Abstract
The alliance of the Polish Catholic Church with the Law and Justice (PiS) government has been widely reported and resulted in significant benefits for the Church. However, beginning in mid-2016, the top church leadership, including the Episcopal Conference, has distanced itself from the government and condemned its use of National Catholicism as legitimation rhetoric for the government’s malpractices in the fields of human rights and democracy. How to account for this behavior? The article proposes two explanations. The first is that the alliance of the PiS with the nationalist wing of the Church, while legitimating its illiberal refugee policy and attacks on democratic institutions of the government, further radicalized the National Catholic faction of the Polish Church and motivated a reaction of the liberal and mainstream conservative prelates. The leaders of the Episcopate, facing an empowered and radical National Catholic faction, pushed back with a doctrinal clarification of Catholic orthodoxy. The second explanatory path considers the transnational influence of Catholicism, in particular of Pope Francis’ intervention in favor of refugee rights as prompting the mainstream bishops to reestablish the Catholic orthodoxy. The article starts by tracing the opposition of the Bishops Conference and liberal prelates to the government’s refugee and autocratizing policies. Second, it describes the dynamics of the Church’s internal polarization during the PiS government. Third, it traces and contextualizes the intervention of Pope Francis during the asylum political crisis (2015–2016). Fourth, it portrays their respective impact: while the Pope’s intervention triggered the bishops’ response, the deepening rifts between liberal and nationalist factions of Polish Catholicism are the ground cause for the reaction.
Highlights
The Catholic support for nationalism and the Law and Justice (PiS) party in Poland is well known, as is clear the unity between the two in moral matters, such as abortion and gay rights (Deutschlandfunk 2017a)
Have the liberal and mainstream bishops, from mid-2016, shifted to an attitude of distance and even criticism of the government? This article aims to understand the multifaceted relationship between the Polish Episcopate and clergy, both as a collective—the Polish Bishops Conference—and as individual bishops and priests, and the PiS party and government
Notwithstanding the phenomena of sectarian nationalism being widely reported as a trend across the world, few systematic studies present and explain how the churches are impacted by alliances with nationalist and anti-democratic parties
Summary
The Catholic support for nationalism and the Law and Justice (PiS) party in Poland is well known, as is clear the unity between the two in moral matters, such as abortion and gay rights (Deutschlandfunk 2017a). Wojtyla—later Pope John Paul II—was both an ardent promoter of the Universalist values of human rights and liberal democracy and a convinced advocate of the Church’s role in promoting conservative morality, including church intervention in the political arena to prevent the liberalization of personal civil legislation. In line with his universalist convictions, the Pope was a constraining force on the National Catholic faction of the Church, with heavy influence on the nomination of Bishops and in political questions, such the countries’ accession to European integration or the support to National Catholic parties (John Paul II 1999). The head of the Polish Episcopate, used his authority to reaffirm the principles of the church creed
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