Concordat of Coexistence

For the first time a Communist regime and the Roman Catholic Church formally agreed to work positively together. The regime was the new national Communist government of Poland, which last week threw over Marx ("Religion is the opium of the people") and promised to remove all barriers to "the realization of the principles of full freedom of religious life" in the country. In return, the Polish Catholic hierarchy pledged "support for all the works of the people's Poland to bring together the efforts of all citizens for the welfare of the entire country."

One of the first acts of Wladyslaw Gomulka, after he shot back into power last October on a nationwide upsurge of anti-Russian feeling, was to set Stefan Cardinal Wyszynski, Primate of Poland, free from house arrest. Like Roman Catholic leaders in other Soviet satellites, the cardinal had been taken into custody during the bitter Stalinist struggle to convert the 85% Roman Catholic country to the atheist Communism of its conquerors. Back suddenly in Warsaw, and instantly a national hero. Wyszynski set an example of restraint and patience to the faithful. In sermons and public announcements, he made the same pleas as Gomulka for national unity, calm, and hard work.

Gomulka, who announced that "Communism is flexible enough for everything except permitting man to exploit man,'' was ready to try all sorts of unorthodox ways to hold Poland for Communism. He named Jerzy Sztachelski, former Minister of Health, to the new Office of Church Affairs. In return for the public pledge of support, Sztachelski quickly conceded the cardinal's representatives' two" main demands: 1) that religious instruction be given in schools for all whose parents ask it; 2) that church appointments no longer be subject to state veto. Having gained these concessions, the Vatican last week named five auxiliary bishops to long-vacant Polish dioceses in the western lands taken from Germany (the Vatican did not accredit them to specific districts so as to take no sides in the German-Polish territorial rivalry). Finally, the Gomulka government released imprisoned priests to resume their parish work in Silesia.

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