What's a Catholic country to do?:
Byrnes, Timothy A.
WHAT'S A CATHOLIC TIMOTHY A. BYRNES COUNTRY TO DO? THE CHURCH'S TEMPTATION IN POLAND What role...
...Nobody slept much...
...He was on assignment in Central Europe for the National Catholic Reporter in 1990...
...The issues, the rhetoric, and the political divisions correspond roughly to our own "politics of religion" in the United States...
...O GROWING UP OR TIM McCARTHY SELLING OUT...
...Religious leaders speak out on a wide ing, voting, and forming parliamentary coalitions...
...It would be placed in the emerged from the defeat of communism as the most organ- awkward position of opposing the democratically expressed will ized and coherent institution in the country, the church has wast- of the people it claims to represent...
...While declaring that the Republic of Poland is "a lay lash would not be directed so much at the church itself, but rather state," the proposed constitution also makes clear that this state at the public officials who voted the church's views into law...
...That backbiguity...
...For influence on abortion policy and its resolute opposition to arone thing, the current constitutional proposal is a model of am- tificial birth control could lead to a political backlash...
...CZECHS FACE THE FUTURE She got pregnant in Prague about the time of the exhausted peoples, economic and social chaos, a political vacVelvet Revolution...
...exceptions are being enforced, legal abortion has been very With divisions on these questions growing ever wider, politi- sharply curtailed in Poland...
...sition is assured over the long run...
...Tank tracks the Magika Laterna theater to hear what the Civic Forum lead- chewed into the spiritual landscape as well...
...More than forty years ago Hannah Arendt wrote in The Origins of Totalitarianism that one day totalitarianism would "simply disappear, leaving no other trace in the history of mankind than TIM MCCARTHY is a free-lance journalist...
...She blushed to the bone...
...rallying points for dissent than as guides to the foundations of As the American experience shows, constitutions do not, by a democratic state...
...That is remarkably close to November and December 1989, breathless, drawn what happened, especially in Czechoslovakia...
...Influence can be defined in many ways in is the right word) the loss of privileged status and have also a democratic system, and often the hardest dilemma for any rebeen challenged to define their political roles in new ways, in ligious institution to resolve is balancing accommodation to pluterms of their access to individual Catholics rather than their ralism with faithfulness to a moral and religious tradition...
...Defenders of legal abortion, for example, tions that the church hoped would disappear with the Communist are dismissed as secularists, nostalgic for Communist policies past...
...Many who had yearned for freedom and They were married the next spring, when words like "mar- truth settled for a new car and a cottage in the country...
...In the United States, as in Poland, religious leaders strive to "return God to the public schools," to restrict access to abortion, and to infuse popular culture (TV sitcoms, movies, magazine racks) with Christian values...
...They were not Christians...
...And, for the moment at least, the ments...
...Despite this wall, indeed determined not through private negotiation beperhaps because of it, religion and politics (as distinct from church tween prelate and party (as it was under the and state) in the United States continue to interact in both be- Communists), but through democratic processes-campaignnign and aggressive ways...
...and it has maintained that Polish popular cul- acts during these periods...
...Taken together these controversies have raised opponents of the church's moral/political initiatives are insidcritical questions about church-state relations in Poland, ques- iously "un-Polish...
...The election is being fought booth...
...pluralism...
...it has tried to eliminate access with the Catholic faith have been political as well as religious to legal abortion...
...Many TIMOTHY A. BYRNES, who teaches political science at Colgate University, is the author of Catholic Bishops in American Politics (Princeton University Press...
...And yet, to state the obvious, circumstances in Poland are vastly different from what they are in the United States...
...tent and where reliable contraceptives were not always avail- We need to be careful, however, not to slip away from a disable...
...On the surface, much of this seems familiar to an American observer...
...Of all the of their country-"Catholic nation"-but in purely demoperplexing questions facing Poles, perhaps graphic terms that is not far from the truth...
...THE CHURCH'S TEMPTATION IN POLAND What role ought the Roman Catholic church Poles, for cultural and political reasons, resist the description play in a democratic Poland...
...Daughter of church...
...Communists old enough still to believe in socialist ideals, she wore a crucifix hidden beneath her clothing for much of her pregnancy...
...port parties and candidates who have done the church's bidding Religious education has returned to the public schools...
...The Catholic hierarchies of This is a lesson that the Polish episcopate may have to learn Spain and Ireland, to name two examples, have suffered (if that in the coming years...
...Given that opinion polls indicate that two-thirds of Poles but regardless of the timetable, the constitutional treatment of favor continued access to abortion, and that hospital emergenchurch-state relations will not resolve the current problems or cy rooms report rising rates of "botched abortions," the church's bridge the political and social chasms that have appeared...
...An exhausted peoers had decided to do next...
...For one thing, Polish religious life is the opposite of America's religious Tower of Babel...
...Everything is so uncertain for the baby," he said...
...Indeed, it seeks the ed what they perceive to be the powerful political role of concrete application of Catholic moral doctrine to Polish law...
...But even were this ambiguity media could produce a similar reaction...
...This development portends a major cians, scholars, and members of the media have been focusing change in the lives of millions of Polish families, a change that a great deal of attention on the crafting of the new Polish con- is widely (and accurately) attributed to the church's political stitution...
...The church in Poland may not carve out a privileged con12: 24 September 1993 Commonweal stitutional status for itself...
...Generally, riage" and "children" were still blossoming with a promise the only those with little to lose (or to gain) dared to be seen in young Czechs had not known in several decades...
...Having new and very formidable challenge...
...Everything was up for grabs...
...Commonweal 24 September 1993: 13...
...But In Poland, as in the United States, the relationship between this month, the citizens of Poland will have a chance, in the religion and politics will be forged in political battle rather than voting booth, to express their views regarding these developconstitutional convention...
...Constitution provides that Congress shall make no law respect- 0 ne of the most interesting aspects of the current ing an establishment of religion, and the last fifty years of situation in Poland is the degree to which the Supreme Court decisions have erected the so-called wall of matter of the church's political power will be separation between church and state...
...This arduous task might well take years to complete, clout...
...But that does not mean that the of its energy on persuading Catholics and non-Catholics through church could not continue to play a central role in Polish soci- education, preaching, and various forms of lobbying...
...lead West, in the direction of consumerism, secularization, and Take the issue of abortion as an example...
...No position may be more tenuous than it appears...
...In fact, viewed in dynamic But Poland is undergoing tremendous change at virtually all political terms, rather than static constitutional ones, the church's levels of society and all predictions must be cautious ones...
...rather than the roots of all evil...
...That vision Christian (or Judeo-Christian) values and traditions...
...Every day In August 1968, the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia around midnight they waited in the cold outside crushed more than a bid for a political reform...
...He spent the Spring 1993 semester as "Can't you give us the roots of a little bit of evil, a Fulbright Scholar in Poland...
...It wants a real say in the poamong the intelligentsia and professional classes, have resist- litical, social, and moral life of the country...
...over economic rather than moral issues, and few of the church Of course, this does not mean that the church's political po- initiatives are in danger of being overturned in the short run...
...Why take chances...
...Well over 90 percent of Poles are at least nominally members of the Roman Catholic church, and no one could fail to be impressed with the huge crowds that flock to Mass each and every Sunday...
...and pursuant to a church-sponsored law, a If, on the other hand, voters express a desire to move in a commission has been empowered to monitor TV and radio to more pluralist or secular direction, then the church will face a ensure their conformity to Poland's Christian values...
...The American church asparliaments and governments that are anxious or even willing serts itself in a myriad of ways, of course, but it focuses much to legislate Catholic teachings...
...abor- in the political arena, then their decision must command retion has been sharply restricted...
...From the decades, indeed centuries, of opposition to a variety of exter- birth of the Polish nation, marked by the baptism of Mieszko I nal forces, the church is asserting a powerful role in setting not in 966, to the long decades of Communist rule, the church has only the moral tone of an independent Poland but its social pol- often symbolized both Polish nationalism and opposition to the icy as well...
...able, the Polish parliament passed a law last year banning aborOpponents of state-mandated "Christian values" are accused tion except in cases of rape or incest or where the life or health of carrying on outdated policies that banned the church from of the mother was at risk...
...The three of us stared at it exposed on its string against her chest...
...My look shot a question toward them...
...has, to a considerable degree, passed into the statute books...
...Church-supported one can be sure where these changes will lead, but they may policies, for example, may prove, in the long run, to be unpopular...
...themselves, determine specific political realities...
...religious interest groups com- of communism's fall, the church has clearly and vigorously aspete for access to politicians, policy makers, and regulators...
...Those were careless days in uum and a spiritual tabula rasa...
...If the voters endorse the church's vision, if they supchurch in Poland is asserting itself with substantial success...
...with danger...
...Given the strict manner in which these the mass media...
...Her husband shrugged...
...Late in her term, her husband flipped it free at lunch one day...
...ficult to obtain...
...The influence on the state...
...Both the blush and the belief in something said a great deal about where many Central Europeans still find themselves...
...The church has sought the reintroduction of reli- ruling regime...
...In the wake range of public policy issues...
...In that case, sovereignty and democracy may turn For nearly forty years abortion was the leading form of birth out to be more durable and more deeply rooted obstacles to the control in a country where sex education was nearly nonexis- church's influence than either nazism or communism were...
...weight of oppression...
...But she was still blushing as though surprised in an unworthy act...
...I do believe there is something," she said...
...none resonates more deeply in Polish his- More important than the demographics is the role that the tory and culture than this one...
...Commonweal 24 September 1993: 11 that were designed to destroy the country's moral fiber...
...WHAT'S A CATHOLIC TIMOTHY A. BYRNES COUNTRY TO DO...
...Mass attendance and personal identification gious education in public schools...
...Indeed, the American hierarchy has been response that the Polish church gives to this dilemma may dearguing in Rome for over two centuries that the separation of fine its role for decades...
...The U.S...
...Cardinal Josef Glemp, the primate, and the rest of the Polish Some elements in the church have gone so far as to argue that episcopate...
...Today, with no educational preparation and no assurance cussion of religion and politics and back to one of church and that effective contraceptives will become more widely avail- state...
...ture (particularly TV and radio) should reflect the "Christian In recent decades the church came nearly to embody national values" of the vast majority of the Polish population...
...serted its vision of the proper relationship between the "Polish and public officials ritually display their reverence for America's national heritage (Catholicism) and Polish law...
...And it may not succeed in electing sentially ephemeral political forces...
...aspirations, and now that those aspirations have forged a truly Not surprisingly, each of these initiatives has generated con- sovereign Poland, the church is not content with symbolic gestroversy...
...In short, Catholicism to be resolved, the constitution would not settle the matter of and Catholic moral teachings may prove to be more popular as religion and politics in Poland...
...ety and indeed in Polish politics...
...At the moment, given the ed no time translating its strengths into tangible influence in general lack of institutionalized opposition to the church's inthe parliament, the president's palace, and perhaps the voting fluence, this scenario seems unlikely...
...Some ple turned inward, hunched its shoulders against the dead would say four years later that it still is...
...After Catholic church has played throughout Polish history...
...divorce has become more dif- spect...
...For Cardinal Glemp and the rest of the church and state is actually a good thing because it frees the Polish episcopate, this dilemma may be the unavoidable price church from potentially crippling alliances with narrow and es- of establishing a truly sovereign and free Poland...
...will "cooperate" with the Roman Catholic church in order to A state-supported imposition of Catholic censorship of the mass "meet the needs" of its citizens...
...Substantial elements of Polish society, particularly tures and mere cultural leadership...
Vol. 120 • September 1993 • No. 16
