No Longer Society's Only Voice

Even in the darkest days of totalitarian rule, when its leaders were silenced, its priests beaten, imprisoned and killed, the Catholic Church of Poland never needed to worry about having a voice in society. If anything, 40 years of communist rule strengthened the bond between the Polish people and their church--the one institution that could stand above the regime's unjust compromises and senseless ukases. The election of Karol Wojtyla in 1978 as Pope John Paul II deepened the relationship and played an important role in the development of Solidarity. In 1988, when Solidarity and the government of General Wojciech Jaruzelski seemed set on another destructive confrontation, the church helped find a way forward. And it was Jozef Cardinal Glemp, the Polish Primate, who mediated the Round Table discussions in early 1989 that led to communism's demise.

Since that high-water mark, however, the tide has turned and now the church in Poland is confronting a decline in its political and social clout--not to mention its congregations. "Our voice is lower now, not as strong," acknowledges Cardinal Glemp, who has led the church since 1981 and was re-elected in March to another five-year term as chairman of the powerful Episcopate Conference. Says Glemp, "Sometimes we are forced to preach unpopular truths about the importance of family, the sanctity of marriage, the restriction of sex and pornography. But we don't care about being popular; we want to fulfill our mission."

The church is still grappling with how best to do that in a democratic, vigorously capitalistic country. Some priests are committed to fighting raucously for a Catholic influence in politics, even though that is a sphere where Glemp himself says "the church seeks no direct influence." Others believe the church militant should take a back seat to the church of salvation. They fear that the political activity that elevated the church under communism could drag it into disgrace in democracy.

The most visible--or at least audible--purveyor of the church militant in Poland these days is Father Tadeusz Rydzyk, 53, a Redemptorist monk who founded "Radio Maryja" as a local station in Torun in 1991 and since then has expanded it to a network of 107 stations across Poland with satellite transmission to Europe and North America. The stern, fatherly advice Rydzyk administers on his call-in show has earned him a devoted listenership, but his nationalist and clericalist political positions are often demagogic.

He rails against the continued popularity of the Democratic Left Alliance (S.L.D.), the successor to the communist party whose most prominent member, Aleksander Kwasniewski, was elected President in 1995. He is certainly not alone in calling U.S. President Bill Clinton a liar, but he has gone beyond that to call him "a drug addict" and "an ancient serpent." After the Polish parliament passed a bill that slightly loosened strictures on abortion, he called its members "criminals" and "mercenaries" who were acting against the profound interests of the Polish state.

Father Adam Szulc, the spokesman of the Conference of Bishops, defends Radio Maryja as one of the church's effective ventures into the media, supplemented by the more pastoral tones of the official church network, Radio Puls, and a new national television network. Says Szulc: "It is not a simple task to deliver faith to contemporary man in an interesting manner."

Many critics of archconservative churchmen like Rydzyk and Glemp's fiery deputy, Archbishop Jozef Michalik, argue that their strong political stands are hampering the church. "There is still a group of priests and lay Catholics in Poland who never understood democracy correctly," says Father Roman Indrzejczyk, 68. It was in his book-strewn parish house above the nondescript Church of Baby Jesus in a prewar housing tract that Solidarity's influential Civic Committee attached to Lech Walesa was founded in 1986. "The aggressive language was acceptable under communism, but today it's not necessary at all. Our message should be one of acceptance and belief in change, in conversion."