Polish church underestimates its flock

Press, 24 May 1982, Page 18

Polish church underestimates its flock

From “The Economist,” London

On May 28 Poland’s Roman Catholic Church will mark the first anniversary of the death of its primate since 1948, Cardinal Wyszynski. Mourning at the loss of one of Eastern Europe’s greatest churchmen will be the keener for the rising doubts about his successor. . . ■ '

Archbishop Glemp disturbed many Poles and delighted the country’s military rulers by his sermons in the second week of May. In the wake of the clashes between demonstrators and riot police in Warsaw on May 3, the new primate called on young Poles not to allow themselves to be “manipulated" by “very irresponsible people," and pleaded with them not to get involved in the “arguments of adults.”. In Czestochowa on the same day he told student-pilgrims that it was a “dreadful crime” to use the patriotism of young people for non-patriotic purposes. The next day in Cracow he again warned young people not to take part in street clashes. “Anyone can throw stones but that is not how law is made.”

These statements were given wide coverage in Poland’s Army-controlled press. They fitted conveniently into the propaganda campaign the authorities have just launched in an attempt to prove that — as Warsaw television put it on May 10 — "tension and unrest are being deliberately organised by subversive centres and special services and also by diplomatic missions of some N.A.T.O. States.”

The day before the broadcast, on May 9, two American diplomats were ordered to leave Poland after being arrested in the flat of a Polish scientist who had recently been released from internment. The chief target of the new campaign is Radio Free Europe, the American-financed station in Munich which has a large audience in Poland. The station has just appointed as head of its Polish section an eminent Polish scholar, Mr Zdzislaw Najder, who happened to be out of the country when martial law was proclaimed on December 13 and decided not to go back. The archbishop's reference to “manipulators” may have been just what the regime wanted. But it- did not please his own flock in Warsaw, which reacted with the churchgoers’ equivalent of a raspberry: audible sighs. The primate . may well be worried about the effect that renewed militancy on the streets may have on the Church’s attempt to find a way out of the country’s postDecember 13 impasse. In early April a group of his lay advisers produced a set of “theses for a social accord” which was sent, to all of Poland’s bishops, to the Government and to opposition leaders still at large. These called for discussions on the lifting of martial law, the restoration of civil rights and the revival of suspended trade unions and other groups. They were well received by Solidarity’s underground leadership,

but ignored by the Government. The Church was nevertheless encouraged by the release last month of some 1300 internees and the lifting of the night-time curfew. In a communique on May 4 the bishops called this “a step in the right direction.” They added that more steps were now in order, including a resumption by the suspended trade unions of their "statutory activity,” as the regime had promised on December 13. Archbishop Glemp no doubt fears that violence will play into the hands of the Communist Party’s hardliners and lead to a crackdown on the forces of pluralism, the Church among them. People who are close to the archbishop claim that he is much more pessimistic than other senior bishops. “We have lost the present battle,” he is reported to be saying; “let us now wait, preserving our spirit and, above all, keeping our . youth.” But holding back Poland's youth may not be easy. If the church tells them to turn the other cheek, they may become uncontrollable. The argument for temporary passivity by the Polish opposition would be overwhelming if it could be demonstrated that Poland's military regime (and its Soviet supervisors) had really accepted the principle ol a gradual return to a measure of pluralism, with roles for Solidarity and other independent groups. But that point has plainly not been reached yet, and is unlikely to be reached except under constant pressure within Poland and abroad. If

pressure is relaxed too soon there will almost certainly be no compromise. The fear, of neo-Stalinism is said to preoccupy the primate and the lay advisers who make up his “social council.” Among its most prominent members are Professor Stanislaw Stomma, a noted Cracow scholar who headed the independent Catholic Znak group in

the Polish Parliament until the end of 1975, when he was deprived of his seat for voting against proposed changes in the Polish Constitution; Mr Jerzy Turowicz, another Catholic veteran who for many years edited the independent Cracow Catholic weekly “Tygodnik Powszechny” (suspended since December 13); and Mr Andrzej Micewski, a

Catholic writer. Many of the primate’s advisers are oldish men, sincere and willing to help but tired out by their long battles with the regime. They may be forgetting the strength of most Poles’ attachment to the gains of 1980-81. The recent revival of resistance may be a better indication of how much stomach the Poles still have for resistance.