Poles take pride in tenacious brand of
Catholicism
Poland is, after everything, still a very Catholic place.
Its not just that, according to official statistics, some 95
percent of the population of 38 million is Roman Catholic. Its that a
strongly devotional Catholicism still oozes from the national pores -- despite
the czars, despite the communists, even despite the invasion of the heathen
West with its easygoing, post-Christian relativism.
To be sure, Catholicism does not hold sway here in the
totalitarian, integralist manner it once did. Poles today see little
contradiction between packing their churches on Sunday and electing a
nonbeliever Socialist president, despite the not-so-subtle opposition of the
countrys primate, Cardinal Jozef Glemp of Warsaw. (A Glemp spokesperson
accused President Aleksander Kwasniewski during the last election campaign of
promoting abortion, narcotics and pornography. Kwasniewski
nevertheless cruised to reelection.)
Moreover, homogenous Polish Catholicism sometimes shades off into
fundamentalism. A conservative movement is centered on the powerful Radio
Maria, a religious radio network that broadcasts throughout the country. Some
of its clerics make common cause with a political party called Self-Defense,
led by radical populist Andrzej Lepper. There have also been accusations of
anti-Semitism surrounding Radio Maria.
Yet walking the streets of Kraków, the nations
third-largest city and its cultural capital, the night before the Aug. 18 papal
Mass, a deep popular faith was on clear display. Every church in the city
center was packed with pilgrims preparing for the next day, most on their
knees.
Poles know they have a uniquely tenacious brand of Catholicism,
and some cant help feeling a certain pride in comparison with other
national churches. This became clear, for example, talking with Jesuit Fr.
Jozef Lukaszczyk, a Pole who for the last 15 years has lived in the United
States. He is the chaplain at the Black Madonna Shrine in Eureka, Mo., and had
come home to see the pope.
Lukaszczyk was sitting in the vast crowd at the papal Mass in
Blonia Commons waving a small American flag.
I am a United States citizen now, and I want people to know
I am not ashamed of it, he explained to NCR.
Ashamed?
Oh, sometimes Polish priests will think that priests in the
United States dont pray, they arent holy, that you should be
ashamed, he said. But Im not. There are many beautiful things
about the United States. This is my life.
Then, quietly, he allowed that he too has seen some U.S. priests
who stay too far away from tradition, and Lukaszczyk said he blames
this in part for the sex scandals currently rocking the U.S. church.
(For the record, Poland itself has not been spared from the sex
abuse crisis. Archbishop Juliusz Paetz of Poznan, a former aide to John Paul II
in the Vatican, recently was forced to resign under accusations of sexual
advances toward seminarians).
Even second-generation Polish immigrants, lacking the language or
lived experience of Poland, get in on the act. George Sliwa, 41, of Birmingham,
England, who was visiting for the first time the country his parents came from,
testily rejected speculation that their Polish pope might resign.
It would be to cave in to the worst, most reactionary
elements in the Catholic church who have been trying to destroy the work he has
been doing for the last 23 years, Sliwa said.
He will never quit. After all, hes Polish.
As if to prove the point, before heading back to Rome Aug. 19, the
pope stopped at the Kalwaria Zebrzydowska sanctuary about 23 miles outside
Kraków, a Marian shrine that he visited as a boy. There he asked Mary to
obtain also for me strength in body and spirit, that I may carry out to
the end the mission given to me by the Risen Lord.
-- John L. Allen Jr.
National Catholic Reporter, August 30,
2002
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