Solidarity & the church
MacShane, Denis
GOD AND CAESAR IN POLAND Solidarity & the church DENIS MacSHANE Editor's note: Since the imposition of martial law on Poland, the church there has called for national unity and the avoidance of...
...The Catholic intellectual journals, although limited in circulation because of restrictions on paper availability, also showed the possibility of maintaining systems of thought and expression that were independent of the State ideology...
...The American interviewers were clearly disappointed, but like many other Western media commentators, they had made the false connection between, on the one hand, the position of the church in Polish society, and the religious beliefs of individual Poles, and on the other hand, the idea that the church therefore plays an instrumental role in guiding Solidarity...
...Yet the Polish church cannot occupy itself with two of the main social concerns of the Catholic church in the non-Communist world - the control of female fertility and chil-ren's education...
...As the procession, with flags held high, wound its way into the streets of Walbrzych, people's eyes were wet, as different emotions - religious, nationalist, and defiance for those who had prevented the celebration of St...
...Walesa always had a badge with the picture of the Black Virgin of Czestochowa pinned on his lapel...
...The church publicly sympathized with the Jews persecuted in the anti-semitic purges of 1968 and expressed support for the "rightful struggle of the Polish workers" during the strikes of 1970 and again in 1976...
...Unfortunately, unlike Solidarity, the church's leaders do not debate their differences in public, or make the minutes of the Bishops' Conference available for public distribution...
...It should not be confused with the samizdat publications of dissident circles in the Soviet Union, or the discussion groups inside Czechoslovakia...
...When he visited Poland in June 1979, more than half-a-million people flocked to southern Poland to greet him...
...Priests do not attend National Coordinating Commissions, though Cardinal Wyszynski's senior lay adviser, Professor Kukulowicz, attended some National Co-ordinating Commission sessions...
...After the creation of Solidarity many of these intellectuals turned to the new union to offer advice and help...
...Three days into the strike, when workers were hesitant about staying on to occupy the shipyard, once the initial demands over more money and Anna Walentynowicz's reinstatement had been met, the strike organizers persuaded a Gdansk priest to come and say Sunday Mass (against his bishop's wishes) for the occupying shipyard workers and so stop them from drifting home...
...Since the arrival of Solidarity, however, the church has lost its role of being the sole independent champion of the Polish people...
...Western magazines seem to have published as many pictures of Walesa on his knees in church as they have of him addressing workers...
...The worldwide importance of what has been happening inside Poland since August 1980 is because it constitutes a major victory for the working class...
...He recalled the steadfast "solidarity" of St...
...No Solidarity office is complete without a crucifix and portraits of Pope John Paul II...
...The high ceilinged redbrick church was crammed with miners, their families, and the local townspeople...
...Yet at the same time there is convincing evidence for arguing that without the church, and, in particular, without the example set by the church in how to resist incorporation by a one-party State, Solidarity could not have come into existence...
...The creation of Solidarity meant that for the first time since the war the miners of Walbrzych were able to celebrate their patron saint's day in a traditional religious fashion...
...Barbara's day, and made it an official miners' holiday when festivals and feasts were laid on by the old official miners' union...
...If you drive through many of Poland's poorest villages you will see a well-built church in the midst of the rural poverty...
...The sense one has of being united with scores of thousands of like-minded people, and of feeling far less vulnerable to being individually targeted by authority gives one a confidence-strengthening belief in one's ability to defy those in power...
...It is perhaps too easy to be overly impressed by the outward religiosity of the Poles, the crucifixes and pictures of the pope...
...It may be that there are some within the Polish church who would like to have more influence over Solidarity...
...It is not necessary to be a Catholic to be a moderate, nor do decisions to call off general strikes (such as the one threatened over the Bydgoszcz incident) reflect undue church influence, so much as majority decisions taken after long debate by Solidarity's leadership, which is quite capable of making up its own mind, based on the available evidence...
...Long before August 1980, in the big university towns, there already existed an experienced cadre of intellectuals associated with the Catholic church who had the experience and the confidence to know that forms of organization and expression independent of the State and Party were perfectly possible...
...The Mass finished on a light-hearted note as a miner, dressed in the traditional black costume of Silesia, chatted on the altar with the archbishop and even exchanged his hat with its large white feathers for the archbishop's miter...
...DENIS MacSHANE is on the staff of the International Metalworkers' Federation, Geneva branch...
...NEVER BEFORE in its history has Poland had two such internationally renowned sons as Lech Walesa and Pope John Paul II...
...But the union itself, as a social movement, is secular, it acknowledges the Christian values to be the foundation of European culture, but it is not politically related to the church, nor does it consider the Catholic social doctrine to be its program...
...Since the strike, the church's, at least symbolic, presence is everywhere...
...and constant pressure on those in power...
...has defended Solidarity and ' 'the democratic renewal'' that it had begun...
...It was an important psychological first in Eastern Europe...
...The entire logistical organization of this mass movement of people was carried out by the church, not helped by State or regional authorities...
...High on the list of twenty-one demands was that the church should be allowed to broadcast Mass on State radio...
...The following article, written well before the most recent, tragic turn of events, is published here, not only as a poignant reminder of what has been, but also as important background to what may yet be...
...Editorial writers in many Western papers have talked of Solidarity almost as if it were under the church's control...
...In December 1980, Father Alojzy Orszulik, Director of the Press Office of the Polish Episcopate, issued a statement critical of KOR and Jacek Kuron...
...For thirty years the primate of Poland, Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski, represented for many Poles the enduring symbol of their country's difference, and its refusal to be subjected to Soviet hegemony...
...To go to Mass every Sunday, as do most Solidarity members , is no guide as to how they vote in a democratic decision-making process...
...This parallel intellectual life was relatively open and tolerated...
...Walbrzych is one of the coal-rich areas of Silesia...
...The church's caution first manifested itself during the Gdansk strike and has continued ever since...
...But Michnik added that there were different tendencies in the church: there were those who saw the possibilities of an "Iranization'' of Poland with a weakening central power confronted by religious forces thinking only of its overthrow...
...This article is an excerpt from his book, Solidarity: Poland's Independent Trade Union (Spokesman, Not-tihg) Copyright ©1981 Denis MacShane...
...Although the church warned Poles away from violent resistance (as did, reportedly, Solidarity leader Lech Walesa), the martial-law government has failed in its attempts to win even passive support from the Catholic leaders...
...There are now three times as many priests as in pre-war Poland...
...ACCORDING TO Edmund Baluka the Poles are "great hypocrites" about their church...
...Birth control and abortion more or less on demand are generally available in Poland and, whatever the church's teaching, they are freely taken up...
...The conference hall where the Inter-Factory Strike Committee met had a crucifix behind the platform...
...The tacit concordat between the State and the Polish church created a space, not just for Catholics, but also for lay intellectuals who discussed seculare subjects...
...He gave thanks to present-day Solidarity and urged parents to teach their children the Polish traditions...
...The State has complete control of education from the kindergarten upwards, though the church runs religious classes outside school...
...Although religious subjects were featured as discussion topics, questions of economics, politics, history, culture, were endlessly debated...
...Barbara's Day, and St...
...But this moderation fully corresponds to the political analysis of some Solidarity leaders who need no urging from the church to stop certain types of strike, or to curtail more provocative demands...
...One should not confuse paying spiritual leaders moral respect with taking orders from them...
...GOD AND CAESAR IN POLAND Solidarity & the church DENIS MacSHANE Editor's note: Since the imposition of martial law on Poland, the church there has called for national unity and the avoidance of bloodshed...
...Although I have tried to show that it is wrong to inflate the church's role in Solidarity or to assume the hidden hand of the bishops on the occasions when Solidarity draws back from confrontation, it is equally mistaken to dismiss the church, as do some Western left-wingers, as an irrelevant, backward-looking force that Solidarity will jettison as the Polish workers grow stronger...
...There is clearly some resentment in some church sections at the role of certain Solidarity activists who stress the secular and socialist ambitions of the new union...
...The election in 1978 of Cracow's Cardinal Karol Wojtyla to be Pope John Paul II seemed to express international endorsement of the role and activities of the Polish church...
...Regional or even national figures would come to Silesia to award labor medals and make speeches about the need for greater productivity in the pits...
...Barbara's day as a religious feast during the past thirty years - could be seen almost visibly surging through the minds of the thousands of Poles present...
...The fact that Polish workers are all baptized, and for the most part practicing, Catholics, and that Solidarity's ceremonial involvement with the church is so obvious should not blind one to the fact that Solidarity operates quite independently of the church...
...December 4 is St...
...One cannot start a mass social movement like Solidarity from scratch...
...For the first time there took place what was, in effect, a mass (large numbers of people, not the religious service) meeting which was perfectly organized, calm, and purposeful, and yet, had nothing to do with the Communist Party...
...According to Adam Michnik, the KOR activist and lecturer at the flying university, the Polish church offers, from a long-term perspective, a perfect model for the co-existence of an independent social formation and those who hold power...
...Neither police nor militia were to be seen...
...For the first ten minutes the two American interviewers bombarded them with questions about what the death of Wyszynski would mean for Poland and for Solidarity...
...The church in Poland has enjoyed its greatest ascendancy under a period of "Godless'' Communist rule...
...Again, it is important to stress that although the word "Catholic" figures in the title of these clubs and journals, they were not necessarily theologically or spiritually orientated...
...For Polish workers themselves, whose lives since infancy have been surrounded by religious symbolism, the fact of having a fellow countryman sitting in St...
...There is not a single recorded incident in which the intervention of a church leader has made any critical difference to a Solidarity decision...
...The Communist rulers of Poland provided the Catholics with something approaching the figure of a martyr through their early persecution and imprisonment of Wyszynski...
...The undoubted commitment to the Catholic faith of the Polish workers does not tell us what political, economic, and social decisions they will take...
...The church, in turn, knows that only the workers have enough power to force through real political changes that can open up society in the direction that the church has always claimed it wanted to go...
...The Polish workers' answers conveyed a deep sense of the tremendous moral respect that they had for the late cardinal, but none of them could think of a single change in the activities of Solidarity that would be brought about by the Cardinal's death...
...The future of both institutions is bound together...
...When he made this analysis in November 1980, Michnik stressed that there was more than one tendency at work within the episcopate...
...The historical importance of the church in keeping the Polish culture and national identity alive during the long years when Poland was divided and ruled by the great empires of Central Europe - Russia, Germany, and Austria-Hungary - is undeniable...
...This developed, not only a tast for, but also the practical experience of, organizing discussion groups or editorial boards that were clearly separate from, and independent of, Party and State...
...On the breasts of the miners, intermingled with war or labor-productivity medals, were little red and white Solidarity badges...
...nor are bishops members of regional praesidiums...
...The new pope's dynamic, public-relations-conscious style carried the papacy to a position of world authority that it had not enjoyed for a long time...
...and has demanded the liberation of arrested Poles and an end to the inhumane conditions of imprisonment...
...SNOW FELL and the temperature was minus twenty degrees centigrade as the crowds gathered for Mass at four o'clock in the afternoon in Walbrzych's main church one Thursday in December 1980...
...It is no accident that Ireland and Poland are Europe's most intensely practicing Catholic countries with no substantial anti-clerical politics that developed in other Catholic countries like France and Spain, where the church was long seen as part of the governing establishment, rather than the champion of national self-identity...
...The presence of a Polish pope in the Vatican has added a different kind of safeguard for Solidarity...
...That is not to say that Solidarity's national and regional leaders do not meet with cardinals, archbishops, bishops and priests, and listen to what they have to say with a greater degree of moral respect than when they have to listen to lay intellectuals...
...seems even more irrelevant today than when he posed it during the war...
...This model unites two fundamental factors: an understanding of realities...
...Each pit was represented with its flag...
...Barbara is the patron saint of Polish miners...
...This reflects the respect which society, most of the people being Catholic, has for the moral authority of the church...
...Bringing people together for mass events is an important part of the development of a popular movement...
...Now that a figure of such authority inside the church is no longer there, different factions will probably more openly begin vying for influence...
...Peter's must seem little short of miraculous and a sign from heaven, as it were, that Poland, at least for the time being, has favored nation status with God...
...As the packed church sang the great and (even to atheistic ears) moving, Polish hymn, Boze cos Polske (God who has protected Poland) - perhaps the only other hymn that touches Boze cos Polske for national-religious intensity is to hear Faith of Our Fathers sung by Irish Catholics in Ulster - a procession of miners dressed in their black costumes wound its way through the church...
...An unlikely story, yet both the Polish and Soviet leaderships cannot but take into consideration the international influence of the pope, especially in strongly Catholic third world countries where Moscow-oriented Communist parties or where Communist-led national liberation movements are struggling to win popular support...
...On the flag of the Maurice Thorez (the former French Communist Party leader) pit there was firmly pinned a large Solidarity badge...
...One should not romanticize the event, but some Solidarity activists talk of the pope's visit as the point when, for the first time, Poles saw and felt their own strength as a mass force...
...Like all powerful institutions, the Polish church is a highly political body...
...Stalin's sneering question: "How many divisions does the pope have...
...The church's search for a new, and from its point of view, satisfactory, role, will be an important element in the changes Poland is living through...
...Within a church which had to be tolerated, if not fully accepted, by the State, there was also room for widening the boundaries of intellectual freedom...
...Now on December 4, 1980, they had taken the day off and were coming to Mass...
...On the railings of the Lenin Shipyard workers hung big color photographs of Pope John Paul II...
...FROM THE very beginning of the Gdansk strike, the imagery of the church was everywhere...
...Despite the wave of highly emotional sympathy that he enjoyed following the attempt on his life, the Italian-Catholic-population decisively rejected his advice and, in a referendum, voted to endorse the State provision of abortion...
...Just as the early Christian church absorbed pagan feasts and turned them into religious festivals like Christmas, so the postwar rulers of Poland took a religious day like December4, St...
...It implied that the continuing presence of KOR activists was unwelcome to the church and even hinted that the church would not react if the authorities took action against Kuron...
...In Michnik's view, the Pope belongs to this latter category...
...Even Cardinal Wyszynski kept his distance from Orszulik's remarks by receiving KOR member Adam Michnik shortly after the statement...
...and then finally, priests close to Solidarity who wanted an open church in a pluralist society - "a church that does not want to be authoritarian, but which defends its own rights as part of the general defense of human rights...
...On the day after Cardinal Wyszynski died, three members of a Solidarity delegation who were in the United States appeared on the MacNeil-Lehrer Report, a prestigious television current affairs program...
...Barbara, who died rather than forswear her faith...
...Each group of miners carried a small statue of St...
...those who wanted the church to come to a deal with the State in exchange for increased ecclesiastical liberties...
...At the height of one of the Soviet invasion scares a rumor went round Warsaw that should Russian troops cross the border, the pope was going to smuggle himself back into Poland to be with his people...
...It does not follow that the church has substantial influence, let alone exercises power, over Solidarity...
...Outside, in the freezing cold, the local miners' chairman chatted with Jan Litynski, a KOR member and an editor of Robotnik, who had been in Walbrzych advising the miners since they broke away from the old union and set up a regional Solidarity organization in September 1980...
...It had also helped nurture the growth of thousands of independent lay people who would help Solidarity firmly implant its roots...
...It is reasonable to suppose that the physical weakness and illness of Cardinal Wyszynski during the last year of his life suspended what would otherwise have been a political fight within the church on how to deal with Solidarity...
...Solidarity, its members, and the large sections of the Polish population who are not members of, but who support, Solidarity, draw confidence from the church's support for the new union...
...It did not formally support KOR and the other oppositionists in the period 1976-80, but church leaders always criticized attempts by the security police and authorities to harass or arrest dissident intellectuals...
...The rugged hilly terrain is not unlike South Wales, though the Walbrzych miners boast that difficult as their coal is to extract from the awkward seams, it is the highest quality coking anthracite and coking coal to be found anywhere in the world...
...In 1981 the pope campaigned and spoke out against Italy's abortion law...
...It is true that among the union symbols those of the Catholic religion are of great consequence...
...Inside, High Mass was being said by the Archbishop of Wroclaw, who preached a sermon invoking the Polish struggle for independence against the Russians in the nineteenth century...
...The 250,000 Poles who turned out for his funeral in Warsaw indicate the support he had...
...Unlike the pre-war Polish church, which, in order to safeguard its land and properties, was deeply enmeshed with the anti-working-class ruling establishment, Cardinal Wyszyhski's church became a champion of human rights and freedom of expression, and in that way firmly established its credentials as being separate and apart from the ruling organs of the State...
...Barbara which had been blessed by the archbishop, and would be placed in each pit...
...Major Solidarity public ceremonies, like the unveiling of the monuments to the workers killed in 1970, or Solidarity's May 3 celebrations, have religious services woven into them...
...The Catholic church in Poland had provided an example of an independent force co-existing with the one-party State...
...The Polish church found itself deprived, therefore, of its traditional role as the guardian of personal sexual relations and was unable to form the young minds at school...
...Orszulik's statement was widely criticized in Poland by many priests and Catholic lay intellectuals, and the church has not made such explicitly condemnatory remarks about the secular, socialist wing in Solidarity since...
...As in Ireland under British rule, the church offered a spiritual national identity that provided solace to a people whose political self-expression was denied by the foreign occupier...
...The Clubs of the Catholic Intelligentsia in Warsaw, Cracow, Wroclaw, Poznan and To-run, provided, not just meeting places, but opportunities for non-Communist intellectuals from different disciplines to meet, exchange ideas, and forge links...
...Yet at the same time Solidarity can publish an official document about itself which is intended for distribution to trade unions outside Poland which categorially states that the union "identifies itself with no ideology and no religion...
Vol. 109 • January 1982 • No. 1
