LETTER FROM WARSAW
On the eve of the feast of the Nativity, when Santas had already invaded Polish shop windows, in a country considered a bastion of Catholicism, a legislative amendment aimed at “defend better” Christians was, however, the subject of an initial discussion in Parliament.
Marcin Warchol, its instigator belonging to the most conservative fraction of the government, referred to a situation “more than alarming”, estimating that the number of criminal proceedings for attacking the sensitivity of the faithful, carried out by the prosecution, had increased by 1,400% over the past seven years. This deputy of the small eurosceptic Solidarity Poland party (Solidarna Polska), deputy minister of justice, has thus proposed a toughening of the law for offenses against religious sentiment in order to counter a “neo-Bolshevik revolution trying today by all means to destroy religious freedom and Christian identity”.
However, the legislative arsenal in force is already readily used against opponents of the ultra-conservatives in power in Warsaw since 2015. Left-wing MP Joanna Scheuring-Wielgus is currently paying the price. This woman, who campaigns for a strict separation of Church and State, lost her parliamentary immunity in November 2022.
The prosecution accuses him of having brandished during a mass, facing the altar, in October 2020, a sign indicating “Woman, you can decide for yourself”. A few days earlier, the Constitutional Court had deemed it illegal to terminate a pregnancy in the event of a serious fetal malformation, which had provoked demonstrations on an unprecedented scale since the fall of communism.
The John Paul II icon is either tarnished or too distant
For no offense to Deputy Warchol, religiosity is crumbling in Poland and society is becoming secularized. The numbers don’t lie. According to the Central Statistics Office (GUS), 92% of Poles were certainly still baptized in 2021, but they were not far from 96% in 2004 and the slow decline is constant.
It is especially the younger generation that is strongly turning away from Catholicism. The very people for whom the icon John Paul II – “the Polish pope” – is either tarnished or too distant. The Catholic Church, refuge of Polish identity at the time when the country was erased from the European map until 1918, and cradle of dissent during the communist period, is now perceived as an institution slaying any sexual orientation other hetero and trampling on the right of women to dispose of their bodies.
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