The Editor’s Note from the Psychologist: Religious Divide in Poland

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In highly Christian Poland, the sword and the aspergillum no longer seem to coexist peacefully. By applauding, during his inauguration ceremony, the announcement of Bishop Wielgus’s resignation, Polish President Lech Kaczynski publicly displayed the divide between two groups within the same country—a kind of religious fracture. This “divorce” is all the more disturbing given that Bishop Wielgus, who was anticipated by the Pope to become the new Primate, must have— one must at least be convinced—been the subject of a discussion between Benedict XVI and the Polish Prime Minister, the President’s brother, like him a fervent supporter of Catholic tradition, during their meeting at the Vatican last October.

Embarrassing for the religious authorities, the affair is as much a story as a symbol. After all, across all former USSR satellites, there must be plenty of politicians, association members, or union leaders who, for reasons of mere physical survival, had to “collaborate” with the security services of the time. The tolerance of a large portion of the population towards a history necessarily punctuated by gray areas now encounters resistance from another fraction of the people who intend to exclude clergy from its scope. The reactions recorded outside St. John’s Cathedral were telling. On one side, the older faithful lamented the departure of their ephemeral Archbishop Metropolitan of Warsaw, denouncing the conspiracy of which he was allegedly a victim. A violent confrontation opposed them to a much younger population that loudly welcomed this courageous decision, interpreting it as a new message from the Church applicable to the future of the Polish nation. The press even indicated that this second group included “lay people engaged in the Christian faith”—lay people whose Catholicism, it should be noted, can no longer ignore its growing influence, capable of compensating, notably in French parishes, the general decline in vocations. To those who imprudently regarded the affair as an exceptional event, current events quickly provided a cruel rebuttal. This demand by Polish Christians regarding their hierarchy claimed a second victim the following day: a lower-ranking prelate, also suspected of collaboration with the former communist secret police, submitted his resignation to the Cardinal of Krakow. The debate is far from over: other members of the episcopate are expected to soon undergo an assessment of their past.

These Polish Catholics in search of truth are undoubtedly the spiritual children of John Paul II. This relentless quest is in itself a testament to the difficult legacy left by Benedict XVI’s predecessor. The current holder of the Chair of Saint Peter is, in a sense, paying the price for the political advances made by the former Pontiff. Karol Wojtyla had devoted much of his papacy to supporting massively the peoples struggling against communist dominance, for their greater good and that of humanity. From this human-focused dimension, the Church has widely managed to regain prestige that had remained suspended after the concessions made by the Second Vatican Council more than 40 years ago. But by moving away from the peaks of spirituality to focus its action on temporal issues, the Roman Catholic Church must also submit to the earthly ethical rules of a magisterium that no longer solely concerns the future salvation of souls. By increasing the weight of its voice on everyday issues and seeking to promote a strategy of proximity, the Curia undoubtedly aimed to get closer to the faithful, inspired by other religions whose influence on the ground they may have envied at times.

However, in its most frequent form—almost exclusively through condemnations, whether of consumerism, cultural deviations, or artistic boldness—the Church’s attempts to invest in the public space on societal themes, in a final surge against its erasure by modernity, seem to have been of little benefit: just over half of the French today declare themselves Catholic compared to 67% in 1994, while the proportion of Europeans opting for “belief without a specific religion” continues to grow. Far from being a walk in the park, continuing on the path of John Paul II might rather resemble a real Way of the Cross for Benedict XVI.

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