A few months ago I went to Cambridge to interview Don Cupitt, the Anglican priest and author best known for his efforts to purge Christianity of all traces of the supernatural, including the Almighty Herself. In Britain, such gimmicks have lost their novelty. But in Poland, where I wanted to publish the interview, the idea of religion without God is dangerous.
I sent the interview to a friend at one of the liberal daily newspapers -and there it sank. The editor-in-chief liked the interview, but decided that it could not be published "just like that." "Just like what?" I asked. "He wants to get an intellectual close to the church to take a stand against it." This reminded me of communist Poland, when the occasional article deemed dangerous by apparatchiks would appear in print only if some intellectual close to the party would take a stand against it. (This is how we got bits of Freud and Weber, Sartre and Popper.) But Poland is different now, I thought. "Oh, come off it," my friend said. "This is a catholic country. We cannot antagonise the bishops when they have trouble in their own backyard."
The trouble in question is the Family of Radio Maryja. This grassroots religious movement is centred around a radio station in the historic town of Torun (birthplace of Copernicus) and now covers the country. It even reaches, via satellite, remote corners of the US and the former Soviet Union. Its founder, Father Tadeusz Rydzyk-or Father Director, as he is usually called-is a plump and enterprising priest who travels the world eliciting support and collecting donations, mostly from expat communities. He often appears, pontifex ex machina, to address the listeners from an undisclosed location in the US. The station, whose presenters are catholic nuns and clerics, has an estimated 4m listeners; quite an achievement in a country of 38m. But this is not just another phone-in station. It is a Family: a well-organised community rooted in shared values and, perhaps, a future political party. The movement has its own magazine, its top ten hits, and a website. Recently, Fr Director offered to buy a 60 per cent stake in the bankrupt Gdansk shipyard.
Maryja is an old Polish word for Virgin Mary, traditionally believed to be the "Queen of Poland." Originally, the station's founding fathers had asked the Black Madonna of Czestochowa (Poland's best known cult object) to intervene on their behalf so that the licence to broadcast would be granted. It was. Gratefully, they offered her a crown made of wedding rings sent by listeners.
The Family has taken on the same old enemies: bankers, Jews, gays, freemasons, communists. Fr Director has even suggested that the social democratic deputies (ex-communists) should have their heads shaved clean like Polish prostitutes during the second world war. Radio Maryja is now spreading the same propaganda once used by the communist secret services: for example, a fake interview with Bronislaw Geremek, a former Solidarity adviser, now minister of foreign affairs, in which he is supposed to have said: "I hate Poles... we are introducing changes which would make Jews always better off than Poles."
The station's favourite code word is "minority," but everybody knows what it means. Only a handful of Poles of Jewish descent remain, yet one of Poland's favourite pastimes is Jew-guessing (is he? is she?). Recently, Fr Henryk Jankowski, Lech Walesa's former confessor, protested against a Jewish presence in the new centre-right government. He was suspended. The Family jumped to his defence.
The real enemy is the liberal rot: pornographers, foreign investors and alien mass culture, the IMF and Europe. In one respect, however, the movement differs from its American protestant cousin. It is anti-libertarian. Not for it the discreet charm of the free market. This is a movement of losers, from small provincial towns and rural areas. They are not simpletons-some are highly articulate-but they can find no place among the nouveaux riches.
For the catholic church hierarchy, the Family is like a fishbone stuck deep in its throat. Some bishops would like to swallow it. The movement represents what they have always stood for: the criminalisation of abortion, compulsory religious education. Some catholic intellectuals are appalled, but their voices are few. And the pope remains delphic in his pronouncements.
Last November, a delegation from the catholic church made a bizarre reconnaissance trip to Brussels. Later the bishops announced that the church is not frightened of Europe. But for domestic consumption they have a different message: it is pagan Europe which needs Poland, not the other way round. Could the Family help in this rescue mission?
The movement has already scored political victories. In recent parliamentary elections, all the candidates who were backed by the Family won their seats with big majorities. Parliament recently rushed through a controversial anti-abortion law-and a treaty with the Vatican.
The Family of Radio Maryja is the nearest thing Poland will get to France's National Front or Austria's Freedom Party. The broadcasters from Torun are convinced that a godless world needs them. But the world of the global economy and global culture which they are fighting is likely to keep them on the margins of big-time politics.
