Last week, Adam Michnik returned to The New School and gave a provocative lecture, “After the Election of Pope Francis: What Paths for the Catholic Church?” In his talk, more about the Church and democracy in Poland than about events in Rome and the Catholic Church as a whole, the renowned Polish intellectual highlighted the two different paths taken by the Church in current public debates: the increasingly popular fundamentalist approach, termed “Integralism,” resistant to the recommendations of openness formulated at the Second Vatican Council, and the marginalized liberal approach, termed “Progressivist,” adopted by the liberal-oriented Catholics. Michnik worried that Pope Francis would be on the wrong side of this debate, or on the sidelines, given his ambiguous at best relationship with dictatorship in Argentina. The talk addressed pressing issues in Poland. Michnik, as usual, was bold in his presentation. It has broad implications beyond Polish borders, which I appreciate. Yet, I also have a question. For, I think Michnik misses a crucial point, concerning Poland, and also concerning the Pope and the Catholic Church and the need to address religious fundamentalism.

Michnik pointed out that the integralist and the progressivist paths emerged as part of the Catholic Church’s struggle for power to shape public debate in post-1989 democratic Poland. To his great dismay, instead of strengthening the Church’s liberal voice, open to the new issues that the newly democratic country had to face as it opened to the outside world, the Church has become dominated by simplistic conservative and nationalistic arguments, which reinforce hostile attitudes toward all that is unfamiliar or strange. As a consequence, the church has fostered a destructive divide between “us” and “them,” which cuts across Polish society. According to Michnik, a significant role in disseminating the fundamentalist message is played by “Radio Maryja” and “TV Trwam.” These media outlets, owned by Father Tadeusz Rydzyk, a controversial Catholic priest often accused of promoting xenophobia and anti-Semitism, are widely popular in small towns in Poland.

Michnik did not have a simple answer to his question, “What Paths for the Catholic Church?“ His overall argument centered around the Polish Church’s reluctance to accept any form of criticism, and he expressed concern that Pope Francis, with his beautiful gestures towards the poor will not address the threat of Catholic fundamentalism in Poland and beyond.

I did not have a chance to push Michnik a bit on the role Pope Francis may play in the continuing conflict between the liberal and fundamentalist factions in the Church. It relates to a topic I am studying, popular Catholic practices in post-1989 Poland. It seems to me that Francis’s gestures towards the poor have greater potential power than Michnik recognizes. They could build a bridge between the radical claims of the Polish “integralists” and the “progressivists” in the ongoing Polish Catholic debate by crossing the divide between popular and elite opinion. The integralists present radical, one-sided and often simplistic visions of reality in which Catholicism should prevail, while the  progressivists take into account the numerous competing values found in earthly life, but the sophisticated arguments they formulate are incomprehensible to many. In other words, I would have liked to have asked Michnik if he felt that Pope Francis could create a bridge through his message of radicalism in humility.

Michnik presented the conflict as a stark clash between the liberal, open-minded intellectuals, on the one hand, and  on the other, the fundamentalists: defenders of pre-Vatican II traditions who want to see the Church as the ultimate institution, founded by God, superior to secular life. In this context, the opinions and gestures of the new pope which emphasize humility instead of rapacity—including the desire of the Church to monopolize the discussion on values—seem particularly important, as they fall in right in the middle of the conflict in the Catholic Church in Poland.

The increasingly marginalized Polish “progressivists” described by Michnik, are intellectuals. I believe this very fact alienates them from popular debate dominated by the “integralist” approach. For many Catholics progressivists’ discussions are not intelligible, too subtle and too boring. The intellectuals speak over the heads of many. Yet many Catholics turn to the Church to give them clear definitions of the meaning of the surrounding world. The “integralists,” on the other hand, present a clear, one-sided vision of an age-old Polish-Catholic unity, which has to be protected in a dangerous, secularizing reality that lacks moral values. Michnik hinted that this propagated, imagined vision not only is a tool of maintaining power in the Polish political debate; what is more, this particular vision seems better suited to an authoritarian, rather than a democratic, regime.

Pope Francis does not look like a “progressivist,” but his call for a poor Church may hurt the Polish fundamentalist vision of the Church, whose opulence and unquestionable power in society is presented as justified by tradition (and God). The Pope’s simple message may be heard by the many traditionalist Polish Catholics uninterested in intellectual discussions, but who nonetheless are troubled by the Polish Church’s increasingly visible deadly sins of pride and greed. “Let us never forget that authentic power is service,” the Pope said in his homily. But will this message come through? And does this “service” include open discussion on the contemporary role of the Church, not limited to the hermetic debates of intellectuals and one-sided claims of the traditionalists?

Tomek Kitlinski informed me yesterday about a new round in the continuing story of the escalating cultural war in Poland. This one hits close to home for me. I have a tragic sense of déjà vu. The greatest of the student theaters I studied in the 1970s, Teatr Osmego Dnia (Translated as Theater of the Eighth Day, or The Eighth Day Theater), continues to face official repression. A theater that combined the theatrical insights of Jerzy Grotowski with deep exploration of the existential problems of “socialist youth” continues its critical journey in the post-Communist order, revealing that some things haven’t changed: their challenging artistic excellence, the intolerance of authorities to alternative sensibility, opinion and judgment, and remarkably, the political monitoring of the private life of artists, the theme of their powerful play, “The Files,” which juxtaposes their dairies with their security files of the Ministry of the Interior from the 70s (think “The Lives of Others” with more dramatic and documentary power, expressed through superb fully embodied acting). The invasion of privacy in this case involved Ewa Wójciak Facebook page, as reported in the letter below. I reproduce the letter of protest here, which points to the unfolding events and comments by Kitlinski, illuminating the meaning of the events. Readers wishing to support this letter of protest should send their names and comments to teatr@osmego.art.pl

On the day of the elections for a new pope, shortly after the official announcement was made, Ewa Wójciak took to her private Facebook profile and wrote: “…and so they elected a prick, who denounced left-wing priests during the military dictatorship in Argentina.”

To Wójciak’s astonishment, her status almost instantly became the cause for a massive media outrage.

She was invited onto a show for the local TV channel, where she defended the private character of her Facebook status, while retaining her conviction that the choice made by the Vatican was of scandalous nature. She explained that, regardless of specific cases and their finales in court trials, the Argentinian Catholic Church – including the newly elected pope – had in fact maintained a close relationship with the military dictatorship responsible for mass ‘disappearings’, tortures and deaths of some 30,000 people.

The councilmen of the city of Poznań demanded that the mayor dismisses Ewa Wójciak from the position of a director of the theatre immediately. Facebook shut down her account. The theatre became flooded with letters filled with threats and insults. Whereas the town hall continues to debate the suitable punishment for Ewa Wójciak, the right-wing councilmen attack the theatre and its ‘leftist’ character, calling for its shutdown. It turns out that in a democratic country, the authorities expect artist subsidised by local councils to share their official worldview. Especially their catholic beliefs.

The situation appears serious. The witch-hunt against the theatre has been going on for years now. The theatre that has over the past few decades become a hub for lively discussions and debates, a platform for independent, young artists, and an important cultural centre is under constant fire from the local authorities.

There has come yet another critical moment for our theatre, and we kindly ask for your support in the form of an open letter or a petition. One such letter has already been produced and signed by approx. 600 representatives of Polish intelligentsia.

Tomek Kitlinski’s Commentary

“In the mid-1970s, the Eighth Day suffered most severely from censorship. Indeed, in the first production of “The Sight of the Crime,” in 1973, 80 percent of the original text was eliminated by the censor.” (Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, On Cultural Freedom. An Exploration of Public Life in Poland and America, p. 99) The current attempts at censorship against Wójciak in Poznan testify to the violence of culture wars (analyzed in Deliberately Considered, here,  here and especially here) and Poland’s polarization.

There is a pattern of cultural repression which is also notably observable in my home town, Lublin. There, the City Council decreed: “Producing the Positive Educational Climate for the Younger Generation of Lublin Residents” which implies art censorship; Lublin artists and scholars have immediately started a petition against this repressive measure (in English at the bottom of the page).

Similarly, Poznan cultural operators have been campaigning against the scapegoating of Wojciak. The legendary poet of the opposition, former Harvard professor and Eighth Day playwright, Stanislaw Baranczak and foremost international artists, Miroslaw Balka and Zofia Kulik, intellectuals Irena Grudzinska-Gross and Elzbieta Matynia and hundreds of people in Poland have signed a previous letter of support for Wójciak.

An eminent scholar of American literature, Zofia Kolbuszewska, has also signed it and subsequently resigned from the position of Vice Dean of the Humanities at the Catholic University of Lublin. Zofia authored a book, which by using the methodology of Lacan, Kristeva and Agamben, explores the American Gothic of such female authors as Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Kate Chopin and Toni Morrison. Kolbuszewska was vilified in the far-right press, but defended by two open letters.

Ever a rebel, Ewa Wojciak has always stood up against authoritarianism. Ewa has always been outspoken, impudent and honest — in her protests against the one-party monopoly before 1989 and in her disagreement against the injustices of the transition. She has invited minority speakers to her Theatre: refugees, “lokatorzy,” poor Poznan residents threatened with eviction, feminists, LGBTQ. She took part in the banned 2005 women’s and gay demonstration in Poznan which was brutalized by the police and one of her actors was arrested.

La Pasionaria of the alternative theatre, Ewa recited-sang the poetry of the poet repressed under the Soviet system, Anna Akhmatova. In the recent shows of the Eighth Day, she performed with a new force, biting irony and vis comica, passionately satirizesing the megalomania “Polishness.” I will always remember her performances in “Paranoicy i Pszczelarze” on ultranationalist, vainglorious paranoiacs and open-minded cosmopolitan beekeepers, in “Portiernia” on Europe resisting refugees, and most deeply personal in “Teczki” on security police files against her and other members of the company.

Ewa Wojciak and the Eighth Day Theatre should be supported on grounds of free speech. Let’s also not forget their aesthetically experimental production, always with a message of freedom.