Poland’s Catholic bishops are preparing to grapple with the new coalition government and its left-wing agenda. Last week, the Polish Bishops’ Conference elected new leadership, with Archbishop Stanisław Gądecki of Poznań leaving his position as president and Kraków’s Archbishop Marek Jędraszewski leaving his role as vice president. Archbishop Tadeusz Wojda of Gdańsk was elected as the new conference president and Archbishop Józef Kupny of Wrocław as the new vice president.
“We need to protect ourselves from all sorts of red stars, familiar to us from the communist past.”
Currently, the Catholic Church in Poland is facing the new government’s endeavors to suppress religion classes in schools, liberalize same-sex unions, and introduce abortion on demand. (READ MORE from S.A. McCarthy: At the Altar of the Zeitgeist: German Bishops Launch ‘Queer’ Commission)
After European Union bureaucrat Donald Tusk and his Civic Coalition took power in last year’s elections, incoming education minister Barbara Nowacka announced plans to strip state funding from Catholic catechism classes in schools and not collect or report grades from catechism classes.
Bishop Artur Miziński, then the general secretary to the Polish Bishops’ Conference, urged that “any work on this should be carried out primarily in dialogue with the Church.” The bishop also noted that the country’s catechism lessons are required by the terms of a 1993 concordat between Poland and the Vatican. The Polish Bishops’ Conference clarified that catechism classes come “from fundamental human rights, in particular the right to religious freedom.”
Poland’s new culture minister, Bartłomiej Sienkiewicz, also announced his intention of cutting government funding to religious publications. “The mission of the state is not to spread faith and salvation,” the culture minister declared. “This is a secular state.” Neither Nowacka nor Sienkiewicz acknowledged or alluded to the fact that over 70 percent of Poland’s population identifies as Catholic.
Prime Minister Donald Tusk also introduced a bill to legalize abortion on demand during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, which the Church in Poland has, of course, strenuously opposed. Under Gądecki and Jędraszewski, Poland’s bishops supported the current near-total abortion ban enacted by the now-ousted Law and Justice party, which only permits abortions in cases of rape or incest or to save the life of the mother. The bishops’ support of the law has resulted in allegations of “political interference.”
Tusk has also promoted legislation subsidizing prescription-free contraception. The Polish Bishops’ Conference said that Tusk’s abortion and contraception agenda would “bring death” and instructed that “one must never comply with … laws that allow the direct murder of innocent human beings.” Bishops’ spokesman Leszek Gęsiak commented, “The bills regarding abortion and prescription-free access to the morning-after pill … bring death under the guise of euphemistic-sounding slogans, because human life begins at conception.” He continued, “There will never be any support from the church for such actions. Abortion is a serious offence against human life.”
Gądecki asked, “When a parliamentary or social majority decides that the killing of unborn human life is legally permissible, even under certain conditions, is it not thereby making a ‘tyrannical’ decision towards the weakest and most defenceless human being?”
Additionally, Tusk and his ruling coalition have unveiled plans to liberalize same-sex unions. Currently, both same-sex unions and same-sex marriage are illegal. Under the Law and Justice party, with the support of the nation’s Catholic bishops, “LGBT ideology” was harshly condemned, with laws put in place to block gender ideology in schools. For the past five years, the European chapter of the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, and Intersex Association (called ILGA-Europe) has consistently ranked Poland the “worst” country in the European Union for LGBT “rights.” (READ MORE: Revisiting A Catastrophe: A Cardinal’s Blueprint for the Next Pope)
At a Christmas Mass, Kraków’s ultra-conservative archbishop proclaimed of the new government, “They want to take us back to the dark times of the [communist] Polish People’s Republic by removing crosses and nativity scenes from some Polish offices.” Jędraszewski was referring to a member of Tusk’s party who, upon taking office, removed a crucifix from his office and replaced it with European Union flags. The archbishop, who used to serve as the Polish bishops’ head of government relations, continued, “Why is there an arbitrary desire to limit the number of hours devoted to [catechism classes] at school, during which the full truth about Christ is proclaimed?”
Jędraszewski concluded, “We need to protect ourselves from all sorts of red stars, familiar to us from the communist past, as well as from modern-day stars that want to drag us into the miserable darkness of hatred, contempt for others, violence.”