Abstract
Since the end of communist rule in Poland in 1989, there has been a steady decline in the participation by Poles in religious rites (such as attendance at Sunday liturgy), accompanied by a decline in the number of religious vocations, a steady attenuation (beginning even before 1989) of the Catholic belief system, and persistent criticism of the Catholic Church’s political engagement.1 At the same time, roughly 90% of Poles continue to identify themselves as Roman Catholics, and assessments of the Church as an institution remain positive (as opposed to views of the Church’s public activities, which have been assessed more critically, especially in the years up to 2004).2 How is this paradox to be explained and what does it mean?
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Notes
See Irena Borowik, “Why has Religiosity in Poland not Changed since 1989? Five Hypotheses”, in Politics and Religion, vol. 3, no. 2 (August 2010), pp. 262–275; and Gazeta Wyborcza (27 April 2010), at http://www.wyborcza.pl/[accessed on 2 May 2010].
John Anderson, “Catholicism and Democratic Consolidation in Spain and Poland”, in West European Politics, vol. 26, no. 1 (2003), p. 144.
Vincent C. Chrypinski, “Church and Nationality in Postwar Poland”, in Pedro Ramet (ed.), Religion and Nationalism in Soviet and East European Politics, Rev. & expanded ed. (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1989), pp. 241–263
Vincent C. Chrypinski, “The Catholic Church in Poland, 1944–1989”, in Pedro Ramet (ed.), Catholicism and Politics in Communist Societies (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1990), pp. 117–141
Sabrina P. Ramet, Social Currents in Eastern Europe: The Sources and Consequences of the Great Transformation, 2nd ed. (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1995), Chap. 7 (“Church and Dissent in Praetorian Poland”), pp. 178–195
Sabrina P. Ramet, Nihil Obstat: Religion, Politics, and Social Change in East-Central Europe and Russia (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1998): for the communist era, pp. 18–19, 31–34, 44–45; for the post-communist era, pp. 285–307.
See Pedro Ramet, “Religious Ferment in Eastern Europe”, in Survey, vol. 28, no. 4 (Winter 1984): 87–116.
For details and discussion, see Sabrina P. Ramet, “Thy Will be Done: The Catholic Church and Politics in Poland since 1989”, in Timothy A. Byrnes and Peter J. Katzenstein (eds.), Religion in an Expanding Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006): pp. 125–126.
Krzystof Kosela, “Religijność mlodych Niemców i Polaków”, in Socjologia Religii (Poznań), vol. 2 (2004), pp. 125, 130.
Witold Zdaniewicz and Slawomir H. Zaręba (eds.), Kośćiot Katolicki na początku trzeciego tysiąclecia w opinii Polaków (Warsaw: Instytut Statystyki Kośćola Katolickiego, 2004), pp. 292–294.
See Mirella W. Eberts, “The Roman Catholic Church and Democracy in Poland”, in Europe-Asia Studies, vol. 50, no. 5 (July 1998), pp. 821–823.
See Andrzej Korbonski, “Poland Ten Years after: The Church”, in Communist and Post-Communist Studies, vol. 33, no. 1 (March 2000), pp. 127–128. See also Eberts, “The Roman Catholic Church”, pp. 823–826.
As quoted in Krzysztof Zuba, “The Political Strategies of the Catholic Church in Poland”, in Religion, State & Society, vol. 38, no. 2 (June 2010), p. 119.
See Sarah L. de Lange and Simona Guerra, “The League of Polish Families between East and West, Past and Present”, in Communist and Post-Communist Studies, vol. 42, no. 4 (December 2009), pp. 527–549.
Jonathan Luxmoore, “Polish Church Faces Questions about Role under Communism”; in National Catholic Reporter (5 April 2002), at http://natcath.org/NCR_Online/archives [accessed on 14 April 2009]; see also Antoni Dudek and Ryszard Gryz, Komunisci i Kośćiot w Polsce, 1945–1989 (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Znak, 2003).
Marek Lasota, Donos na Wojtyte: Karol Wojtyta w teczkach bezpieki (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Znak, 2006).
Fr. Tadeusz Isakowicz-Zaleski, Kzięża wobec bezpieki: na przyktadzie archidiecezji krakowskiej (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Znak, 2007).
Roman Graczyk, Cena przetrwania? SB wobec Tygodnika Powszechny (Warsaw: Wydawca Czerwone i Czarne, 2011), pp. 369, 372–373.
David Herbert and Max Fras, “European Enlargement, Secularisation and Religious Re-publicisation in Central and Eastern Europe”, in Religion, State and Society, vol. 37, Nos. 1/2 (March/June 2009), p. 88.
For an assessment of this trend from a Catholic perspective, see Janusz Mariański, “Reconstruction or Disintegration of Moral Values in Poland: A Sociological Essay”, in Irena Borowik (ed.), Church-State Relations in Central and Eastern Europe (Warsaw: Zakład Wydawniczy “Nomos”, 1999), especially pp. 368–371.
Irena Borowik, “The Roman Catholic Church in the Process of Democratic Transformation: the Case of Poland”; in Social Compass, vol. 49, no. 2 (2002), p. 240.
Ewa Golebiowska, “Ethnic and Religious Tolerance in Poland”, in East European Politics and Societies, vol. 23, no. 3 (Summer 2009), p. 383.
Jacek Kucharczyk and Olga Wysocka, “Poland”, in Grigorij Mesežnikov, Ol’ga Gyárfášová, and Daniel Smilov (eds.), Populist Politics and Liberal Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe (Bratislava: Institute for Public Affairs, 2008), p. 81.
Patrick Michel, Politics and Religion in Eastern Europe: Catholicism in Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia, trans. from French by Alan Braley (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991), p. 77.
The importance of generational change is also noted by Grace Davie, who says “that the younger generations of Europe have effectively lost touch with the institutional churches in terms of anything approaching regular practice”.— G. Davies, Religion in Modern Europe: A Memory Mutates (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 180.
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Ramet, S.P. (2014). The Catholic Church in Post-Communist Poland: Polarization, Privatization, and Decline in Influence. In: Ramet, S.P. (eds) Religion and Politics in Post-Socialist Central and Southeastern Europe. Palgrave Studies in Religion, Politics, and Policy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137330727_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137330727_2
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