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Poland The Polish Catholic Church and the People
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, more than 90 percent of
Polish children were baptized in the Catholic Church,
showing
that the younger generation shared loyalty to traditional
religion. Surveys of young people in the 1980s showed an
increase
in professed religious belief over the decade, from 74
percent to
96 percent. Also, the number of men preparing for the
priesthood
rose from 6,285 to 8,835 between 1980 and 1986. The
church's
influence extended far beyond the limits of a traditional
predominant religion, however. Especially in rural areas
and
among the less-educated urban population, religion
permeated
everyday life, and church attendance was higher in the
communist
era than it had been before World War II. As other forms
of
social affiliation were repressed or reorganized, churches
continued as the de facto arbiters of a wide range of
moral and
ethical problems in their communities, a role they had
assumed
initially during the war. Although church affiliation was
less
prevalent among the educated elite, over 60 percent of
that group
(which included most of the nominally atheistic communist
ruling
class) professed belief in Catholicism in 1978.
Experts point to certain characteristics of Polish
Catholicism to explain its unique resilience in a
population
bombarded for decades with state-sponsored atheistic
propaganda.
Polish Catholic religiosity focuses more strongly on the
Virgin
Mary and the saints than on the direct relationship of the
individual to God or on abstract religious doctrine. The
most
important pilgrimage destination for Polish Roman
Catholics is
the image of the Virgin (called the Black Madonna) at
Jasna Góra
Monastery in Czestochowa. The image is believed to have
rescued
Poland miraculously from invasions by the Tatars and the
Swedes,
and some Solidarity leaders wore replicas of the icon.
Especially for less-educated Poles, Mary represents a
tangible yet mystical connection with God much preferable
to
contemplation of abstract theological doctrine. During the
communist era, this more immediate and anthropocentric
religiosity seemed uniquely resistant to replacement by
the
intellectual doctrine of atheism. On the other hand, in
the early
1990s, once the specter of state-sponsored atheism had
disappeared, this immediacy promoted individual expression
of
beliefs in ways that questioned the church's authority
over
secular social ethics. Thus, the official church that had
protected the spiritual interests of all Poles under
communism
risked separation from the everyday religious practice
that
retained great meaning for the average Polish Catholic.
Data as of October 1992
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