A very worthwhile piece from George Weigel.
In May 1953, the Polish government ordered the implementation of a decree giving the state the authority to appoint and remove Catholic priests and bishops throughout the country: The Catholic Church was to become a subsidiary of the Polish state; its clergy would act as agents of state power; and its educational and charitable activities would be approved (or rejected) by a state intent on bringing the most important institution in Polish civil society to heel. The bishops of Poland, who had tried for years to find a modus vivendi with the Communist regime, now drew the line. Meeting in Kraków under the leadership of the country’s primate, Stefan Cardinal Wyszyński, the Polish episcopate issued a memorandum deploring the government’s attempt to turn the Church “into an instrument of the state” as a violation of the natures of both church and state. The memorandum concluded memorably: “We are not allowed to place the things of God on the altar of Caesar, Non possumus! [We cannot!].”
He then goes one to write:
Americans accustomed to religious freedom may, at first blush, find it hard to imagine any possible analogy between our situation today, in the midst of the debate over the HHS “contraceptive mandate,” and that of Poland’s Christians in 1953; of course those brave men and women faced challenges far beyond those facing American believers today. Yet the structure of the moral and political argument, then and now, is eerily similar. In both cases, an overweening and arrogant government tries, through the use of coercive power, to make the Church a subsidiary of the state. In both cases, the state claims the authority to define religious ministries and services on its own narrow and secularist terms. In both cases, the state is attempting to co-opt as much of society as it can, while the Church is defending the prerogatives of civil society.
3 comments
You hit the nail on the head, Jeff. You mustn’t look at the relative importance of the particular thing the government is trying to force the Church to do that is against her teachings, but the FACT that the government is trying to force the Church to do anything at all that is against her teachings. Once they get one thing, they can get anything.
Damien Thompson wrote a dispiriting piece about same-sex “marriage” in England this week — predicting that it will soon be against the law to for anyone to refuse to marry same-sex couples, requiring the Catholic Church to stop marrying anyone at all. Someone really does want to get rid of us.
I think this hits the nail on the head. The government has NO right to usurp the authority of our Church. I love what Stefan Cardinal Wyszyński wrote, “We are not allowed to place the things of God on the altar of Caesar, Non possumus! [We cannot!].” I hope our bishops here in the United States have the courage to stand firm on every single little infraction of this government and insist on our right to be what God has decreed that we be without interference. I wonder if they will be able to but I pray for them that they will have the grace to stand firm. Much of this would be easier to fight if the Bishops over the past 60 some years had been diligent and firm in spreading the teachings of Catholicism without apology or fudging!
The difficulty came in two ways:
1. Many priests and bishops did collaborate with the police power of the state by informing.
2. By resisting any and all interference of the state, the Polish Church allowed a culture of pedophilia to flourish.