Posted on 06/10/2002 7:55:06 PM PDT by JMJ333
On October 19, 1984, Father Jerzy Popieluszko was returning from some pastoral work in the town of Bygdoszcz to his parish, Saint Stanislaw Kostka, in Warsaw. Three state security officers stopped his car without bothering to hide what they were doing. They tied him up, beat and tortured him to death, then threw the body, weighted down with stones, into the Vistula River.
When he did not turn up home at the time expected, everyone feared the worse. Since 1982 he had been repeatedly accused of crimes, harassed by police, and subjected to intimidation. After a bombing attempt, workers from the Huta Warsawa steel mills had to take turns protecting him. Father Popielusko was under regular police surveillance and was arrested twice in 1983. In the first half of 1984 alone, he was interrogated 13 times. It was still a shock, however, when ten days later his body turned up as the authorities dredged the river.
The Father Popielusko case also stunned the world because, contrary to official announcements claiming the priest had been kidnapped by unknown persons, everyone familiar with the situation in Poland knew the murder was the government’s work. In the mid-1980s, the Polish Solidarity movement, 10 million strong, was in the midst of the peaceful, but effective, resistance to the Communist regime, which would eventually free Poland and, in conjunction with other forces, lead to the breakup of the Soviet empire. The young priest had become pastor to the workers’ movement. Father Popielusko’s death confirms how seriously the Polish regime and its Soviet masters took the Catholic opposition. A few years earlier, in 1981, Mehmet Ali Agca, operating under Bulgarian and Soviet instructions, tried to assassinate John Paul II in St. Peter’s Square. Unlike its earlier, cautious treatment of a powerful national church, authorities had turned desperately to violence in the waning days of Polish Communism.
In 1982, just before John Paul II was scheduled to return to Poland on a visit, about 20 thugs attacked St. Martin’s Church in Warsaw and beat the volunteers working there for the Primate’s Aid Committee. Around the same time, Fathers Tadeusz Kurach and Jan Borkowski were arrested for “hooliganism,” several other priests were beaten, and two, Bishop Kazimierz Kluz and Father Honoriusz Kowalczyk died in “accidents.” Krakow Archbishop Henryk Gulbinowicz’s car was bombed. Father Tadeusz Zaleski had a corrosive chemical thrown at him and his clothes set on fire for his work with Solidarity. On another occasion, he was beaten unconscious and almost strangled with a wire. As late as 1988 and 1989, five priests died under mysteriously violent circumstance.
Unlike many other places of persecution in the twentieth century, these desperate attempts to stop growing Catholic resistance resulted from the weakness rather than the strength of the Communist regime. Indeed, Father Popieluszko, who had presided over many public masses during the rise of Solidarity, had constantly urged his listeners to show the maturity and humanity of their cause by their refusal to be goaded into violence:
Do not struggle with violence. Violence is a sign of weakness. All those who cannot win through the heart try to conquer through violence. The most wonderful and durable struggles in history have been carried on by human thought. The most ignoble fights and most ephemeral successes are those of violence. An idea which needs rifles to survive dies of its own accord. An idea which is imposed by violence collapses under it. An idea capable of life wins without effort and is then followed by millions of people.
It is no wonder that this eloquent soul was appointed by Cardinal Stefan Wyszynki as chaplain to striking steel workers in Warsaw and then naturally gravitated towards becoming a kind of unofficial spiritual advisor to the Solidarity movement. The nation was grateful. Estimates vary, but it is believed that at his funeral 400,000 Poles showed up to honor him.
Despite vigorous measures, the Communists in Poland were not as successful against the Church as they were in other nations in Central and Eastern Europe. The Church’s resistance owed a great deal to the well-formed Catholic laity that resulted from steps Catholic leaders took to thwart the worst threats to the faith. Cardinal Wysynksi, in particular hewed to a strong line that combined confrontation, as necessary, with a vigorous program of building up alternative programs of social formation within the Communist system. He asserted that Poles had demonstrated “in Dachau and the Warsaw Uprising that we have learned how to die for the Church and for Poland.” But Cardinal Wysynski believed that his people should embrace “martyrdom only as a last resort.” Instead, he wanted to find a way, despite all odds, that the Church in Poland could live and flourish. By a combination of bravery and shrewdness, he and the rest of the Catholic leadership managed to minimize outright martyrdom and the worst dimensions of persecution even as they faced tremendous pressures and threats.
As early as 1966, something unprecedented in Communist-dominated countries had occurred. There was a powerful element of independent civil society in Poland linked directly with the Church. The Church had such great credibility in Polish society that Polish intellectuals — traditionally anti-clerical — as well as labor leaders, journalists, historians, all came to regard Polish Catholicism as central to the basic moral reconstruction of the nation. The philosopher Leszek Kolakowski characterized the situation, as did many others, in striking terms: “It is not possible with internal repressive instruments to destroy the most powerful crystallizing force of social consciousness to resist the Sovietization process and the most powerful source of moral authority, viz., the Catholic Church.”
It is no surprise then that when the first Polish Pope, John Paul II, came to Warsaw in 1979, the crowds in Victory Square chanted: “We want God, we want God, we want God in the family circle, we want God in books, in schools, we want God in government orders, we want God, we want God.”
Thanks to heroic figures like Father Popielusko and many others, today Poles practice their faith vigorously and openly again.
The culture of the United States is so much different than Polish culture. For the Polish people, their way of life, their faith, their patriotism and their identity as a nation is completely intertwined. When they did not have a country to call their own, they kept their Polish identity by keeping their faith, even during times it needed to be suppressed. To express their faith in solidarity in public for them is a true expression of freedom in their country.
I may puke.
The one poster wants me to stay off her threads. She doesn't like anyone who thinks and feels differently than she does. In my head I assent to just about all catholic teaching, but in my heart I have a different approach to things because of the way I was brought up.
When I look at all those crowd scenes on tv with the Muslims, Hitler footage, communists and then see vast crowds adoring the pope, I guess I mush them all together and it makes me feel afraid.
I'm afraid of crowds of any sort and stay away from them all.
I wish I were a better writer so I could write an essay about crowds and religion.
I thank the cordial posters who pointed out how different things were in Poland. I worked with some Polish catholics (before I became one) and I enjoyed and liked them so much. Certainly I share in the joy of their liberation. It was terrible under Russian occupation. The Russians sent all the shoes to Russia. Those Polish women came here to work and send money, toys and clothes back to their families in Poland.
The only parallel I can think of in America is when WWII ended. That was thrilling for us. Other than thanking God, we left religion pretty much out of it. I guess that's what I've been conditioned to. Leaving religion out of public life but holding it dear in your private life.
The person who wants me off this thread is the kind of person who scares me. You have to believe their way and think and feel their way or else. Their way or the highway, right?
If I had been in an Eastern European country and had newly found freedom to celebrate the religion I love, after seeing torture and persecution, I would be out in the street to. I would not make you join me in celebration. You act as if there is something wrong with those people. I do not understand you.
I'm very bitter about my experiences as a catholic and I came to see some of what they get so enthused about is not true and I hate falsehoods of any kind.
The context of writing what I did was I had just had my daughter and her friend ( and my friend but she gets on my nerves terribly ) here. The friend said she didn't like Bush and that he wasn't a good president. That set me off. I don't like him with my whole heart but he is so much better than what we could be dealing with and I tried to defend my position.
A few days ago a close family member and I had a phone conversation. Things always drift to the ME. She is on the side of the Palestinians. I can tell. We were talking about the latest suicide bombing. Everytime I point out an atrocity of the Palestinians, she counters with something bad about the Isralis. It is hopeless.
Then I ask myself why am I on the side of Israel. Deep down, most Jews hold Christ in contempt and they probably don't like us very well. So why do I persist in defending them? I don't know.
There are so many things about ourselves that we just don't know. I just know that I am a nonconformist but have high ethical values.
The last time I was in a crowd of any size, it was a car race. Someone got hurt and everybody stood up and was all excited, wanting to know how bad it was. Something inside of me got turned off about crowd reactions and I remained seated. I was the only one in the whole crowd who reacted like that. I remember thinking at that moment that must have been how excited those Romans in the stadiums got when watching Christians killed.
I guess I just don't trust anyone and I don't think like anyone I know. This side on this. That side on that. What confusion!
Why can't it be both?
This will probably get me in hot water, but I tend to think in terms of how I would react. I don't like over enthusiam about persons, no matter who or where they are. If a crowd got too enthusiastic about me, I would be embarassed because I know I am unworthy of their enthusiasm. I would try to direct their enthusiasm to God (or something bigger than me) and not to my person.
I guess in my tradition (protestant until I converted) religious enthusiasm was confined to churches and meeting places, not the streets. I know catholics like to gather in huge crowds and have walks, protests, whatever, but it just isn't something I'm all that comfortable with. To be honest, sometimes I feel threatened with all that show of religious power, like they would take over if they got the chance and force their beliefs on everyone like they tried to do in the past.
I've got an email from someone who wants to establish a catholic country to show the world and try to convert them all to catholicism. We had catholic countries before and they weren't all that great for everyone.
There's a real dichotomy in my soul about these things. I think I've lost my cultural roots. They are so mixed. I don't have that strong sense of culture that catholics seem to have. Some of their cultural transcend nationalism, but some doesn't. All the strange cultural interpretations of Christianity kind of turn me off, to be truthful. So many fables have gotten mixed into the Christian religion and my mind goes on overdrive trying to retain what seems valid and trying to block out what seems exaggerated or false. I got into trouble with a prayer group over the Infant of Atocha. That is so alien to anything I'm used to and the devotion wasn't approved by the church. That was a real hangup. Everything had to be approved by the church. Then things cropped up that seemed to be approved by the church which began to cause difficulty. Thus began my downward spiral into rebellion against all that is nonessential to the faith. My soul was getting too cluttered with it all and I got stuck about where to turn.
I'm happiest when I'm with people who just are nice and don't go overboard about religion. I don't care what flavor they are. Then overzealousness creeps in and sometimes ruins what could otherwise have been a good friendship.
Things are so TENSE now. I'm grateful to catholics for making me see the truth about abortion. I've gotten so bad that I can't get close to anyone who thinks abortion is all right. So I suppose I'm guilty of some of the things I accuse others of doing. My way or the highway ;-).
If you want a good reference work for dogmatic Catholic belief, you should purchase Ludwig Ott's "Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma." It's a great reference work which lists Catholic doctrines and their status, ranging from essential to theological speculation. Ott provides the Scriptural, Magisterial and Traditional support for the doctrines and also provides extensive quotations from the Church Fathers.
I don't know of any reference work regarding devotions, but your intuition is probably a pretty good guide. If something gives you a strange feeling it's probably wise to stay away from it.
If I can't find out the official church stance on anything, I do have to rely on my intuition. Often I intuit correctly but, unlike the pope, I am not infallible :-(.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.