Poles
Together, Poles Apart
18th April
2010
The Malta Independent
on Sunday
Alfred
Mifsud
Poland has a history of suffering like few
other nations. In the Second World War, they were vilified, victimised and
humiliated by the Nazis, who started the war on 1 September 1939 as Hitler
ignored warnings from the UK and France and marched mercilessly into Poland,
just as the Russians negotiated a non-belligerence treaty with the
Nazis.
When the fortunes of war turned, the Poles were equally brutalised
and humiliated by the Russians, as they rolled back the German attacks and
forced their way through Polish territory in their march towards
Berlin.
Following nearly five decades of oppressive communism, the Poles
were the first to light a torch for liberation through the Solidarnosc trade
union movement, aided with moral and financial support from the Polish Catholic
Church, with the direction and moral authority from the former archbishop of
Krakow, Karol Wojtyla, who in 1978 became the first non-Italian Catholic Pope
for centuries.
This liberation torch eventually developed into a roaring
fire that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall, the general collapse of communism
and the disintegration of the Warsaw Pact and the USSR. In all this, Poland
played a leading role.
Poland is today one of the most successful stories
of countries that emerged successfully from the chaos of 50 years of central
command economics to a vibrant emerging economy that is providing a better life
for its citizens and the restitution of national pride that was so severely
damaged in the 20th century. Even during the current financial crisis, Poland
was the only EU country that did not officially fall into a recession and is
increasingly becoming a political force to be reckoned with in EU institutions
and other international fora.
Among all this story of recent success, it
was an unprecedented shock that Poland suffered a week ago through the crash of
the official Presidential plane carrying the Polish President Lech Kaczynski and
scores of other senior Polish figures that were all killed in the
incident.
The Polish delegation, which included the chief of Poland’s
army, the central bank governor, MPs and leading historians, was flying to
Smolensk in Russia to mark the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre of
thousands of Poles by Soviet forces during WWII.
A silver lining has,
however, emerged through the great unity shown by the Poles in this episode of
national grief, and the extremely graceful response of the Russian authorities
to the accident over their territory through the personal involvement of Prime
Minister Putin, who immediately went to the scene of the accident. The Poles
have come together like no other time in recent history and finally there is
reason for the Russians and the Poles to look forward to a more collaborative
future.
As the Poles have come together, the Pope is coming apart. The
short visit of Pope Benedict among us is coming during turbulent times for the
Catholic Church, which is being accused of an undignified response to widespread
accusations of paedophilia among the clergy.
From a Church that condemns
all sexual activity outside marriage, and even sexual activity within marriage
that is not open to procreation, paedophilia by its own clergy in full
exploitation of the children who are entrusted in their care is a very serious
crime. How can the Church condemn sexual activities by consenting adults if it
tolerates, hides or in any way defends or protects its own operators from sexual
abuse of innocent children?
The Head of the Catholic Church is always
welcome in Catholic Malta. At least his visit has brought about much needed
maintenance to the places through which the Pontiff will pass. This last week,
in fact, I started suspecting that Pope Benedict must have been a public works
inspector in an earlier life, as our roads and roundabouts are being re-touched
with a paint lacquer with the same philosophy as that for the building of a film
set: make the set look nice for the shoot, but don’t spend money on durability,
as the whole structure needs only to last the 24 hours of the shoot.
But
frankly, the Pope should have much better things to do than visit Malta. Not
least, he should be knocking heads together in the Vatican to cleanse the Church
from the paedophile scar it has inflicted on itself by trying to bury such
misdemeanours within its own vaults. There is no disinfectant better than
sunshine. Apart from condemning the despicable acts themselves in the most
unreserved manner, it should open up to police authorities all its internal
records and let criminal justice work normally against criminal offenders,
irrespective of their religion, robe or title.
But, in the end, this
paedophile saga is a mere distraction from the true problems of the Church.
These are the growing disengagement between the Church and the general
congregation, as shown by falling Mass attendances, low new vocations and the
general attitude of Catholics to adopting an a la carte approach to their
religion. The Church needs to ask itself where it expects to be in 50 years
time, with churches and monasteries but no priests or nuns to run
them.
Pope John Paul II was a great pope politician, who increased esteem
for the Church in international diplomacy but made little contribution towards
enhancing its relevance to the daily lives of its own faithful. The initiatives
that were being considered by the Papa Luciani (who stayed in his seat for just
33 days) concerning birth control, celibacy and other controversial issues were
swept aside. On the death of John Paul II, Joseph Ratzinger used his position as
Dean of the College of Cardinals, the primus inter pares in the interregnum
between the death of a Pope and the election of a new one, to promote his own
candidacy.
It is clear that he was elected because there was no agreement
over the Pope yet to come who would bring back to the Church the spirit of St
Francis of Assisi to rediscover its true mission. His age at the time – 78 – was
considered an asset to ensure that, during the few years of his papacy, such a
St Francis type of papal candidate would emerge.
As Benedict XVI
celebrates his 83rd birthday and the fifth anniversary of his papacy, he would
do well to invest in the Church’s future by increasing the cardinal crop with
more representatives of the poor and the meek who, according to Our Lord, shall
inherit the earth. The next Pope must not come from a rich nation but from the
poor of Africa or South America.
Pope apart, how symbolic the Iceland
volcanic eruption has been this week. The ash cloud that was spewed out by a
volcano in insignificant Iceland has closed down practically all northern
European air traffic for several days – and still counting.
It is a
message to the financial world. The resolving of the wrongdoings of Icelandic
banks, which caused a financial crisis for savers in the UK and the Netherlands,
has involved substantial amounts of taxpayers’ money. The world has become so
interdependent that the big countries cannot even disregard what happens in the
financial system of a tiny state. Much less can they shrug off their
responsibility for the financial mess in Greece.
The Greeks carry the
first line culpability, but those who let them into the monetary union knowing
they were not up to it, and those who looked the other way while the Greeks
cooked the books, cannot claim complete innocence and leave Greece to its own
fortunes. Like the Icelandic volcanic ash, a Greek sovereign default will have
unpleasant consequences, even for the best in class.
