ABSTRACT
The Catholic Primate of Poland, Archbishop Josef Glemp, admits that life was easier for the Church under communism. That’s the internal struggle between those who want the Catholic Church’s definition of society to dominate Polish life and those who want the Church to play a guiding, spiritual role in a society based on pluralist principles. The two faces of Polish Catholicism are most dramatically highlighted in the very different styles of two of its most famous churchmen, Primate Josef Glemp and moral theologian and former Solidarity chaplain Father Josef Tischner. Many Polish clergy distributed leaflets and posters reminding the people that they faced an historical moment in which the ‘fate of our homeland, Catholic Poland, was being weighed’. Long before the Sejm and Senate passed the new abortion bill, Poland’s Supreme Doctors’ Chamber introduced new ethical guidelines for doctors which prohibited abortion for genetic or social reasons.
