Same Shoe, Other Foot

Under the Stalinists, Roman Catholic schoolchildren in Poland were harassed by the state when they chose to go to religion classes. Now the shoe appears to be on the other foot. Newspapers all over Poland are carrying complaints of Communists that their children are being teased, ostracized, and sometimes beaten up for not attending religious instruction.

Under Poland's Stalinist brand of Communism, religious instruction was barely tolerated, and Catholic parents were pressured (through threats of losing their jobs, chicanery over taxes, etc.) to keep their children from religion classes. The one weekly hour of instruction was usually set at an inconvenient time; often it was canceled entirely. Even so, the faith did not go untaught. In one school, when religious instruction was eliminated, the children insisted on praying together before beginning their lessons. When crucifixes were removed from the classrooms of another school, the pupils arranged to take turns bringing a crucifix from home. In one village outraged housewives stormed the school with brooms and forced the principal to rescind his ban on religious instruction.

The return of Gomulka and the release of Cardinal Wyszynski brought a new era of cooperation between church and state; religious instruction was readily available again for any who wanted it, and Catholic parents rushed to register their children in such numbers that Communists began to talk about a "holy war." The Warsaw newspaper Trybuna Ludu reported that in a school near Lublin "no child wants to sit beside the daughter of the secretary of the district Party Committee. The children say that they are afraid to sit with a girl who is in alliance with . . . the Devil . . . More and more children who do not attend religious classes are discriminated against and often beaten up . . .In some schools even Party activists and thorough atheists now send their children to religious instruction."

Some Jewish children are reported to be suffering the same discrimination. Anti-Gomulka Communists are obviously exaggerating the situation for propaganda purposes, to suggest that Gomulka is a tool of the church. But there is no doubt that many Catholics are in fact getting a measure of revenge for years of persecution. Latest development: the formation of the Secular School Society "to protect the children of non-believers against all manifestations of discrimination."

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