Symbolic Conflict in the Public Sphere: The Catholic Church against the State in Post-Communist Poland

Abstract

This article explains the public engagement of the Catholic Church in Poland in the post-Communist period (from 1989 to approximately 2015) as a symbolic challenge to the state. It draws on Simon Harrison’s theory of symbolic conflicts—conflicts over symbolic capital—applied to power struggles involving religious actors in contemporary political systems. The Polish Church engaged in a valuation contest against the state in which it tried to champion its own religious interpretation of several key elements of Polish statehood and national identity using items from its own symbolic arsenal, including the notion of Pole-Catholic and an emphasis on the Christian origins of Poland. Similarly, by solemnizing state ceremonies with religious symbolism and politicizing the cult of religious figures, the Church sought to sacralize the public sphere. Although these challenges to the symbolic inventory of the state have not led to its total replacement by a competing set of religious symbols, the series of low-intensity conflicts generated a considerable amount of symbolic capital for the Church and contributed to maintaining its authority as a value-based public actor. This, ultimately, helped in sustaining the Church’s political leverage throughout most of the post-1989 period, well into the second decade of the twenty-first century. It is only in the last few years that the Church’s support for a more stringent abortion law, the scandals connected with sexual abuse by the clergy and its concealment by the hierarchy, and questions over Pope John Paul II’s moral integrity have considerably harmed its public image.