POLAND: Way of Dying

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The Red government of Poland had turned in due course toward a "hard" policy of Communizing the nation. Before they come into direct conflict with the peasants on the issue of collective farms, Poland's Communists have decided that the first order of business is to break the influence and independence of the Roman Catholic Church. To that end, the Communists over the past several weeks have stepped up pressure on the church; the Vatican last week issued a long report detailing persecutions in Poland.

On the heels of this report came a government announcement in Warsaw, published on the front pages of all newspapers there, that the Catholic bishops had signed an agreement outlining church-state relations. The announcement said that the government agreed to permit continuance of Catholic religious instruction in the state schools, and gave other guarantees. The church, according to the account, agreed to "oppose abuse of religious feelings for anti-state purposes, combat criminal activity of underground bandits, and . . . teach the faithful to respect . . . the state authority." The church was also said to have made many other concessions which it had formerly refused to make.

In Rome, the Warsaw announcement was received first in shocked silence. Later, a Vatican official pointed out that the Communist announcement was made a day after Adam Cardinal Sapieha, chief prelate in Poland, had left the country to visit Rome. Cardinal Sapieha, 82, and other Polish churchmen have been pursuing a more cautious policy in Poland than Cardinal Mindszenty adopted in Hungary. Nevertheless, Vatican spokesmen did not believe that the Polish bishops had signed the agreement. Said a Vatican aide: "It is incredible that an agreement of this scope could have been negotiated without Cardinal Sapieha's knowledge. It could be only a dictate." Said another official: "The Communists describe the pact as a modus vivendi—a way of living. Actually, it is a modus morendi—a way of dying."