands. And it gets what it wants.
The myth of the Polish Catholic
In other countries, the Catholic Church has lost its political influence. In Africa and Latin America it competes with other, increasingly popular Protestant denominations, such as Pentecostal and Evangelicals. Within Europe itself, it has suffered enormous losses as a moral authority, for example in Ireland. As the results of the recent referenda on same-sex marriage and abortion have shown, the political influence of the Church in Ireland has practically disappeared.
So what makes the Catholic Church in Poland such a powerful political force? Simply put: its ability to act behind the scenes, which in practice comes down to co-governing with secular groups. This means: participation in drafting the constitution and law-making on a daily basis, direct contribution to the creation and implementation of politics, screening the officials of a secular state, and even participation in governing the country. How does it do it?
The channels of institutional access have been different at various stages of the systemic transformation in Poland: active participation in political debates and the formulation of draft bills in special committees, influencing decisions on filling positions and participation in national negotiations during the transformation. The Polish Church has had many opportunities to learn one thing: it achieves the greatest political and financial gains when it uses its influence in secret meetings and in the back rooms of parliament, rather than through public pressure at the ballot boxes.
The ability of the Church to enter these “silent” corridors of power results from its historical role in defending the nation - thanks to this, it gained moral authority and the national interest is identified with it. The Church, which has great moral authority, is seen as an impartial, trustworthy representative of the nation, and is therefore allowed to mobilize society in matters other than religious. For example, Polish bishops were mediators and national representatives at the 1989 Round Table talks, and their participation in these talks was widely accepted (and even desired) by both communists and the democratic opposition.
In Poland, building a national narrative about the Church defending and identified with the Polish nation, as well as about the fusion of Catholicism and Polish national identity, gave the Church great moral authority. By skillfully creating the myth of a Polish Catholic (the idea of linking Polish culture with the Catholic religion arose during the Partitions of Poland as a resistance against Russian Orthodoxy and Prussian Protestantism; Poland was at that time divided between Russia, Prussia and Austria), the Church has gained a powerful position in Poland as a defender of society, national interest, and the country's cultural and historical heritage.
This narrative, however, is a rewriting of history: pre-War World Two Poland was only two-thirds Polish and Catholic, and was also a multinational and multi-religious country. Earlier, instead of defending the persecuted Polish society, representatives of the Church often took the side of the Prussian and Austrian partitioners, and even persuaded Poles to undergo forced Germanization. Therefore, a strong anti-clerical trend was born in the interwar Poland, and it was represented, among others, by Józef Piłsudski.
Only the ethnic and religious homogenization of Poland made it possible to identify the nation with religion. As a result of the devastation of war and post-war migrations, Poland became a homogeneous Catholic nation - in which communism was perceived as something alien, imposed, which violated both sovereignty and the principles of faith. The Church carefully strengthened these ties through evangelization, mass events such as the Great Novena of 1957–1966, the pilgrimages of Pope John Paul II in 1979, 1983 and 1987, and supporting the political opposition in the 1980s.
Dinners with bishops. Church power during Communist times
The Roman Catholic Church in Poland achieved the most when it managed to hide its own influence, both in the times of the People's Republic of Poland or PRL (1947-1989) and in democracy. During communism, the Church mediated in conflicts between the Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR - the communist party which ruled the Polish People's Republic as a one-party state from 1948 to 1989) and the opposition, mainly informally, through letters, meetings, messages and individual interventions. A critical forum for negotiation and access, especially during crises, was the Joint Commission of Representatives of the Government of the Republic of Poland and the Polish Bishops' Conference (which I will call „Commission” later in the article). Representatives of the Church and the PZPR met to discuss the policy of the state towards the Church and the demands of the Church regarding this policy. A characteristic order of things emerged: the state granted the Church privileges to satisfy it in the periods of social unrest in the 50s and 70s (most of the Church hierarchy remained silent after the 1968 student protests and during the anti-Semitic campaign that followed) and limited those privileges and concessions when the mediating and stabilizing role of the Church did not seem to be necessary. One thing stands out in the Commission's archives: there were frequent meetings on an equal basis in the 80s – in January 1989, communist dignitaries ate dinners with bishops.
At the end of the 80s, the PZPR was intensively negotiating with the Church regulatory and financial issues, which had long been a priority for the latter. Prolonged political negotiations in the Commission bore fruit: the Church received major policy concessions even before the fall of communism. The 1989 Act on Guarantees of Freedom of Conscience and Religion ensured freedom of faith and religious practice. Another law guaranteed that the state would pay pensions and pay social insurance for members of the clergy. And finally, most importantly for the Church, the Act on State-Church Relations defined the legal position of the Church in Poland, guaranteeing it autonomy and various material benefits, such as exemption from taxes on revenues and property and customs duties, as well as restored church property. So it was a series of concessions that the communist parliament passed shortly before the partially free elections on June 4, 1989.
In the declining phase of the PRL and during the period of political changes in Poland, both the communist regime and the democratic opposition perceived the moral authority of the Roman Catholic Church and its role as a national representative in maintaining social stability. The Church, on the other hand, took advantage of the desperation of the endangered communist regime, and then the instability of the young democracy. At that time, parliamentary committees were formed, in which representatives of the state and the Church sat, policy proposals were made, the clergy gained the opportunity to veto the proposals of government representatives, and consequently could count on significant political concessions.
Behawe! The Church in democratic Poland: powerful and untouchable
After 1989, the Church in Poland quickly translated the political capital gained in the times of the PRL into political influence in a sovereign democracy. When it pressed for changes to the law on abortion, divorce and education, it felt morally entitled to insult and publicly rebuke those who dared to contest its influence, calling its opponents "sons and daughters of Russian officers". Access to state affairs meant that while the Church's popularity declined in the first three years of democracy, each new law was drafted according to its preferences. Moreover, even when the SLD – the party heir to the Polish United Workers' Party – won the 1993 elections, thanks in part to the strength of its secular identity, it did not obliterate the Church's achievements in prohibiting abortion, compulsory religion in schools, or its material privileges. As a result of the Church's institutional access to government and the anxiety felt by many politicians in the 90s (they feared that public support for democracy was fragile), the Church continued to gain political gains despite widespread disapproval of the state: in 1992, 81% of respondents were against the church's influence in politics (86% in 1996) and in 1998 only 3% supported the political activity of the Church.
The Church's political preferences were conservative and showed its little experience of democracy and its no-tolerance for various opinions. Criticism was perceived as an attack, and objections were dismissed. The Church defended its presence in politics as part of its ministry - and of those who criticized it said were "jealous". Another legacy of the communist era was that the Church continued to treat the faithful in a patriarchal way and the clergy as "shepherds of souls." Its own interpretation of law, in which natural law was more important than any man-made or universally preferred law – and in 1989, although the Church adopted economic and political reforms, it became "triumphalist, convinced of its own decisive role ... no criticism of its past mistakes and the price paid by Polish Catholicism for isolating itself from reformist movements in previous decades.” The clergy expected that politicians and representatives of the state would behave primarily as Catholics, and secondly as representatives of the government. In the early 90s the „triumphalist Church” relied not only on the same Commission that was established during the communism, but on personal interventions as well. As Wiktor Kulerski, one of the former ministers recalls: "high-ranking members of the church hierarchy believed that it was normal, because for years they had been used to recommending certain people for certain positions (...) They called ministries and intervened when this or that employee or director was dismissed, even if there were obvious reasons for dismissal, because these people were associated with the SB (secret police in communist Poland) and we had evidence of it (...) the same members of the hierarchy considered it appropriate to call instructions to liquidate or establish one or another department, which stunned us. Such interventions took place in ministries, such as the Ministry of Education or the Ministry of Health, responsible for the most important matters from the point of view of the Church.
When the new millennium arrived the government no longer needed the support of the Church to survive. As a result, the Church could no longer shape policy on same-sex marriage and assisted reproduction (in vitro) of its own accord. But it was quite a short period of the Church's less political activity. Since Poland is ruled by a right-wing government, which came to power also thanks to the Church's involvement in an election campaign - especially in rural Poland - the Church again dictates the terms and calls the ministers with requests.
At the peak of its power, the Church is losing the Poles
The influence of the Church is not a question of social needs in Poland or anywhere else. Social opposition to the Church's influence on politics is fairly widespread: a survey in many democracies (World Values Survey oraz International Social Science Survey Programme) found that, on average, 72% of respondents are against the Church's influence on politics, 78% against its influence on elections, and 72% against its influence on government. This is the case even where the Church has a strong influence on people: in Ireland, where 93% of the population declares itself Catholic and more than half of it is attending mass once a month or more, over 79% of respondents do not want the Church to influence the government and 82% to influence the vote. In 2017, almost three-quarters of Polish respondents agreed that the Church was "too involved in politics" and openly supported the separation of religion and government policy.
But that's not all. As shown by public opinion polls in Poland, the Church has also lost its moral authority among the society. Revealing further abuses by the Church – child molestation, involvement in unclean businesses, homophobic statements by priests in the media – all this contributed to the decline of Poles' trust in the Church. In a study from December 2021, where Poles were asked who in the Catholic Church was a moral authority for them, only 14% indicated a priest from the local parish, and 2% chose Polish bishops. 48% indicated Pope Francis, and every third Pole surveyed replied that no one.
“There is an attack on the Church, which was not there in the 90s – the movie "Clergy", the street protests – and we are dealing with a direct attack on the family and children - sexualization of children, this whole LGBT movement, this whole “gender” idea...” claimed Jaroslaw Kaczynski in a 2019 speech. “It is imported, but today they really threaten our identity, our nation, its continued existence and therefore the Polish state”, he added. Kaczynski is known for even stronger opinions: "Catholicism and catechesis have no competition" and "only nihilism can be opposed to it”. Kaczyński added that "every good Pole" must understand this.
Meanwhile, the Pew Research Center's research on changes in global religiosity in 2021 showed that among 106 countries surveyed, young Poles are the leaders in abandoning religious practices. The Church is looking for those to blame (it lists a smartphone among many enemies – this is what the head of the Church in Cracow said) and without hesitation calls the politicians of the ruling party with demands for swift and decisive action. And when we listen to Jarosław Kaczyński, we know that they are doing what they are asked to do.
