INSINUATIONS OF THE CHURCH ENEMIES
JAN MARIA JACKOWSKI
In the recent months we have been witnesses of massed anti-Catholic campaign, proceeding under the motto of chasing pedophilia among Catholic priests. Following the most powerful mass media, one can feel that pedophilia among Catholic priests is the widespread problem, which is, certainly a lie and manipulation. What is happening in Poland is a fragment of a bigger whole because this campaign has a global dimension, although it particularly concerns Europe and the USA. However, its specific feature in Poland is using this campaign by pro-government media as a socio-technical element, used to distracting attention from essential problems of Poland and Poles.
It is also easy to notice that intensification of this campaign is connected with the fact that in Poland the increase of priestly vocations is noticeable and a lot of missionaries are from our country. Attacking priests in Poland, ‘anonymous anti-evangelical centres’ are trying to depreciate clergy in the eyes of the public opinion and ‘neutralize’ their leading people to salvation, which is the mission of the Church.
What is the most painful for believers is the fact that sometimes people of the Church are used for this campaign, whose task is to make these attacks credible. Bishop Józef Zawitkowski, in one of his homilies, gave his brotherly admonition: - I feel sorry for the group that has brought up such a television monster which is attacking the archbishop. Dear ordained son, which school did you attend? Who taught you reading and good manners? You see what you have done? I am walking along a street and I feel someone’s breath: pedophile!
And what do facts look like? We submitted two sentences (interpellations) with a group of MPs of the Law and Justice party addressed to the ministry of justice. We asked for information about the number of the convicted of pedophilia in Poland. We also asked what professional groups the convicted were from and we asked for a number of the convicted in the particular groups. We received a reply signed by the sub-secretary of the state in the Ministry of Justice Stanisław Chmielewski.
This document states that according to information of 18 November 2013 of the ministry, 1468 convicted were serving the imprisonment in penal institutions for crimes of pedophilia character. According to the given data, in the above-given number of the convicts, 900 of them did not have learned professions, about 70 people did the job of a bricklayer, 40 people were irregular workers, about 30 of them were farmers, 25 of them were car mechanics.
‘The other convicts – it was written – were from other groups. Among them were people of other profession, for example: engineers, doctors, teachers, pedagogues, priests of the Roman-Catholic religion, educators from educational institutions and charitable institutions, and these were single people’. As a complementation of this information, we received a reply to our second statement from the ministry that in the penitentiary institutions on 18 November there were: ‘four teachers, two educators, one doctor, one priest of the Roman-Catholic religion’.
There is an obvious conclusion from it, that the anti-Catholic campaign and insinuations of the Church enemies are based on manipulation, that is, in this case presenting the single case as a rule.
(AA)
"Niedziela" 5/2014