Another surprise from Poland
Modras, Ronald
'COMMON WAY'-FOR RIGHTS WITHIN THE CHURCH Another surprise from Poland RONALD MODRAS POLAND DOES NOT cease to surprise. The land that has given us Pope John Paul II, Lech Walesa, and the most...
...On mandatory celibacy for priests: "Every person has a right to establish a family...
...polemics, no...
...We work now without a priest but wish to remain loyal to the faith and to the church...
...ment actually began more than fifteen years ago, when Dr...
...Our movement and our newsletter are supported with only our own pocket money...
...Except for a coordinating committee of six persons, our movement has no administration...
...A recent memorandum on capital punishment describes it as "incompatible with the teaching of the Gospel...
...The 1974 Synod of Bishops was even more explicit: "From her own experience the church knows that her ministry of fostering human rights in the world requires continual scrutiny and purification of her own life, her laws, institutions, and policies...
...A pope, an independent labor union movement, and now a widespread movement for human rights in the church...
...Is criticism of the church allowed...
...We have tried to address such questions as: Where are the limits to freedom...
...Their newsletter justifies their program with appeals not only to the Bible but also to recent Vatican declarations on human rights...
...Klapuch was transferred to the smallest pastoral position in the diocese, a chapel with about six hundred people...
...What kind of topics do we work on...
...We send written position papers to the bishops but do not receive any answers and have not been invited to any conversation...
...One's relationship to work...
...Our tactics...
...Other topics have been : Psychic health and human rights...
...Poland has long remained terra incognita to the West...
...At first we entered into written polemics with chancery officials...
...The rights of children...
...Although Common Way began as an exclusively Catholic movement, Polish Protestants were accepted when they asked to join...
...Then followed our activity as informal base communities with the goal of realizing human rights within the church...
...Louis University...
...Christian marriage and the family...
...But in 1969, even before those two synods of bishops, and long before the organization of ARCC in this country or anything similar in Western Europe, the Common Way movement had formulated its statement of purpose: The Common Way Movement • is a religious, Christian, church movement...
...He taught that if the church was to be credible in its demand for human rights from the state, it must first realize human rights within itself...
...In the church as in other institutions and groups, purification is needed in internal practices and procedures, and in relationships with social structures and systems whose violations of human rights deserve censure...
...ARCC is currently establishing relations with similar Western European groups interested in developing a charter of rights in the church, and in the process encountered the Polish movement...
...declares the need for an extensive renewal of what is secondary and open to change in the church...
...aims at renewal by especially emphasizing the dignity of the ordinary, simple person in the church...
...THE REACTION of Poland's hierarchy to the Common Way movement has been predictably wary and unsupportive, at times even repressive...
...regards its mission as all the more important, since the chief forms of evil in our world today result from violations of basic human rights...
...He had begun to discuss human rights as moral principles and how human rights correspond with the teaching of the Bible and the teaching of Christ about the dignity of the human person and love of neighbor...
...There are no officers, no membership lists, no dues...
...We send our monthly newsletter, Our Way, to the diocesan officials and to Pope John Paul II...
...Each group has to work out its own theme...
...Calling itself the Common Way ( Wspolna Droga), this movement is committed to working for human rights within the church...
...is founded, as a church movement, upon what is essential and inviolable in the church...
...In the area of Christian unity, we are allowed only to pray and not undertake any contact...
...That is the rule in the inner life of the groups as well: exchange of ideas, yes...
...Members of the Common Way movement insist that they are loyal to Christian faith and to the church, but believe it necessary to press for reforms...
...What is the impact of urban culture on human rights...
...We begin with a reading from the Bible and seek to find confirmation of human rights in the Scriptures...
...We have also worked for the introduction in each parish of adult catechesis conjoined with discussion...
...The movement is now the singular example of practical grass-roots ecumenism...
...Now, at least in the cities, we have catechesis with discussion...
...Most theologians, along with Cardinals Alfrink and Ratzinger, have said yes, and indeed in greater measure in the church than in political societies...
...Therefore, no polemics, no conflict with the bishops...
...group whose president is James Finn, a former Commonweal associate editor, and whose vice-president is Sister Teresa Kane...
...We first met in church halls and in a retreat house, but we were forced to leave...
...Church and State...
...At present," Biskup writes, "in light of the radio broadcast of the Mass every Sunday, we are writing that religious freedom and tolerance demands that there also be a broadcast of an ecumenical radio program...
...The land that has given us Pope John Paul II, Lech Walesa, and the most sustained challenge to Communist authoritarianism, is also the home of a movement of base communities that is altering the image of the Polish Catholic church as monolithic and uncompromisingly conservative...
...The exchange of ideas with the bishops has been one-sided...
...Recently, also the topics: The church and the labor unions...
...struggles so that human rights might be realized more fully in the church than in other societies...
...What is more important in the life of a Christian, liturgy or moral principles...
...Three or four times a year, a meeting of all the groups is organized around a topic that interests all of them...
...The pastors agreed, but in the beginning gave instructions from the pulpit as they might a sermon, without discussion...
...Klapuch was given an ultimatum: either give up work with our base communities or be suspended and our groups declared to be a sect...
...The diocesan chancery does not want any dialogue with us...
...holds that the human rights for which it struggles have their origin in the rights conferred by human dignity...
...Last year it made contact with the Association for the Rights of Catholics in the Church (ARCC), a U.S...
...As increasing interest comes to be focused on it, one wonders if there are other surprises in store for us.other surprises in store for us...
...We meet each month in a different home...
...How do we operate...
...Each of our groups is autonomous...
...We had no way out...
...the church and strikes...
...The 1971 Synod of Bishops, for example, stated that "anyone who ventures to speak to people about justice must first be just in their eyes...
...Given the official atheism of Poland's government and its desire to break the hold of Catholicism on the Polish people, the bishops fear movements like Common Way may prove divisive and dangerous...
...The one thing holding the groups together is the issue of human rights as moral principles...
...Since we are informal, our groups do not receive any financial support...
...Biskup writes how Klapuch, undaunted, continued to meet with the base communities and to serve as their theological advisor...
...Later we came to the position that we must be an example of love of neighbor, including adversaries...
...The Common Way movement consists today of about fifty base communities comprising approximately 1,500 members...
...We give voluntary donations for only our monthly newsletter, Our Way, which is distributed without charge...
...The problem of the Christian conscience...
...solidarity with the oppressed...
...They apparently think that human rights should not be sought within the church since they originate outside the church...
...To obedience...
...When should a person seek a compromise, and when should one refuse to compromise...
...As a result, Dr...
...maintains that one can go on to productive, general discussions of other problems in the church only after attaining these goals...
...They are carefully qualified but clearly not conservative...
...Gustav Klapuch, a professor of theology, would meet for catechetical dialogue and discussion with intellectuals...
...Now we meet only in the homes of our members...
...To tolerance...
...realizes that human rights are a problem not only in the church but in our society today throughout the human race...
...Some groups were even a bit aggressive...
...On the involvement of the clergy in political and social activity: "A flat prohibition would be against human rights...
...But then, in April of last year, the movement's newsletter, Our Way (Nasza Droga), published a factual account of the conflict between Hans Kung and Rome, based on material from the independent West German Catholic periodical, Publik Forum...
...The relationship of religion to life...
...Over ten years, but the moveFATHER RONALD MODRAS is associate professor of theological studies at St...
...Klapuch, a priest, had the canonical mission of his theological teaching position withdrawn (similar to the much later case of Professor Kung...
...The groups exist mostly in southwestern Poland, in Upper Silesia, historically a region heavily influenced by Germany with strong affinities to the West Josef Biskup, a Catholic layman and technical engineer, wrote recently to Leonard Swidler of ARCC's international liaison committee as a representative of Common Way's coordinating committee: "How long have we existed...
...Our initiatives...
...We have written well-known theologians in Europe, asking whether human rights have a place in the church...
...The host prepares the topic and leads the discussion...
...BISKUP GOES ON TO describe some of the position papers that the Common Way movement has formulated and sent to the bishops...
...The Polish bishops view such lay movements as weakening the centralized authority of the hierarchy...
...does not have social or political changes as its purpose, because it is not a social organization or a political party but rather a religious movement...
...strives for freedom of people to express their opinions in the church...
Vol. 108 • April 1981 • No. 7
