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Poland The Early Communist Decades
The Polish Catholic Church suffered enormous losses
during
the Nazi occupation of Poland in World War II. Its
leadership was
scattered or exterminated, its schools were closed, and
its
property was destroyed. Ironically, in the war years this
destruction fostered the church's conversion from an aloof
hierarchy with feudal overtones to a flexible, socially
active
institution capable of dealing with the adversity of the
postwar
years. In the first two postwar years, the church enjoyed
considerable autonomy. In 1947, however, consolidation of
the
East European nations under the hegemony of the Stalinist
Soviet
Union led to the closing of Polish seminaries and
confiscation of
church property in the name of the state. The state
abolished the
concordat and assumed legal supremacy over all religious
organizations in 1948.
In the decades that followed, the church adapted to the
new
constraints, pragmatically reaching compromise agreements
with
the state and avoiding open confrontation over most
issues.
Between 1948 and 1981, the church was led by Cardinal
Stefan
Wyszynski, an expert on Catholic social doctrine whose
commanding
personality augmented the power of the church hierarchy as
a
direct conduit from the Vatican to the people of Poland.
As a
general policy in the early communist decades, Wyszynski
avoided
fruitless direct campaigning against communist oppression.
Instead, he stressed the church's role as advocate of
Christian
morality. Nevertheless, the cardinal's criticism of PZPR
party
leader Boleslaw Bierut earned Wyszynski three years under
house
arrest (1953-56), as well as international stature as a
spokesman
against communism. During this period, a total of 1,000
priests
and eight bishops were imprisoned, and convents were
raided by
the police in the communist drive to destroy completely
the
authority of the church in Polish society.
Wyszynski was released in 1956 as a result of severe
social
unrest that forced a change in party leadership. The
release was
followed by a church-state agreement significantly
relaxing
restrictions in such areas as religious teaching and
jurisdiction
over church property. This agreement marked a general
softening
of state religious policy at the end of the period of
hard-line
Stalinism. Ten years later, the church's lavish
celebration of
the millennium of Polish Christianity strengthened the
identification of Polish national consciousness with the
church
and, in the process, the state's respect for the church as
representative of national opinion.
Data as of October 1992
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