George Weigel on the strengths – and potential weaknesses

Contrary to some expectations, Polish Catholicism hasn’t gone the way of Irish Catholicism, Spanish Catholicism, and Portuguese Catholicism in the sixteen years since the Revolution of 1989 — which is to say, Poland hasn’t abandoned its historic faith and the religious roots of its national culture. Quite the contrary. Poland today remains the most intensely Catholic culture this side of Guadalupe or Manila. Vocations to the priesthood and religious life are strong in their own right, and astonishingly high by western standards. The Church remains the most respected institution in the country. As an American friend says every year in Cracow, “It’s amazing to be in a city where the principal civic activity on Sunday morning is going to Mass.”

Yet fervor, piety, and high rates of religious practice aren’t the whole story of Polish Catholicism. With rare exceptions, the Polish episcopate has yet to find a genuinely “public” voice in the debates over the life issues, biotechnology, and marriage in which all European and North American democracies are now embroiled. The Marxism of the bad old days in Polish high culture has frequently been replaced by the kind of post-modern skepticism and relativism that have eroded the civilizational morale of western Europe; and the Church has not, to date, effectively taught John Paul II’s conviction that we can, in fact, know the truth of things — even moral things — in ways that challenge the regnant intellectual cynicism. The intellectual and spiritual formation in diocesan seminaries must be strengthened, so that the priests of Poland’s 21st century are equipped to deal with the questions of Catholic faith and practice that inevitably arise in modern societies — and equipped to give more persuasive answers than “Because I told you so.”