The Polish Church as an enemy of the open society: some reflections on post-communist social-political transformations in Central Europe

In the foreword to the Polish edition of this book, written just after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Karl Popper stressed that he had introduced the term “open society” as a synonym for the “not very fortuitous term ‘democracy’” (Popper 1993, vol. 1: 1). The essence of democracy, he stated, is political freedom and its opposite is despotism, a system as old as civilization. “Under despotic governments,” the author wrote, “we are terrified and have no right to responsibility for our own deeds. This means that we are stripped of our humanity. Moral responsibility is, after all, part of our humanity” (ibid.: 1).