The Pope and the General

...Despite the anticlerical stance of the Moscow-Warsaw axis, Wyszynski sought a concordat with the authorities that underscored the historically protected role of the church in Polish society He prevailed because successive Communist regimes discovered they could not hope to govern without tolerating a modicum of spiritual pluralism Over the course of 15 years as Archbishop Karol Wojtyla of Krakow, the Pope was embroiled in these tense, often ambiguous negotiations...

...On December 13, 1981 came the imposition of martial law, an event that continues to shock and anger Poles On the one hand, the new Primate, Jozef Caidinal Glcmp, criticized the repressive measures, on the other, he urged the faithful to abstain from violence and to "forgive" the authorities for what they had done Glemp's sermon was repeatedly broadcast while Jaruzel-ski's tanks were maneuvering through Warsaw As political arrests mounted, the Pope neither endorsed nor repudiated Glemp's mushy responses During his prolonged final illness, Wyszynski had sought a successor who, above all, would preserve the rights of the church against any renewed pressures Insiders within the Polish church knew that Glemp had not been Karol Wojtyla's choice, the Pontiff had acceded to the dying wish of his one-time mentor...

...The Pope resolved the political schism by backing the Polish priests against Glemp and his allies within the cautious Italian-bred Vatican Curia The priests, in turn, supported the illegal movement with prayers and provisions...

...Meanwhile , Jaruzelski has attempted to harness the prestige of the church to gain legitimacy with a people who look upon their government as little better than an internal occupation This effort reached a climax in late 1982 when Jaruzelski and Glemp made a deal The church would oppose the Solidarity underground's planned revival of civil disorder in return for Walesa's release from internment, relaxation of martial law and a Papal visit in June 1983...

...For eight triumphant days in his native land, the Pope defied the Communist regime Uninformed predictions that he would show restraint and advocate compromise proved as false as shallow post-mortems implying that he had sold out Solidarity and its leader, Lech Walesa, while contriving a modus Vivendi for the church with Jaruzelski During sermons before vast throngs, the Pope plunged into the basic moral issues of social freedom and worker democracy His message was heard by crowds totaling perhaps 10 million people, or better than one of every four citizens He spoke with such fervor and with such a lack of diplomatic guile that in the end, church officials revealed, Jaruzelski felt bound to come to him and plead that the Pontiff refrain from further undermining the government's precarious standing with its furious Soviet ally Officially, however, the beleaguered regime maintained that the second meeting between the two men on June 22 had occurred at the Pope's instigation, rather than with his acquiescence...

...POLISH RENEWAL-I The Pope and the General BY ANDREW J GLASS Warsaw The spiritual leader today of 750 million Roman Catholics spent World War II quarrying stone in Nazi-occupied Krakow Evenings he acted with an avant-garde theater group and wrote several plays The General who currently governs 36 million Poles under limited martial law was in the Soviet Union when that War began, also working as a laborer He joined a Polish Army raised within the USSR, and after the formal fighting ended spent two more years battling guerrilla forces seeking to thwart a Communist takeover in Poland On June 17, Pope John Paul II and General Wojciech Jaruzelski held their initial encounter at Warsaw's Belvedere Palace Once the residence of governors the Russian Tsars assigned to rule their Polish provinces, the Belvedere was stormed by the Poles in 1830 when they rose up against the Russian occupation...

...That was not the only dishonest report to emerge from the visit Government spokesmen said that, all in all, they were satisfied with the visit, although the results were disastrous when measured against the Government's long-term aims And as the tour drew to a close, a Vatican spokesman chastised the Western press, present in force, for injecting unwarranted political themes into homilies that purportedly were solely religious in nature (This was a bit like suggesting that the Washington Redskins played in the Super Bowl merely to exhibit their athletic prowess and not to be paid...

...The message for Marxism-Leninism should be as clear as it is chilling The eventual fallout from these Papal thrusts may yet topple Jaruzelski and perhaps trigger, on Kremlin orders, the installation of a tougher hardliner in Warsaw (A leading candidate is Stefan Olszowski, a foe of "renewal" during the 16-month "Polish summer "When Walesa climbed over the wall at the Lenin shipyard in Gdansk, Olszowski was serving as the Polish envoy in East Berlin, a place where, with luck, troublemakers like the electrician spend their lives in prison ). Some Western diplomats believe that the Red Army may be protecting Jaruzelski and his "Military Council for National Salvation" for fraternal reasons Whatever the case, the Politburo cannot help feeling outraged by the Pope's audacious behavior in Poland Jaruzelski warns that such imprudence may compel the Soy lets to react, thereby voiding Western plans to ease economic sanctions It he is right, the church's own scheme to pump billions of dollars into Polish farms through private channels will go awry, too But John Paul s central theme-the triumph of the human spirit over Communism-will endure...

...John Paul has never suffered the anguish that befell so many Polish bishops, including Glemp Refusing to be torn between the paths of resistance and accommodation, he has taken a longer view, anchoring the church as the protector of nationalism in a country that, as he sees it, must play an independent role between East and West...

...Andrew J Glass, , is head of the Cox Newspapers bureau m Washington...

...The brief and bloodless revolution known as Solidarity was spawned in 1979 by the first visit of John Paul-II precisely because he managed to restore in Poles a sense of unity and national identity that had been shaken by 35 years of random bureaucratic terror As primate, Wyszynski lived to see the trade union movement emerge and pry open the Communists' political grip even as the church sapped their ideological juices Under Walesa, Solidarity remained a staunchly loyal arm of Polish Catholicism, the intellectual anti-Soviet, anticlerical members of the movement, on whom the authorities have subsequently lavished so much attention, never dominated...

...Halina Bortnowska, a Catholic scholar from Krakow who knows the Pope well, has described Solidarity as " one of the most important expressions of what I call the 'subjectivity' of Polish society-its capacity to act as a subject rather than the object of history " In other words, the Poles had regained their souls through the idea that 10 million of them working together could forge their own fate Speaking before millions at Jasna Gora, the nation's principal shrine, the Pope proclaimed that ideal once more "The state is firmly sovereign when it governs society and allows the nation to realize its own subjectivity, its own identity," he said...

...Now as then the Polish people, fated by geography to live in one of Europe's most contested neighborhoods, see the dramatic clash at the Belvedere as one of those symbolic passages whereby they periodically renew their identity The tough words exchanged between the Pope and the General, in Warsaw and later in Krakow's Castle of Kings, indeed revealed their deep differences over Poland's proper place in the world In fact, the bold agenda the Pope proclaimed for Poland-to restore political liberties crushed by the General 20 months ago-threatens the junta, the hardline satraps in Czechoslovakia and East Germany, and ultimately the Soviet Union itself...

...The Pope held himself aloof from this tactical compromise Nevertheless, through his private intelligence network he was undoubtedly aware that the church's help in preserving the new social order had been opposed by not only most parish priests but also prominent members of the Polish Catholic hierarchy Heated by Polish emigres and Radio Free Europe broadcasting, resistance to Glemp's moderate course nearly boiled over after his bargain with Jaruzelski The Primate called a clerical conference, where he was sarcastically addiessed as "Comiade Glemp" and admonished to remember who the real friends of Polish workers were...

...To fathom the strong emotions the pilgrimage stirred in Polish hearts, and the possible consequences, one must view matters in a broader context Since the first partition of Polandin 1772, the Catholic Church has provided Poles a nationalistic and spiritual haven against a succession of occupying powers The advent of a "People's Republic" in Poland following World War II served to reinforce those feelings, especially when the Communists sharpened the conflict by placing Stefan Cardinal Wyszynski under house arrest in the 1950s...