Christian Democracy in Poland (19th-21st Century)

Magdalena Monika Molendowska

doi:10.17951/k.2017.24.1.179

Abstract

Christian parties, which emerged as organized parliamentary powers in the second half of the 20th century, have a long history and initial phase, which is presented in this paper. The period of their historical, progressive development was a breakthrough, and a transition from the pre-revolutionary era to the post-revolutionary world, characterized by the liberalization of a strong state, industrialization and the emergence of social problems, new ideologies and processes of secularization. The development of Christian-democratic parties in Poland took place with almost two decades of delay in relation to the flwering of Christian democratic parties in Western Europe. The fist Christian democratic parties appeared in Poland only in the interwar period. During this period, the weakest point of Polish Christian democrats was the small share of intelligence in its ranks and lack of support from the Catholic Church. In the early 1990s, numerous Christian democratic groups began to appear on the Polish political scene, but none of them retained their positions for longer. First of all, it was characterized by a huge gap, almost arbitrary programme, which often had more to do with conservative ideology than with Christian-democratic one.

Highlights

This article attempts to answer the question: why is there no Christian party in Poland, a country where the majority of citizens declare their affiliation to the Catholic Church [Sozańska 2011: 27]? it will demonstrate a place for Christian democracy on the Polish political scene
“Electoral instructions” on who one should vote for appeared in some curiae, i.e. the already mentioned Catholic Election Action, Center Citizen Alliance, People’s Alliance, Christian Democracy, Party of Christian Democrats [Kowalczyk 2016: 70]
As a result of socio-political changes in Poland, the Church began to lose its socio-moral prestige. This should not be considered in the negative issues because it is typical of democratic societies and developed countries

Summary

INTRODUCTION

This article attempts to answer the question: why is there no Christian party in Poland, a country where the majority of citizens declare their affiliation to the Catholic Church [Sozańska 2011: 27]? it will demonstrate a place for Christian democracy on the Polish political scene. In the National Population Census, in the section “National-ethnic, language and religious structure of the Polish population – NSP 2011”, the data confirms the statistically dominant position of the Catholic Church in the Latin rite: “the group of people considering themselves as faithful to the Roman Catholic Church amounts to 33,729 thousand people, representing 87.6% of the total population” [National Census 2011: 92]. Despite these facts, in Poland there is no strictly Christian democratic political party. It could rebuild its influence precisely through rivalries for seats in parliament

THE ORIGINS OF CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY IN THE WORLD

THE ORIGINS OF CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY IN POLAND

OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC OF POLAND

Findings

CONCLUSIONS