Polish church defends religious teaching against new government curbs

Poland’s Catholic bishops have urged schools to continue offering religious teaching after government attempts to restrict it were blocked by the Constitutional Tribunal following church appeals.

“Take advantage of this opportunity to know God more deeply … make an effort to overcome any difficulties,” the bishops’ conference told pupils in a pastoral message for the Sept. 2 start of the school year.

Religious lessons are of “great educational importance,” the bishops wrote, forming “conscience, characters and attitudes of young people,” shaping “social attitudes,” and teaching “love of neighbor, sensitivity, openness, empathy and cooperation,” and is “a valuable aid to understanding one’s own culture and history.”

The message was published following the Aug. 29 Constitutional Tribunal intervention that suspended an education ministry decree which would have removed religion grades from school reports, mixed age groups together, and restricted lessons to the start and end of the school day.

Meanwhile, Poland’s Catholic primate told OSV News the country took the unusual step of making religious classes optional, compared to Austria, Germany and other countries where they were compulsory, but said the system depended on respecting “responsible choices” by parents and students.

“Whereas previous 1992 regulations were signed off by the Catholic Church and other religious associations, this decree was issued without any such acceptance,” said Archbishop Wojciech Polak of Gniezno.

“It isn’t just a question of law, but of enabling young people to be educated in line with principles and values. To demotivate children, by ending the marking system and joining age groups together, will merely hamper their education, causing stress and frustration,” Archbishop Polak said.

Restrictions on religious classes, taught across the traditionally Catholic country by 30,000 full-time catechists, were unveiled in early 2024 by Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s newly installed liberal government and confirmed for the new school year under a July 26 Education Ministry decree.

Appeals were lodged Aug. 22, however, by the bishops’ conference and the Polish Ecumenical Council, a group of seven non-Catholic denominations, who requested a Constitutional Tribunal postponement.

Speaking to journalists, the Polish bishops’ spokesman, Father Leszek Gesiak, said canon and civil law specialists agreed the decree violated constitutional provisions and consultation requirements set out in Polish law.

In its Aug. 29 statement, the Constitutional Tribunal said it had agreed to suspend application of the “contested regulation,” pending a “final decision” on its legality.

However, the court’s decision was rejected as having “no legal effect” in an Aug. 30 statement by Poland’s education minister, Barbara Nowacka, who insisted the decree would remain “generally applicable” to schools in the current year.

Speaking to the Polsat TV station, Nowacka said Poland’s Catholic bishops should recognize “Eldorado is over,” and stop interfering with government regulations.

Protests by supporters of religious classes were staged, however, outside some Polish schools, with banners stating, “We want God,” and other slogans.

Religious classes in Poland usually cover the Catholic faith, with courses approved by the church.

Although participation has dropped, especially in cities and large towns, with almost 36 percent of Poles favoring the scrapping of classes in their current form in a February survey, church data suggest 80 percent of first and secondary school pupils still attend the voluntary classes.

The editor of a Warsaw-based Catholic weekly, Idziemy, Father Henryk Zielinski, told OSV News it was “deeply unsettling” that government members appeared ready to “disregard court judgments which do not suit them,” while also “ignoring the constitution and currently binding laws.”

Meanwhile, Archbishop Polak said the situation varied widely nationwide, adding that 93 percent of the 1,500 pupils at a school in Wrzesnia, close to his Gniezno see, attended religious classes, which would be “rendered impossible” under the new Education Ministry decree.

The primate added that the bishops’ conference, meeting in March, had recognised the need to give the school religion programme a more “culture-forming and social character,” and was now working on its own reform projects.

“While the ministry decree might be implemented at schools where attendance is lower, it would still damage the education process by ignoring key aspects of our social culture and national history,” Archbishop Polak told OSV News.

“I think public opinion agrees parents have a right to ensure their children receive religious education in a proper way,” he said. “Parents of small children will be particularly alarmed they could be placed in groups with older pupils, contrary to pedagogical procedures.”

The education reforms are among a series of liberal measures pursued by the Tusk government, whose Civic Coalition came second in October 2023 elections, but allied itself with the center-right Third Way and radical-left Lewica parties to gain a majority of 248 in Poland’s 460-seat Sejm lower house.

The government has also pledged to legalize same-sex partnerships and make abortion more accessible. After suffering a defeat July 12 when conservative Civic Coalition members joined opposition parties to vote down a landmark abortion liberalization, the government issued new guidelines Aug. 30 that a certificate from a psychiatrist brings “sufficient grounds for terminating a pregnancy” in a country where abortion is only legal when the pregnancy is a threat to the woman’s life or health and under suspicion that the pregnancy resulted from a criminal act.

A senior Catholic presenter with Polish Radio, Malgorzata Glabisz-Pniewska, told OSV News she believed the Tusk government had made a “serious unprofessional mistake” in failing to consult Poland’s bishops about the school religion changes.

She added that views had been divided within the church over the existing religious curriculum, with many Catholics urging improvements, but said even opponents of school religion were now criticizing “government high-handedness.”

Meanwhile, Father Zielinski said many Poles would view the current dispute as an attempt by the Tusk government to “marginalize the church in social life” and as reflecting a mistaken understanding of wider trends across the European Union.

“In any other EU country, a government which ignored laws and top court judgments would face intervention by Brussels. Instead, those now in power seem to think they can do anything,” the Idziemy weekly editor told OSV News.

Speaking Sept. 1 at Poland’s Jasna Gora national sanctuary, President Andrzej Duda, who has threatened to veto some government reforms, warned that restricting religious teaching would “remove an inalienable part of Polishness.”

In his interview, Archbishop Polak said the church was aware that opposition to religious teaching formed part of an “ideological game” between different parties making up Tusk’s coalition government, adding that ordinary people risked “becoming victims of internal political squabbles between competing groups.”

“I hope this won’t lead to conflict, but many people are warning that new education guidelines are not legally valid and will bring chaos rather than genuine reforms — we cautioned previously against pursuing changes in a way which causes social anxiety and exasperation,” the primate of Poland told OSV News.

“Under the Polish constitution, church and state are distinct entities but also cooperate for the good of mankind — and this requires dialogue and openness, not one-sided diktats.”

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