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approximation to an organized political opposition to exist in any Communist state, but in the later years of the Gomulka regime, its value was largely symbolic. Finally, the Clubs of Catholic Intellectuals, lay groups which were also most active during the post-1956 period, continue to exist but have generally shunned controversial issues.
Despite the official postwar policy of repressing the church as an institution as a moral force, the Polish people have never been denied freedom of worship. Attendance at Mass, baptism, religious weddings, last rites, and funerals are freely observed by the majority of the population. Moreover, regime policy toward religious observances by those who hold responsible party or state positions has been uneven, and generally related to the "public visibility" of such behavior. Many such persons have lost their jobs because of religious practice, and most risk doing so, but few are known to have been persecuted any further as a result. The public commitment by the Gierek regime to eliminate social, economic, and political discrimination because of one's religious practice suggests a further expansion of this pragmatic policy.
The peak of religious repression during the Stalinist period of the early 1950's coincided with a religious revival which served as an expression of popular hostility toward the state. Although periodic confrontations between the church and state thereafter generally served to bolster popular support for the church, they also served to weaken the moral authority of both sides among that part of the population which was uncommitted to either. That this fact was not lost on either of the protagonists was perhaps the single most important reason for the gradual though halting improvement of church-state relations in the late 1960's.
After Gomulka returned to power in 1956, Cardinal Wyszynski, who had been removed from office and held in secret confinement since 1953, was released from detention. An agreement between the church and state in December 1956 to remove certain points of friction was hailed by both parties and resulted in limited church support for the new regime in the January 1957 elections. In mid-1957 Cardinal Wyszynski formally received the red hat of a cardinal from Pope Pius XII during a 6-week visit to Rome. The rapid stabilization of Gomulka's power, however, soon heralded a virtual nullification of most of the guarantees contained in the 1956 accord. In contrast to the previous practice of overt physical repression, the Gomulka regime accomplished its goals by a flexible policy of gradual encroachment on church influence. It was relatively successful in encouraging a growing secularization of Polish life through restrictions on religious activities. These restrictions included the elimination of religious institutions from state schools in 1961, the closure of all Catholic schools (with the significant exception of the Catholic University of Lublin), seizures of church property, exorbitant taxation, barring public religious processions except when permits were issued by the state, harassment of religious orders and seminaries, elimination of the church press, and the use of relatively sophisticated antireligious propaganda.
The most serious church-state confrontation of the past decade took place in 1966 during the simultaneous celebrations of a thousand years of Christianity in Poland and of Polish nationhood. The regime's vehement reaction to the church's extensive program of activities included the party's main charge that the Polish episcopate was intent on using the millennium observances to stress the church's traditional position as a "bulwark" of Western civilization against encroachments from the East. This charge, the church's strong defense from the pulpit, and rival government observances of the state's millennium provided occasions for friction and for several confrontations throughout the summer of 1966.
By the end of 1966, however, both sides were making serious efforts to create an atmosphere conducive to the resolution of some of their differences. A direct dialogue between the church and the state was reestablished with several meetings of a joint church-state commission, and exploratory talks concerning a possible future accommodation between the regime and the Vatican were initiated.
Thus, in the late 1960's, church-state relations entered a more hopeful stage in which both sides apparently believed that a truce would redound to their advantage. A mutual renunciation of polemics resulted in the church's neutrality during the regime's internal political crisis in mid-1967 and throughout 1968, when Cardinal Wyszynski abstained from strong condemnation of either official anti-Semitism in Poland or the regime's participation in the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia. This forbearance apparently was the main reason he was given government permission to visit Rome in late 1968, the first time he had been permitted to leave the country since the events of 1966. Moreover, in August 1969, Cardinal Wojtyla was permitted to travel to Rome and then to visit ethnic Polish communities in Canada and the United States, a trip originally scheduled for, but denied to, Wyszynski in 1966.
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