Word: polisher
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...religious freedom and recognition for his church undreamed of anywhere else in the Communist world. Today the cardinal and the commissar lean on each other in a breathtakingly precarious balancing act. protecting each other against extremists in both the Catholic and the Communist camp, personally opposed in everything except Polish patriotism and a talent for tough-minded compromise. It is a strange coexistence between the cross and the hammer-and-sickle. But Masses are crowded, public schools are swamped with applications for religious instruction that is once again permitted without interference. Everyone seems to be wearing crosses and holy medals...
...show that agreements with Communist governments, even when favorable to the church, are nothing to be endorsed eagerly, or for any reason but strict necessity; 2) to protect Wyszynski himself against the propaganda charge that he is a favored tool of the Vatican. Reported one Vatican correspondent: "If the Polish Communists or the Russians ever ask Wyszynski to persuade the Vatican to any particular course of action, Wyszynski might well reply: 'Go tell it to the Roman fire brigade.' " Insiders report, however, that Pius immensely admires Wyszynski, and entirely approves his policy...
Historically, the Roman Catholic Church is identified with nationalism in Poland as it is in few other countries; Poland became Catholic to avoid being gobbled up. When the pagan Polish ruler Mieszko I was attacked A.D. 963 by Saxon Warlord Count Wichman, Mieszko cannily guessed that this early German Drang nach Osten would disguise itself as a Christian missionary enterprise. To undercut this excuse, he married a Bohemian Catholic princess, took himself and country to the Church of Rome in 966. The office of primate, which in many countries degenerated into a mere courtesy title, remained in Poland...
Almost immediately, the government began to violate its side of the agreement, firing 500 priests from their posts as religious teachers, demanding that the Polish clergy sign the Stockholm peace declaration (Wyszynski refused at first, later capitulated), rounding up members of religious orders in mass arrests. Wyszynski's stock in the free world was low when in January 1953 he was made cardinal...
Wyszynski's resistance to the Communists stiffened. When a Polish bishop was tried on phony espionage charges, Wyszynski delivered an angry sermon in which he said: "Today they speak of criminals, perhaps tomorrow one will speak of holy criminals." On Sept. 25, 1953, the secret police came to take him away. Cardinal Wyszynski had still one more touch of consideration for the enemy: when one of the arresting officers was bitten by a watchdog, the cardinal insisted on personally bandaging his hand...