Poland ten years after

The Church

Bibliographic Data

ID6180753
AuthorsAndrzej Korbonski (University of California, Los Angeles Centre for European and Russian Studies, Communist and Post-Communist Studies, 11367 Bunche Hall, Box 951446, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1446, USA, corresponding author)
Year2000
Volume33
Issue1
Pages123-146
Publication date2000-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueCommunist and Post-Communist Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0967-067X • E-ISSN: 1873-6920
PublisherUniversity of California Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1016/s0967-067x(99)00028-8
OpenAlexW2019051793
LanguageEN
Citations received9

Ten years after the collapse of communist rule, church-state relations in Poland present a mixed picture. On the one hand, the Roman Catholic church continues to enjoy a privileged position in the country and has achieved most of its cherished goals. On the other hand, its very success carried with it seeds of its future decline. This was particularly true in several areas where the church's aggressive and arrogant behavior has proved counter productive: religious education, anti-abortion legislation, Christian values in mass media, antisemitism, murky church finances, the concordat with the Holy See, and the debate on the new constitution. As a result, there has been a steady decline in popular support for the church which itself has developed some serious rifts in its supposedly united posture. It may be hypothesized that the power and influence of the church actually peaked in the early 1990s and that, having absorbed some of the lessons from its decline, its future policies may well be less triumphalist and controversial, and more accommodating

Archaeology · Christianity · Communism · Communist state · Constitution · Legislation · Political science · Politics · Sociology · European Politics and Security · History · Law · Polish Historical and Cultural Studies · Theology and Canon Law Studies

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