RELIGION AFTER COMMUNISM

...So too with the clergy who were defined as a distinct social group with a well-defined agenda of their own interests, which they protected to the detriment of the poor and ill-educated...

...In November 1989, Cardinal Frantisek Tomaszek of Prague told crowds of Czechs that he and the entire Catholic church stood on the side of the people...

...A religion of "my kingdom is not of this world," or a religion of dominance, wealth, and conformity...

...Despite the varied and complex experience of the last ten years, the general feeling of the journalists, politicians, and academics I know is that this critical task has not been successfully carried out...

...For the educated classes and intellectuals, a more refined system of historical and philosophical discussion was employed...

...The celebrations drew huge crowds of believers, dramatically demonstrating the undiminished attraction of religion...

...Popular perception is that organized Christianity in countries like Russia or Poland is still in danger of taking the side of conservative, antimodernizing, nationalist-minded forces...

...When the police took the icon away, Cardinal Wyszynski told the celebrants to continue the parade with an empty frame, which became the symbol of the regime's ruthless violation of basic civil rights...

...This notion helps to explain the atrocities in Croatia, Bosnia, and most recently in Kosovo, as well as the high level of enmity toward ethnic, cultural, and religious minorities who are considered "alien" even after centuries of living in our various countries...

...A paternalistic, xenophobic, anti-intellectual religion, or a religion willing to face radical change and accommodation without losing its historical and spiritual identity...

...The absence of any enduring and successful democratic experience can be felt almost every day in the life of post-Communist societies from Poland to Albania...

...It is only through critical analysis and public debate on the defects and merits of liberal democracy and a market society that a working consensus can be reached...

...of my own country, Poland, churches and religious organizations in Eastern and Central Europe were unable to maintain the positions and the credibility they held before the age of communism...

...The authorities worked to ensure that organized religion would lose its social, political, and moral influence and eventually its grip on the hearts, minds, and imaginations of the people...

...It proved to be a painful and difficult job that required intellectual capabilities hard to find within the existing religious elites...

...This specter of exclusion rests on the particular concept of nation that continues to dominate...

...On the contrary, many once brave religious-minded people have taken sides with the critics of new democratic regimes and with their openness to a variety of ideas and values...

...Below, the Polish journalist Adam Szostkiewicz offers his assessment of these matters...

...If this does not compromise and undermine religion in society, what does...

...Thus the Czech Republic, Hungary, and East Germany seem to have produced fewer instances of the abuse of religion for political or chauvinist aims and to have demonstrated more encouraging examples of religion truly serving the common good and acting as a force for moral renewal...

...But what kind of religion...

...The dominant religion in any one country does almost nothing to rectify this...

...A religion of tribal loyalties and suspicion toward other religions or nonbelievers, or a religion of trust and understanding, good will, self-constraint, and cooperation...

...The Lithuanian Catholic woman, Nijole Sadunaite, a well-known champion of religious freedom and human rights in Soviet times, attacked the Lithuanian Catholic bishops for not campaigning against a post-Communist candidate in a presidential election...

...But after ten years of experience, we see that restoration is not renewal...

...Furthermore, the tirades of many leading Catholic churchmen and activists against Europe, the West, the market economy, and pluralism add to the perception of Polish Catholicism as a force fighting the modernization of Poland...

...Still another is the problem of dealing with the conflicting value systems in an open society...

...In 1989, the generally peaceful and democratic revolutions in Central and Eastern Europe caught the churches by surprise...

...Still, to the extent that these atrocities could be defined as wars of faith and be manipulated by politicians on every side, religion can be said to have played an important role...

...They had to face a novel and rapid transition from authoritarian rule to multiparty, pluralistic democracy...

...Commonweal 19 September 24,1999...

...The Catholic church under Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski, the primate of Poland, not only maintained a remarkable degree of independence from the Communist state, but was also able to serve as a substitute for the independent institutions of a free society...

...The idea of the nation as a community of free citizens—exercising their rights and liberties and acting together toward a common good based on compromise—has not taken root in Eastern Europe...

...For particular historical reasons, Catholicism in Poland proved to be an effective bulwark against the New Society project...

...The model of courageous and faithful individuals who witnessed to their faith under Communist persecution does not easily translate into a larger pattern of religion acting as a friend of freedom and liberty for everyone...

...Religion was almost totally eliminated in Soviet Russia and Albania, or should I say, "deactivated...

...In Poland, nothing has done the Catholic church greater harm than its constant demands for the return of properties confiscated by the Communist regime, its active involveCommonweal 18 September 24,1999 ment in day-to-day politics, and its unwillingness to listen to the arguments against Europe's most restrictive anti-abortion law...

...But populist-oriented attacks on the modern age or antiliberal legislation will not resolve this tension...

...This excerpt is printed with the permission of the author and the ICC...

...The traditional religiosity of popular Polish Catholicism, a source of strength in Communist times, has suddenly and somewhat surprisingly shown its other face: that of a community deeply divided along political lines as well as susceptible to antireformist rhetoric, the reforms of Vatican II included...

...When religion went, there would be no barriers to building the New Man and the New Society...

...They were helped by the propaganda of the state-run mass education system and the media...

...This is not to deny that there is a certain tension between religion and the modern world...

...The editors are grateful to Judith Banki of the Tanenbaum Center in New York for calling it to our attention...

...The other is the problem of how to understand limits to freedom in a democratic society...

...In the former Yugoslavia, efforts at cooperation and reconciliation nothwithstanding, both Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christianity were compromised by ethnic wars and atrocities...

...In every country, the police and secret service used a mixture of coercion, blackmail, reprisals, and brainwashing...

...After World War II, the official policy of the Communist parties taking power in Eastern and Central Europe was to suppress any religious presence by imposing severe restrictions on churches and other religious institutions...

...The wars in the former Yugoslavia cannot be considered wars of religion in the classic sense...

...What post-Communist societies need for their renewal and reconstruction is not more but less religion in the political arena...

...In all these areas of critical importance for a livable future in post-Communist societies, we need a helping hand from the West with its long and rich history of dealing with these central issues...

...How successful were the Communists...

...The political and economic transformations taking place in these now independent nations are widely reported and closely followed...

...For religion has been a force of division rather than unity, of opposition rather than conciliation...

...Examples from social and political history were used to undermine the credibility and the prestige of the churches...

...His remarks were given at a conference, "Destruction and Renewal: The Role of Religion in Changing Society," convened by the International Council of Christians and ]ews in Kiev, ]uly 11-15,1999...

...Rather than a nation of citizens, we have a nation of ancestors...

...A religion of militant defenders, or a religion of peacemakers ready to defend the rights and dignity of every human person regardless of his or her religion, nationality, social status...

...The specter of exclusion and discrimination still haunts our world: Russia's Orthodox church seeks rigorous legal limitations on freedom of religion in the Russian Federation...

...W hen religion is seen as a constitutive and defining factor in a people's identity, there is necessarily a potential for abuse...

...Religious organizations are tempted to think and act without taking into consideration the rights, expectations, and demands of other segments of society...

...With the exception Adam Szostkiewicz is political editor of Tygodnik Powszechny, the national Catholic weekly of culture and society, published in Krakow, Poland...

...In Czechoslovakia and Hungary, this antireligious, antichurch policy was helped along by the processes of secularization that had begun well before the coming of the Communist system...

...Religion, of course, has a role to play in this...

...Overall, it would be incorrect, in my view, to draw a positive lesson from post-Communist Europe as far as the role of religion is concerned...

...and there have been pogroms against the Gypsies in the Czech Republic...

...A religion that cares only for its own interests, or a religion that takes notice of the artifacts of history and culture and the needs of the natural environment, all of which require protection regardless of whom it has served or by whom it was created...

...Once the euphoria of the peaceful revolution began to fade, however, organized Christianity in Eastern Europe had to face the crucial task of defining its position in a new democratic context...

...One of the key issues is coming to terms with the realities of secularization occurring in all pluralist, market-based democracies...

...In the spring of 1989, the Polish Catholic church sent high-ranking representatives to the roundtable talks between the Communist authorities and the democratic opposition to help forge a resolution of the political and social stalemate...

...A religion of politique d'abord, or a religion of charity and care that transcends political, ethnic, and social divisions...

...Polish anti-Semitism still displays itself...

...In countries where no single religion dominates, the record appears more positive...

...This populist, ethnocentric notion is at odds with the contractual civic conception of the West...

...Surely, for renewal to happen, restoration must first take place...

...It would be better for the future of these societies if Christians and people of other religious faiths promoted an agenda of social peace, interreligious dialogue, and cooperation in charitable activities rather than an agenda in which an established religion demands privileges and subsidies...

...The sheer strength of the Catholic religion within the population was key, but mistakes by the government increased the church's moral authority...

...A Russian Christian poet, Irina Ratushinskaya, has written that it is easier to suffer than to preach the gospel...

...Her words may be a warning to those who believed that the end of communism opened the way to an ecumenical pluralism and a mature Christianity...

...A spectacular example was the "arrest" of a copy of the much-revered icon of the Black Madonna from the shrine at Czestochowa...

...Twenty-three years later the regime was gone, religion was still in place...

...The burden of the past, which is the burden of unfreedom, is one of the most important reasons for this...

...After ten years of democratic experience in post-Communist nations one feels that our societies are still in transition...

...Only Commonweal 17 September 24,1999 in Poland and Czechoslovakia was the Roman Catholic church ready to voice its open support for fundamental change...

...There is still a great deal of confusion, fear, and ignorance as to the direction we will take...

...Less is heard of their religious evolution and the role that churches and other religious institutions are playing in this process...

...The Polish pope is a hero and a cult figure in Poland, but his teachings on specific issues, such as the evil of anti-Semitism, are largely ignored...

...In 1966, the icon was being paraded throughout the country to celebrate Poland's first millennium of Christianity...

...The churches are seen as acting not for a genuine renewal but for securing their own social and political interests...