Love and Social Justice: Reflections on Society
Writings from a Heroic Anti-Communist
Marxist-influenced ideas affect American
lives, often under the banner of "Woke." Some Americans who do not
enjoy Facebook and Twitter censoring their speech and schoolboards indoctrinating
their children have turned for inspiration to heroes of the anti-communist
resistance from the former Soviet Empire. "What would Solzhenitsyn
do?" they ask, or, "What would Vaclav Havel and the members of
Charter 77 do?" In 2020, Rod Dreher published Live
Not By Lies, arguing that contemporary American "Christian
dissidents" could and should learn from past Eastern European dissidents.
It was with that approach in mind that I
began to read Love
and Social Justice: Reflections on Society, a collection of
short essays by Blessed Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski. It was translated by Filip
Mazurczak and published by Arouca Press in 2021. It is 554 pages long.
It's difficult to communicate to Americans the overwhelming stature of Stefan Wyszynski. Some
background will help. What would come to be called the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was a relatively large, wealthy nation in the late Middle Ages and Early Modern Period. In 1410, for example, Poland, Lithuania, and allies were the victors in possibly the largest battle in Medieval Europe, at Grunwald. In 1683, Poles, under King Jan Sobieski, played a key role in defeating the Turks at Vienna, a battle that Bernard Lewis singles out as stopping the thousand-year advance of jihad. Poland prided itself on being a "state without stakes," where religious freedom was guaranteed and practiced. Largely Catholic Poland was home to Jews, Orthodox, Protestants, and Muslims.In the late eighteenth century, though,
Poland, weakened by wars on all fronts, was partitioned by its neighbors,
Prussia, Austria, and Russia. Conquerors slated Polish identity for extinction.
Poles fought back, in one doomed uprising after another, for example in 1830
and 1863. Mass executions followed and exiles were marched to Siberia.
It wasn't until the end of World War I
and the Versailles Treaty that, in 1918, Poland regained status as a nation
state. Independence would not last. Nazi Germany and its ally, the Soviet
Union, invaded Poland in 1939. Soviets massacred Poles, for example at Katyn
and in the NKVD Prison Massacres, and deported
over a million Poles, many to the Gulag. The Nazi occupation of Poland was
the worst in Nazi held territory. Poles were displaced, tortured, massacred,
enslaved, and subjected to medical experimentation. Polish churches, museums,
and manor houses were destroyed. Polish Jews and their material culture were
wiped out. In spite of this, Poles participated in the Home Army, one of the
largest resistance armies in occupied Europe, and also in Zegota, the only
government-supported group in occupied Europe expressly formed to aid Jews.
At the end of the war, in 1945, Poland
was again invaded by its ancient eastern nemesis, Russia. Again, there was
fighting between Polish anti-communists and Russian and Polish communists.
Polish freedom fighters were, again, captured, tortured, exhibited in show
trials, executed, and buried in unmarked graves. Poles would continue to resist
Soviet communism in one popular uprising after another, for example in 1956,
1968, 1970, and in the Solidarity movement.
During periods of foreign, hostile
domination, Polish identity found a home in the Catholic Church. The
identification of the church with Polish identity was so strong that one symbol
of this identification was a devout Jewish student, Michal Landy.
His father wrote of Landy, "He was particularly fond of Polish history,
which was not taught in schools at that time … he was outraged by the indecent
violations of Poland's freedom by its neighbors and felt hatred towards Russia
to the point of fanaticism. He saw his fortune in the Homeland's fortune and
its Rebirth."
In April, 1861, there was a patriotic
demonstration in Warsaw. Demonstrators visited the graves of Polish Catholic
and Polish Jewish patriots. Rabbi Izaak Kramsztyk, who would eventually be
exiled to Siberia, gave a "fiery speech." The crowd marched onward, a
monk carrying a cross leading the way. Cossacks shot the monk dead. At that
point, Michal Landy, a devout Jewish teenager, picked up the cross and lead the
crowd, holding the cross high. He was also killed. Polish-Jewish artist Artur
Szyk's illustration of this event depicts a Jewish youth with payot,
kippah, and tallit holding high a Catholic cross and leading Poles carrying an
image of the Black Madonna.
Put all these ingredients together and
you get certain characteristics associated with Poles. There is a Polish sense
of heroism, of one's ancestors having been men and women who fought and died
"For
your freedom and ours." Martyrdom is valued. Heroes are commemorated.
Any given Pole might feel that his or her actions, seen or unseen, large or
small, are of great significance. Suffering has greater meaning. Poland as an
ideal, something outside of oneself, is worth fighting and dying for. The
entire Polish narrative is plugged into both the Old and New Testaments. Polish
art, poetry, and song might cite enslaved Israelites or Poland as the Christ of
Nations. Indeed, the National Catholic Register wrote in 2021 that Stefan
Wyszynski "was Moses to the communist pharaoh for 33 years as head of the
Church in Poland."
Stefan Wyszynski (1901-1981) was born
when Poland was still divided between colonizing, hostile, foreign powers. His
family were szlachta, that is, members of the noble estate, though they
were not wealthy. He was born in Zuzela, a tiny village in the Russian empire.
His mother died when he was nine. He was sent away to school, and, though he
was ill – he'd had tuberculosis and typhus – he was a priest by the time he was
23. He received a doctorate and traveled and studied throughout Europe. Back in
Poland, he was assigned to pastor laborers.
"Father Wyszynski's preoccupation
with labor and agricultural problems quickly led to him being dubbed 'the worker
priest.'" Against the interests of his szlachta class, he supported
land reform for Poland's still semi-feudal economy. Wyszynski took his
students, future priests, "to factories so they could see the horrible
working conditions, not very different from those of Charles Dickens' London,
in the previous century, in which their future parishioners worked … he
organized a Christian Workers' University … he educated workers about their
rights and the dangers of Marxism and laissez-faire capitalism" writes
Filip Mazurczak. Wyszynski helped workers acquire such basic amenities as soap.
In September, 1939, When Nazi Germany
and Soviet Russia both attacked Poland, Wyszynski was teaching at the seminary
in Włocławek. Blessed Bishop Michal Kozal told Wyszynski to flee. Wyszynski had
published articles critical of Nazism. Wyszynski obeyed. Kozal himself was one
of many priests subsequently arrested, tortured, imprisoned, and murdered by
Nazis. Kozal died in the Dachau concentration camp, the final resting place of hundreds
of Polish priests and thousands
of other clergy. Einsatzgruppe III, as part of the Intelligenzaktion,
that is, the Nazi liquidation of educated Poles, committed mass murders of
priests and seminarians in Wloclawek.
During the war, Wyszynski adopted the
nom de guerre Radwan, the name of a medieval knight. While continuously hiding
from the Gestapo, he taught blind children, and served as chaplain in a
hospital and for the Home Army. He aided a hiding Jewish family, and exhorted
others to do the same. When the war ended, he took up his duties as a priest in
a materially and psychologically devastated country. He was named, in short
order, bishop, cardinal, and then primate of Poland.
Between 1947-1953, communists carried
out mass trials and imprisonment of Polish clergy. Eight bishops, one thousand
priests, and one thousand nuns were
imprisoned. Sir Geoffrey Hutchinson reported
in Parliament that 37 priests were killed. Wyszynski preached, "We teach
that it is proper to render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God
that which is God's. But when Caesar sits himself on the altar, we respond
curtly: He may not." In other words, Wyszynski used Jesus'
words to recognize the separation of church and state. In this understanding,
the church would not interfere with the communist government, but it would
never allow the communist government to trespass on the church's domain. Wyszynski
was arrested – at night, of course – in 1953. His dog bit one of the men
arresting him; a nun tended to the man's wound with iodine. Wyszynski was a
prisoner for the next three years. No one was allowed to know his whereabouts.
Of his imprisonment, Wyszynski wrote,
"To suffer abuse for the name of Jesus. I had feared that I would never
share this honor, which had befallen my seminary classmates. They had all
experienced concentration camps and prisons. The majority of them had lost
their lives there; several returned as invalids … Something would have been
wrong if I had not experienced imprisonment. What was happening to me was very
appropriate." In all of this, there is humor. "In my official
household, my impending arrest seemed so certain that even the chauffeur was on
the lookout for a new job."
In his imprisonment, Wyszynski took inspiration
from past heroes, specifically from "Mieczyslaw Cardinal Ledochowski, who
was imprisoned by the Prussians from 1874-76 for defying orders not to use
Polish [language] in church schools, pastoral letters or the catechism."
Cardinal Ledochowski had lived during
Prussia's anti-Catholic and anti-Polish kulturkampf, or "culture
war." The kulturkampf's goal can be summed up in a quote by
Bismarck. "If we want to survive, we can only exterminate [Polish people];
the wolf, too, cannot help having been created by God as he is, but people
shoot him for it if they can." Cardinal Ledochowski's insistence, on pain
of imprisonment, on using Polish language in church schools was an act of
resistance against a culturally genocidal force that targeted both Catholic
faith and Polish identity. Ledochowski was a direct inspiration to Wyszynski.
John Cardinal Krol wrote the forward to
Wyszynski's published prison diaries. Krol said, "He was deeply aware of
the unchanging goals and changing tactics of atheistic Communism." That
is, Marxist tactics would change form in attempts to hoodwink the naïve, but
this ideology would always remain true to its ultimate goals, and never stop
being a force to be reckoned with, no matter what guise it wore at any given
moment.
In 1966, Wyszynski hosted a triumphant
nationwide celebration of a thousand years of Catholicism in Poland. In 1978,
he witnessed the election of his protegee, Karol Wojtyla, to the papacy. There
is a famous photo by photojournalist Arturo Mari. It is 1978 and Wyszynski, as
per custom, is attempting to kneel before the new Pope John Paul II. John Paul
II will not have it; he recognizes Wyszynski's stature. He lifts Wyszynski up
and embraces him. The moment is now the subject of at least two statues (here
and here).
Pope John Paul II wrote,
"This
Polish pope … would not be on Peter’s chair were it not for your faith which
did not retreat before prison and suffering. Were it not for your heroic hope,
your unlimited trust in the Mother of the Church! Were it not for Jasna Gora,
and the whole period of the history of the Church in our country, together with
your ministry as Bishop and Primate! … A keystone is what forms the arch, what
reflects the strength of the foundations of the building. The Cardinal Primate
shows the strength of the foundation of the Church, which is Jesus Christ … The
Cardinal Primate has been teaching for over thirty years that he owes this
strength to Mary, the Mother of Christ. We all know well that it is possible,
thanks to Mary, to make the strength of the foundation that is Christ shine
out, and effectively to become a keystone of the Church."
These statements by Pope John Paul II
are testimony to Wyszynski's power, and his source of power. Poles like Wojtyla
and Wyszynski feel that they are part of something larger than themselves. They
are inspired by the heroic sacrifice of past Polish heroes. The reference to
Jasna Gora – the mountain of light – is to the site of a seventeenth-century siege
by invading Swedes and German mercenaries. Legend has it that monks at Jasna Gora's
fourteenth-century monastery were able to repel the Swedes and Germans thanks
to their miraculous image of the Black Madonna, an image painted by Saint Luke
on the table of the Last Supper. Poles like Wojtyla and Wyszynski believe that
their lives are part of a story that reaches back to Biblical times, and has
immortal import.
It is not the argument of this review
that one must be Catholic to perform heroic deeds. Rather, it is the argument
of this review that a traditional narrative strengthened and inspired
Wyszynski, Wojtyla, and other Polish heroes like Jan Karski. In the West today
we are rejecting our traditional narratives of patriotism and faith, and we
have yet to develop new narratives that strengthen us. This is to our personal,
national, and culture-wide detriment.
Wyszynski died of cancer in 1981, just
two weeks after Pope John Paul II was shot by an attempted assassin. Some
believe that Wyszynski asked God to take him rather than Wojtyla.
The lands of the Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealth are the ancestral homelands of the vast majority of Jews in the
United States; Polish kings invited Jews and other religious minorities to live
in their lands. This state was known as the "paradise of the Jews."
In interwar Poland, Polish anti-Semites were a powerful political minority.
During the war, Nazis built Auschwitz and Treblinka on Polish soil. Some Poles
did betray Jews and profit from the Holocaust. On the other hand, the largest
group of "Righteous Gentiles" recognized by Yad Vashem are Poles.
This is a complicated history that cannot be adequately summed up in one
paragraph.
Translator Mazurczak writes that
anti-clerical forces have worked to depict Wyszynski as an anti-Semite. Mazurczak
rejects this charge, citing Wyszynski's risking his own life by actively
participating in the hiding of Jews, which was a death-penalty offense in Nazi-occupied
Poland, his exhortations to Polish Catholics to aid Jews, his support for
Israel, a support which ran contrary to the Soviet position, and his
condemnation of the 1968 communist anti-Semitic campaign. "The chief rabbi
of Poland, Zew Wawa Morejno, publicly thanked the cardinal for his defense of
the Jews twice, in 1968 and 1971," Mazurczak says.
Love and Social Justice: Reflections on
Society, the new
collection of Wyszynski's writings, will be a valuable resource to
English-speakers interested in Wyszynski. The translation by Filip Mazurczak is
flawless. The prose reads smoothly. The book is not, though, the first book a
general reader should turn to. It is an exhaustive reference anthology on a
narrow topic, rather than a biography or vivid description of Wyszynski's
interior life. For a first book about Wyszynski, a better choice would be A
Freedom Within: The Prison Notes of Stefan Cardinal Wyszynski.
Love and Social Justice is, for the most part, 554 pages of
Stefan Wyszynski supporting papal documents: Pope Leo XIII's 1891 encyclical Rerum
Novarum, and Pope Pius XI's 1931 follow-up encyclical Quadragesimo Anno.
These encyclicals were a response to Marxism. Rerum
Novarum addresses "the misery and wretchedness pressing so
unjustly on the majority of the working class." It outlines a Catholic
approach to workers, employers, the state, the church, capitalism, and
communism.
Reading Love and Social Justice, one
is reminded that one of the most persistent and overwhelming themes of the
Bible is "don't be greedy; take care of the poor." This theme runs
from Genesis to Revelation. It is stated as words from God's mouth, from the
hand of the prophets, in proverbs and psalms, and in illustrative anecdotes. This
theme is emphasized by citing the terrifying destruction that God visits on
those who are greedy and who do not take care of the poor. Wyszynski quotes
this material extensively. He reminds the reader of more famous passages addressing
proper treatment of the poor and of laborers from Luke
and less obvious lines from Deuteronomy,
James,
Sirach,
and Proverbs.
Another emphasis of LASJ is one
that the reader has perhaps never paid much attention to. The Bible praises
labor and praises laborers. Wyszynski insists that this praise of labor as good
for mankind is distinct from previous and surrounding Pagan cultures in the
Ancient Mediterranean, who, he claims, regarded labor and laborers with
disdain. At least one
modern historian agrees with Wyszynski on this point.
The Bible's respect for work and workers
is reflected in Jesus' status as a carpenter. God himself is depicted as
"resting" on the seventh day. Wyszynski sees an omnipotent God's
"rest" as a poetic way of relating God, the creator of the universe,
with the humble laborer who also needs rest, and, in Judaism and Christianity,
receives that rest on the Sabbath. "My father is working still, and I am
working," Jesus says, in John. "God is a plowman, gardener, and owner
of his vineyard," Wyszynski writes. "Of old, Thou didst lay the
foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of Thy hands,"
Wyszynski quotes Psalm 102. "We are God's fellow workers," says 1
Corinthians.
Wyszynski wrote these pieces during
World War II. He speaks of the war and Nazism mostly in veiled terminology. He
wants to make larger points, universal and eternal points, about how, as he
sees it, Catholic teaching lifts people up. Conversely, he argues, turning
pleasure, profit, or national identity into gods drags humanity down into the
depths of hell.
Though Wyszynski was writing eighty
years ago, many of his sentences could have been written today. "Scientific
progress has pushed a different kind of elite to the forefront: scientists who
have much knowledge, but often don't know how to live; people whose adulation
of reason has lead them to completely destroy their will. Outstanding experts
who are focused on the narrow fragment of life they study but do not perceive
the deeper meaning of the world and its ultimate meaning." He responds to
these people with Revelation
3:17 and Jude
12-13. Similarly, Wyszynski uses Bible passages utterly to condemn the
racism promulgated by Nazism. There is no "master race;" he insists.
All are equal children of God, as declared in the multiple Biblical passages he
quotes.
In addition to his main themes about
work and the marketplace, Wyszynski emphasizes the sacredness of the family as
society's foundation. At one point Wyszynski assumes the voice of a
totalitarian hectoring parents of children. "These children are not yours!
You gave them life? You are only functionaries of the state!" This very
attitude has been spoken in recent years, for example by Melissa Harris Perry,
formerly of MSNBC, currently on National Public Radio; see here. "The end of
the family means the downfall of society," Wyszynski writes.
Wyszynski insists that Catholics must be
Catholic in public as well as in private. The Catholic "cannot have two
consciences, a Catholic one for private life, and a non-Catholic one for public
matters," he says, quoting August Hlond. This statement reminds the reader
of contemporary debates around public Catholic figures Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi,
and Amy Coney Barrett. "Whenever secular authority enters into the realm
of ecclesiastical affairs and violates the freedom of religion and conscience,
it is evidence that a new wave of paganization is approaching," warns
Wyszynski. He certainly understood Nazism as a pagan phenomenon, but his words
are as powerful in our own era as in his.
Wyszynski seems to anticipate recent
shortages of medical equipment, drugs, and computer chips, caused by broken
supply chains during COVID. "The means of production and transportation
are constantly multiplied so that merchandise is sent to foreign, distant
peoples while one's own neighbor, who is nearby and needs goods that are sent
over the hills and across the sea, is completely ignored." Wyszynski
supports a conservative principle. Power is best exercised closest to its
impact. "Economic life must be above all monitored by the good of those
closest to us: our families, co-workers, and compatriots … The Christian state
cannot engage in exports at the expense of its own hungry citizens."
In another passage, Wyszynski seems to
be looking into the future and seeing the aftermath of the 2008 financial
crisis. "In Warsaw, there were banks that were several months behind in
paying their workers so that their directors and owners could be paid to make
up for their financial losses. Is it not evidence of a complete lack of
morality when, after the bankruptcy of one factory in Lodz, where 6,500 workers
had lost their jobs, the insolvency administrators were each paid 220,000
zlotys for two weeks of work?"
Wyszynski does not support redistribution
that demands nothing of recipients. He quotes 1 Timothy 5:8. "If any one
does not provide for his relatives, and especially for his own family, he has
disowned the faith and is worse than an unbeliever."
Given the book's limited focus and its
length, and also given that the book is an anthology of short pieces that were possibly
not planned to evolve into a book-length work, it is inevitable that there is a
great deal of repetition in LASJ. Were the contents edited, they might
fit neatly into a book that is a fraction of the size of the current volume.
Again, though, researchers will appreciate the collection, under one cover, of
so many of Wyszynski's pieces on such an important topic.
The style of each piece is exhortation.
Wyszynski adjures the reader to contribute to the creation of an idealized,
Catholic vision of how work plays out in a righteous world. LASJ is not
so much a "how to" manual as a "This is what you must do"
manual. Readers who don't like to be preached to will not be able to read this
book.
Lech
Walesa said that Wyszynski was the
most impressive man he had ever met, and Walesa had met many impressive
people. I never had the honor of meeting Stefan Wyszynski, but through this
book and other sources about him, I feel as if I had. "Meeting" him in
this way will have an impact on my life. He has become, for me, what previous
heroes and role models were for him as he faced the tremendous difficulties he
faced in his life. He was known as the "iron cardinal." He exercised
that power without ever wielding a material weapon. His strength was in his
mind, his heart, his faith, his love for his country and its people, and his
commitment to service.
Danusha Goska is the author of God through Binoculars: A Hitchhiker at a Monastery
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