The Law and Justice Party (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość, PiS for short) is a right wing nationalist populist party which has been in national government in Poland since 2015. It has often been considered a Christian nationalist party, and a de facto political proxy of the Polish Catholic Church. Like Christian nationalist parties in other countries, it is decidedly authoritarian and illiberal; and like them it has attempted to dismantle democratic checks and balances1.
When the unfortunately abbreviated PiS won power in 2015 it used the same sort of sly political lies that characterise so many authoritarian parties: It accused its political opponents of being enemies of the people; it would make Poland great again by restoring ‘traditional values’; it would resist the EU even though it was a member; and it would be unremittingly hostile to migrants and gays; indeed, it would defend Polish Christianity from Islamic invasion. At the time, it seemed like a flash in the pan, but PiS soon emerged as one of the leaders in Europe’s drive to the right2,3.
In the recent elections, PiS lost control of both houses of parliament. Despite this, it remains the single largest party in the parliament and President Andrzej Duda will probably allow the current PiS Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki to try to form a new government. However, they are unlikely to be able to do so. The opposition Civic Coalition (KO), led by former Prime Minister Donald Tusk, would then be in a good position to form a new government, although this will be challenging. Tusk will need his own centrist alliance to find common ground with the left-wing Lewica and center-right Third Way blocs. The glue that binds these three together—their joint aversion to the attacks on democratic institutions under two consecutive PiS-led governments—should prove stronger than what divides them, such as access to abortion, social housing, and protection for farmers4.
In the election, PiS obtained 35.4% of the vote, a drop from the 43.6% in the previous election. The opposition KO obtained 30.7%, while the smaller Christian democratic Third Way received 14.4% and the New Left, 8.6%. This would give these three political groups, which campaigned for a coalition government in the run-up to the election, a majority of 248 seats in the 460-seat Sejm, the lower house of parliament. By contrast, PiS would only have 198 seats. In a further blow to PiS’s hopes of forming government, the ultra-right Confederation Party, its only likely coalition partner, got just 6.4% of the vote (14 seats)5.
One aspect of this election which interested me was the fact that attendance at Catholic churches is collapsing. The proportion of Catholics in Poland attending mass has fallen from 37% in 2019 to 28% in 2021 according to new figures published by the church. In 1981 it was 52.7%! While the 2021 figures are likely to have been affected by the pandemic, the church also admits that “socio-cultural factors” have played a part in the decline. While the vast majority of Poles are officially identified as Catholic, recent years have seen the status of the church plummet because of its support for policies of PiS, such as an unpopular near-total ban on abortion, as well as by revelations of child sex abuse by members of the clergy and by bishops ignoring it or covering it up6.
This trend is likely to continue as the Catholic church in Poland finds itself in an existential crisis. For one of the most Catholic countries in the world, and the homeland of Pope John Paul II, this is unprecedented. While Poland is not becoming an atheist country overnight, the trend is indisputably away from the church, especially among the young7.
The proportion of people in Poland identifying as Roman Catholics has fallen to 71.3% in the latest national census of 2021, down from 87.6% a decade earlier. The figures mirror other findings from recent years showing declining attachment to Poland’s Catholic church. Meanwhile, the proportion saying that they belonged to no faith almost tripled, from 2.4% in 2011 to 6.9% in 2021. Similarly, those who refused to answer the question also almost tripled, from 7.1% to 20.5%. Among young Poles, the decline was even more dramatic: from 69% practising regularly in 1992 to 23% in 20218.
While this is a long way behind the proportion of people with no religion in other countries, the trend is the same; religion is declining9. This is happening everywhere and it is happening among the young faster than in older demographics. It has been shown in several countries that the young are not becoming more conservative with age as their predecessors did10, and that conservatives are losing their support base ‘one funeral at a time’ as the older cohort pop their clogs; maybe that is true of the Polish Catholic church as well, because the young are deserting it faster than their older compatriots. Both the church and the ultraconservatives like PiS promise heaven, but all they want is control.
PS
I spent a bit of time trying to write a suitable, short title for this piece and initially thought of including symbiosis* but settled on conjugation**, because it is the term used for gene sharing between bacteria and both the church and christofascist political parties are much like bacteria; in that they attempt to infest everything.
*Symbiosis: This is a close, prolonged association between two or more different biological species. This relationship can be mutualistic, where both parties benefit from the interaction, or it can be parasitic, where one party benefits while the other is harmed11.
**Conjugation: This is the process by which one bacterium transfers genetic material to another through direct contact. During conjugation, one bacterium serves as the donor of the genetic material, and the other serves as the recipient12.
PPS
When reading up on all of this, one item made me laugh: In Poland, the number of people belonging to the Muslim Religious Union (2,209) was smaller than the number identifying as Pastafarians (2,312) – followers of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, a parody religion.
Sources
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_and_Justice
- https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/oct/22/poland-turning-back-tide-of-the-right-should-be-an-object-lesson-in-democracy-for-uk
- https://ecpr.eu/Events/Event/PaperDetails/46802
- https://www.cfr.org/in-brief/how-polands-election-results-could-reshape-europe
- https://www.dw.com/en/poland-tusk-sets-sights-on-return-to-power-after-close-election/a-67112520
- https://notesfrompoland.com/2023/01/14/dramatic-fall-in-church-attendance-in-poland-official-figures-show/#
- https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/apr/05/catholic-church-poland-law-and-justice-party-young-voters
- https://notesfrompoland.com/2023/09/29/proportion-of-catholics-in-poland-falls-to-71-new-census-data-show/
- https://blotreport.com/2019/07/29/decline-of-religion-in-the-anglophone-world/
- https://blotreport.com/2023/01/01/conservatives-rightly-fear-the-young/
- https://www.pbs.org/articles/what-is-symbiosis#
- https://www.nature.com/scitable/definition/conjugation-prokaryotes-290/#
