In a matter of days the Polish bishops radically changed their position towards the controversial law that the centre-right Law and Justice (PIS) party passed through Parliament on July 20.
Incredibly enough, before the parliamentary vote, the bishops’ conference spokesman, Fr Pawel Rytel-Adrianik, said the Church would not be issuing a statement since they viewed the matter as a “purely political dispute”. But after the vote, the bishops, fortunately enough, did a U-turn. They wrote an open letter to Polish President Andrzej Duda warmly approving his decision to veto the Bill.
Why did the Polish bishops come to (or were pressured to) see the obvious?
The election of October 2015 was handsomely won by the Law and Justice party. It was the first time in post-Communist Poland that a party won a majority of seats in both houses of Parliament. The people voted for judicial reforms touted as necessary to ensure greater accountability by replacing some Supreme Court judges. In line with this electoral mandate the law gave the government the power to force the country’s Supreme Court judges into retirement and replace them with its appointees.
Many people protested and the EU warned of sanctions against this flagrant undermining of one of Poland’s most important institutions, the courts. The bishop brushed this off as a purely political dispute.
The President of Poland’s Supreme Court, Malgorzata Gersdorf, criticised the bishops’ silence, attributing it to their close links with the government. Truth be told, many Church people support PIS. Besides, the party in power parades its ‘Catholic’ credentials. But how can an anti-immigration party that limits freedom and undermines the institutions be a Christian party?
Then the Vatican went into action. In an editorial last week, the Vatican’s L’Osservatore Romano described the PIS government as “right-wing, nationalist and anti-European”, and accused it of attempting “effectively to liquidate the autonomy of courts”.
It is not desirable in a secular state to have political parties who want to implement all the Church’s positions politically
We don’t know whether the Secretary of State of the Vatican exerted any pressure. But we do know that the bishops changed tack. They publicly thanked President Duda, who is a former member of PIS, for vetoing the law.
“True democracy is only possible with the rule of law and the right concept of people’s personal rights,” they said. The bishops quoted the words of Pope St John Paul II regarding the balance between the judiciary, executive and legislative branches, “each of which has its designated tasks and responsibilities, so that one never dominates over the other, is a guarantee of the proper functioning of democracy”.
The Polish bishops realised that a government-sponsored attack on a state institution, be it the courts, the police, anti-money laundering organisations, public service broadcasting or the Office of the Attorney General, is definitely not a purely political dispute. It is a fundamental abuse to be combatted.
This applies to Malta as much as it applies to Poland.
As Cardinal Reinhard Marx said during a recent interview with Augsberger Algemeine, the Church should not be interested only in Church-related matters. He aptly said: We don’t only lobby for the Church.
During the same excellent interview, Cardinal Marx commented on the introduction of same-sex marriage legislation in Germany. While defending the Christian view of marriage, Marx said that the Church should be more concerned over its historic complicity in demonising gay people than about gay marriage. He said the Church must also express its regret that it did nothing historically to oppose the prosecution of homosexuals. He made this point last year in Dublin where he also repeated a statement made in the Family Synod of 2014: “You cannot say that a long-term relationship between a man and a man, who are faithful, is nothing. That it has no worth.”
Reacting to the question about Catholics feeling politically ‘homeless’ after the gay marriage vote, Marx said that it would not be possible or indeed desirable in a secular state to have political parties who want to implement all the Church’s positions politically. “In a secular society, the state must make laws that are valid for everyone.”
Marx is no ordinary Joe. His words cannot be ignored. The German bishops chose him as their president and Pope Francis chose him as one of the closest collaborators while side-lining other top prelates. Some, who don’t share Francis’s vision for the Church, look at Marx (like they look at Francis) as part of the Church’s problem. But Pope Francis looks at him as part of the solution.
Marx’s position does not decimate the place of the Church in society. Nor does it lessen the importance of the role of Christians in politics. On the contrary the role of the Church and Christians in politics can become more important if both widen their vista and re-focus their objectives while discerning what is and what is not a purely political dispute. But more on this in another commentary.
joseph.borg@um.edu.mt