Posted on 04/10/2006 1:27:08 PM PDT by x5452
Stay out of politics, Vatican tells Polish radio station (AFP)
6 April 2006
WARSAW - The Vatican has issued a fresh rebuke to the Polish fundamentalist Catholic broadcaster Radio Maryja and warned it to steer clear of politics, Poland’s episcopate said on Thursday
“The Holy See expresses its deep concern about Radio Maryja’s political commitments,” papal nuncio Monsignor Jozef Kowalczyk said in a letter sent to the provincial, or superior officer, of the Redemptorist religious order that runs Radio Maryja and other fundamentalist media outlets.
“The Holy See urges Poland’s bishops to gather together to try to overcome the current difficulties brought about by some of the broadcasts and positions taken by Radio Maryja,” Kowalczyk said in a separate letter sent to the Polish episcopate.
In January, the Roman Catholic Church already issued a sharp rebuke to the fundamentalist Polish priests, led by Father Tadeusz Rydzyk, who run Radio Maryja, the Trwam cable television station and the Nasz Dziennik newspaper.
The message then from the Vatican warned that “institutional activities by clergy ... that in any way involve the authority of the Church require written permission.”
The Radio Maryja media empire has been built up on Catholic fundamentalist, nationalist, anti-liberal and too often anti-Semitic ideologies.
Rydzyk openly supports the ruling conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party and has just as openly decried parliament’s second biggest grouping, the liberal Civic Platform, who he said “must be drowned” during legislative elections last year.
Leading lights of PiS, including Prime Minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz, have made guest appearances on Radio Maryja and its sister cable television station, Trwam, since the conservatives came to power last year.
Late last month, Radio Maryja commentator Stanislaw Michalkiewicz said that “Jews have humiliated Poland internationally by demanding money” for goods and property expropriated during World War II.
“We look after democratic issues in Ukraine and Belarus, while in our own backyard, “kikes’ sneak up behind us to try to oblige our government to pay them money on the pretext of these demands,” he said.
On Thursday, the last surviving leader of the Warsaw ghetto uprising, Marek Edelman, in an open letter reprinted in the Polish press, urged political leaders to curb what he called Radio Maryja’s anti-Semitic and xenophobic outbursts, which he likened to those made by the Nazi press in World War II.
“Radio Maryja’s political broadcasts propagate xenophobia, chauvinism and anti-Semitism,” the now 83-year-old Edelman said.
“Some of these broadcasts are no different from those in the Nazi newspaper, Stuermer,” he said in the letter addressed to Marcinkiewicz and Polish parliamentary speaker, Marek Jurek.
“I call on the prime minister and the speaker of the house to take steps to eliminate the ideology disseminated by Radio Maryja in its political broadcasts, including closing down the radio station,” Edelman wrote.
Being anti-Semitic is bad, of course, but I don't see anything wrong with Catholic, fundamentalist, nationalist, and anti-liberal.
With all the rest of the badmouthing, I can't help wondering if they're really anti-Semitic.
Not big on freedom of speech, apparently. One would think that someone who has experienced the horrendous power of the state for evil, would be more concerned with winning the public debate and limiting the power of government to regulate/suppress/crush political views--even those that are disagreeable.
Yeah, I guess this commentator, at least, is genuinely anti-Jewish.
And I'd love to see Cardinal Mahoney forcibly retired, too.
Ironic, since Poland is the birthplace of Solidarity, the first real affront to Soviet Russia. And of course it's the birthplace of the Pope who confronted and cracked the Iron Curtain.
All the same, anti-Semitism is never pretty, no matter who's playing that tune.
Yes, they really are anti-Semitic. Even our Polish Freepers will tell you that. Read up on the 'Ojciec Direktor', he makes Robert Tilton look like a saint by comparison.
Radio Maryja have become some kind of sect and I would say they are becoming dangerous. They have nothing in common with what I would call "catholic media". But in the other hand most of Radio Maryja listeners are retired old grannies so how long can this "popularity" last?
I see that now, thanks.
They are anti-semitic. And there's a lot better options, particularly here, with regards Nationalism, and Religious Fundamentalism... that's why the 20/21st C in Poland [in this case] has been inundated with war, violence and hatred. There's a big difference between Patriotism and Nationalism for starters, and Religious belief and Fundamentalism.
We don't need it.
Thanks for the information.
FYI
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