Church and State: The Relationship that is Defining Poland's Future
Morgan Fox, Online Staff Writer
December 2, 2020
Over the past few weeks, protests have been sweeping across Poland after the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party’s attempt to effectively outlaw abortions. But it is a protest that encompasses so much more than that: it is a rejection of the partnership between the far-right-wing government and Poland’s powerful Catholic Church.
As of 2015, 92.9% of Poland’s population was Roman Catholic. The relationship between the Polish government and the Catholic Church has almost always existed, but never like this. Historically, liberal Catholicism has made huge strides in the country - it fostered open-minded discussions about sexual orientation in the 1960s and pioneered Polish-Jewish reconciliation in the 1980s. The Church also played a crucial role in the fall of the communist regime in 1989, helping in Solidarity, the anti-communist labour movement that fought for democratic reforms. In recent years, the Catholic Church has formed a close partnership with the governing Law and Justice Party, making a hard pivot to the far-right with it.
The most glaring recent example of this occurred when Poland’s top court outlawed abortions, except in cases of rape, incest, or if the woman’s health is at stake. The primary reason for abortions in Poland (of which there are already less than 2,000 per year) is for cases where there is a high probability of severe fetal impairment or incurable diseases. Outlawing this justification puts the lives of thousands of women at stake; an estimated 200,000 Polish women already have abortions performed illegally or abroad each year. After weeks of some of the largest protests the country has experienced since the fall of communism, PiS has indefinitely delayed the implementation of the ruling. The government tried to pass a similar law in 2016 but similarly had to back down after huge country-wide protests. But it is unlikely that the fight for legal abortions is over either.
PiS and the Catholic Church have spent the past decade making Poland a battleground for numerous culture wars. Aside from purging Poland’s top courts and restacking them with heavily conservative judges, PiS has focused its election campaigns on numerous cultural issues, including halting the spread of LGBTQ+ rights, attacking the ‘liberal’ free press, closing its borders to non-white refugees, and defending the Catholic Church from encroaching secular values. In 2015, for example, PiS leader Jaroslaw Kaczyński warned that migrants carried ‘dangerous diseases long absent from Europe’ and that they would use Christian churches as toilets. While claims such as these are unfounded, they resonate with many conservative Poles who consider these to be a danger to a nationalist, white, and Catholic Poland.
But what role does the Catholic Church play in promoting the relationship between hardline conservatism and Polish nationalism? In practice, while the rest of Europe continues to secularize and Pope Francis promotes openness and non-judgement when it comes to the LGBTQ+ community, Polish bishops function as the religious wing of the current government. They use their position of cultural influence and power to bully and marginalize vulnerable populations, particularly the LGBTQ+ community. Polish history is full of attempts at nation-building, invasions, and occupation, which also gives right-wing nationalists ample opportunity to use Catholic tropes surrounding martyrdom and betrayal to fuel feelings of fear and distrust of others.
These conservative culture wars are just one example of a government that is trying to further blur the boundaries between church and state, while simultaneously pivoting to an ‘illiberal democracy’, akin to Hungary. It is uncertain whether there will be enough opposition to prevent them from succeeding. The 2020 Polish presidential election was close and had the highest turnout since 1989, but PiS was still able to narrowly return to power. Despite this, there is some hope for a more liberal, secular Poland. Recent surveys suggest that church attendance and trust among young Poles are falling at the fastest rate in the world, with 54% of Poles stating that they do not trust the Church, against 33% who do. With COVID-19 cases rising quickly, and the rising possibility that Poland will leave the EU, it is unclear if an electoral change will happen fast enough to secure Poland’s democracy.