My guess: Tusk is using abortion as a wedge issue to create an eruption of street-level conflict as seen in 2020 that will cow Poles who are less stalwart into letting a noisy minority have their way just to keep the peace, and gain the left political power in the process. Disgusting, cynical political maneuvers not unlike the behavior of the left in our own country. I really hate this stuff.
However, the bigger issue is the secularization bit. This saddens me terribly, but it is unsurprising. It's the same story all over the post-Western world. My only hope is that Catholics in Poland can learn lessons from where this process is more advanced to head off its worst consequences. They're going to have to accept unpalatable compromises and proactively reorganize the Church so that it can operate with proper independence and authenticity. Though I suspect Tusk is insincere in his "care" about the well-being of the Church, the Church would best be served by shoring up its institutions and making a clean break from the state instead of trying to maintain a status quo that will only alienate people who need to be evangelized. It's going to feel like defeat and retreat, but it's necessary to reposition for the sake of a stronger Church in the future.
The biggest problem in Poland has been the incredibly low birth rate, lower than almost any country in Europe, reaching the dire levels of Japan and South Korea. This Polish Catholic hypocrisy has been going on for decades, where Poles loved Saint John Paul II, but never really listened to him. Before, the birth rate was only low in cities, but now even the villages and small towns, the main suppliers of priestly and religious vocations, have a very low birth rate. This is even despite the fact that the Law and Justice Party had implemented a very generous support system in which each family received about a $125 stipend per month per kid (and even additional funds for larger families), along with money paid for vacation time for kids and the Card of the Large Family for families with 3 or more kids which allowed for major discounts at stores, museums, zoos, and many perks (like first dibs for public swimming pools free of charge). I saw this dramatic decline in Poland when I was there with my familiy last summer, where the lack of children was quite obvious, especially during Sunday Masses. It was most obvious at the main Archdiocesan Corpus Christi procession in Wroclaw (the 3rd largest city in Poland) last June. In the 1980's this procession was packed with tens of thousands of people. Even in the 2000's if was quite full. Well, in 2023, my 7 year old daughter was one of only about 20 flower girls and my 9 year old son was one of only 5 boys ringing bells when there used to be hundreds of boys and girls just 20 years ago in a city with 638,000 inhabitants (Corpus Christii is a national holiday so all the kids were out of school that day).. The procession, was interupted by people walking around doing their daily shopping, making noise, looking at the few hundred people participating in the Eucharistic procession as weirdos. It broke my heart to have my Polish-American kids witness this obvious decline in faith in Poland which was not subtle, but in your face apostasy. There is no surprise that the liberals and leftists won in a country that is losing its moral backbone.
My guess: Tusk is using abortion as a wedge issue to create an eruption of street-level conflict as seen in 2020 that will cow Poles who are less stalwart into letting a noisy minority have their way just to keep the peace, and gain the left political power in the process. Disgusting, cynical political maneuvers not unlike the behavior of the left in our own country. I really hate this stuff.
However, the bigger issue is the secularization bit. This saddens me terribly, but it is unsurprising. It's the same story all over the post-Western world. My only hope is that Catholics in Poland can learn lessons from where this process is more advanced to head off its worst consequences. They're going to have to accept unpalatable compromises and proactively reorganize the Church so that it can operate with proper independence and authenticity. Though I suspect Tusk is insincere in his "care" about the well-being of the Church, the Church would best be served by shoring up its institutions and making a clean break from the state instead of trying to maintain a status quo that will only alienate people who need to be evangelized. It's going to feel like defeat and retreat, but it's necessary to reposition for the sake of a stronger Church in the future.
The biggest problem in Poland has been the incredibly low birth rate, lower than almost any country in Europe, reaching the dire levels of Japan and South Korea. This Polish Catholic hypocrisy has been going on for decades, where Poles loved Saint John Paul II, but never really listened to him. Before, the birth rate was only low in cities, but now even the villages and small towns, the main suppliers of priestly and religious vocations, have a very low birth rate. This is even despite the fact that the Law and Justice Party had implemented a very generous support system in which each family received about a $125 stipend per month per kid (and even additional funds for larger families), along with money paid for vacation time for kids and the Card of the Large Family for families with 3 or more kids which allowed for major discounts at stores, museums, zoos, and many perks (like first dibs for public swimming pools free of charge). I saw this dramatic decline in Poland when I was there with my familiy last summer, where the lack of children was quite obvious, especially during Sunday Masses. It was most obvious at the main Archdiocesan Corpus Christi procession in Wroclaw (the 3rd largest city in Poland) last June. In the 1980's this procession was packed with tens of thousands of people. Even in the 2000's if was quite full. Well, in 2023, my 7 year old daughter was one of only about 20 flower girls and my 9 year old son was one of only 5 boys ringing bells when there used to be hundreds of boys and girls just 20 years ago in a city with 638,000 inhabitants (Corpus Christii is a national holiday so all the kids were out of school that day).. The procession, was interupted by people walking around doing their daily shopping, making noise, looking at the few hundred people participating in the Eucharistic procession as weirdos. It broke my heart to have my Polish-American kids witness this obvious decline in faith in Poland which was not subtle, but in your face apostasy. There is no surprise that the liberals and leftists won in a country that is losing its moral backbone.