'The Church Strives for Order"

By Spencer Davidson

An embattled Cardinal Glemp opts for an accommodation

The evening Mass at St. John's Cathedral in Warsaw was jammed last week, but not just because of Lenten piety. The service marked the first formal appearance of Jozef Cardinal Glemp after his return home from a 27-day journey to Brazil and Argentina. The Primate of Poland was characteristically cautious on this dramatic occasion. Mounting the pulpit, he doffed his scarlet biretta and carefully positioned it alongside the microphone. Next he paused. Then, explaining that he wanted to share his impressions of South America with his 1,000 congregants, the Cardinal set off on a soporific travelogue that included even the climate and crops of the places he had visited.

The first part of Glemp's homily proved to be not only dull but strangely inappropriate. The Cardinal by chance had chosen an awkward time to go away. In the month that he was absent, the Catholic Church in Poland had suddenly faced its most extraordinary external and internal challenges since the end of martial law last July. Externally, the church once again confronted the government of Prime Minister Wojciech Jaruzelski, this time on the removal of crucifixes from state-run school-rooms.* Internally, the church was in considerable turmoil over Glemp's decision last month to silence, with a transfer out of the Warsaw area, a priest in an industrial parish who had been outspoken in support of the Solidarity labor union during its brief life. In the eyes of many Polish Catholics, the transfer indicated that the cautious Glemp was about to placate the Jaruzelski government.

In such a situation, the St. John's congregation expected Glemp would have to address at least the emotionally charged cross confrontation in his evening sermon. At last he did. The travelogue had droned on for 15 minutes when the analogy suddenly became unmistakable. Among the Polish emigrants he had visited in South America, the Cardinal declared, "everywhere beside the white eagle [Poland's national symbol] there is a cross. Nobody renounces either the cross or the eagle because they know that these two symbols, united for centuries, represent Poland."

So obvious was the reference that Glemp's listeners waited with anticipation. "The question arises," the Cardinal continued, "Who is offended so much by this cross?" It sounded like a challenge to the government, one that many Poles would gladly welcome. But Glemp had hardly raised the issue before he put it down. "We need peace," he said, centering on the Polish situation in general. "The church strives for social order and for a moral good. But the social order includes tolerance, which cannot be taught with intolerance of the cross in the name of secularity. The church will defend values in peace, looking for ways, however difficult, to get through." What Glemp seemed to be saying was that the Catholic Church, which has baptized 90% of the country's 36 million people and is the only force with the stature and immunity to stand up to the Communist regime, will seek accommodation rather than confrontation. Most Poles had hoped for more.

The Cardinal in his sermon did not broach his other problem, the transfer of Father Mieczyslaw Nowak from the Church of St. Joseph the Worker in Warsaw's industrial suburb of Ursus. The next day, however, Glemp held a 90-minute meeting with the banished priest as well as with representatives of nine of St. Joseph's parishioners who were fasting to protest the Cardinal's decision. Once again the outcome appeared to indicate Glemp's determination to coexist with the Jaruzelski regime. Despite the fast and the fact that many of Nowak's supporters are withholding contributions (total collection at one recent Mass at St. Joseph's: 64 zlotys, or about 60-c-), the transfer will hold. It was undertaken, the dissidents were informed, "for the good of the church, the nation and Father Nowak."

If Glemp's flock was unhappy over his stands, the regime decidedly was not. The government was delighted to see the Cardinal on the hot seat for a change, fighting a two-front battle against disgruntled Catholics as well as the state. Addressing a party conference, Jaruzelski said that Poles need not choose between loyalty to the state and to the church, but he did concede "an obvious contradiction between our philosophy and systems of religious faith." He blamed foreign centers--presumably the Western press--for abusing "church politics for their own purposes." Government Spokesman Jerzy Urban gave foreign journalists deliberately smudged signals about what the regime would do next if protests continued over government orders to remove crucifixes from more schools, as occurred last week in the town of Mietno. Said Urban: "State schools in Poland were and will remain lay institutions. It therefore follows that religious symbols cannot be displayed. State institutions cannot be places of worship. The state does not try to secularize church institutions, and the church must not try to clericalize state institutions. Some overzealous people do not understand this." To make certain that the "zealots" understood, residents of Garwolin were informed that a detachment of ZOMO, the Polish riot police, had been put on stand-by near the town.

Caught between two pressures, Glemp may find himself in embarrassing difficulty. The hand-picked successor to the late Stefan Cardinal Wyszynski lacks Wyszynski's charisma and sure hand for balancing accommodation with the Communists with, when necessary, forthright independence. Some recent decisions of the Polish church, as a result, have been made not by Glemp alone but by a council of the episcopate that includes Cracow's Franciszek Cardinal Macharski and seven senior bishops. The council's communal decisions could yet become more defiant toward the regime than Glemp would like. --By Spencer Davidson. Reported by John Moody/Warsaw

* Poland, despite its overwhelming Catholic population, has no tradition of school prayers But, except for a brief Stalinist antireligious period following World War II, crucifixes supplied by various sources have been classroom fixtures.

With reporting by John Moody/Warsaw