Are the political upheavals in Poland since the parliamentary elections of October 2023 likely to accelerate the erosion of the country’s Christian culture, which decades of communism had failed to dent?  

The reduction of catechism classes in schools, the ban of religious symbols from public spaces, the liberalization of abortion, along with the restriction of the conscience clause, are measures, promoted in the space of a few months by the new center-left government led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk, that have raised this question among a number of commentators. For Catholics in the West, the stakes are high, with Poland still considered the main bastion of Christianity in secularized Europe.  

According to Krzysztof Bosak, deputy speaker of the Polish Parliament, who identifies as a traditional Catholic, the fundamentally pro-family mentality and natural mistrust of the Polish people towards their government is slowing down the general process of de-Christianization, which is not sparing the homeland of St. John Paul II. 

The leader of the right-wing political alliance Confederation Liberty and Independence, Bosak was also a candidate in the 2020 presidential elections, where he finished in fourth place, with almost 7% of the national vote.  

Bosak spoke with the Register on the sidelines of the annual Vanenburg Meeting, hosted July 4-7 by the Center for European Renewal near Warsaw, around the theme “The Great and the Good.” He also discussed the defeat of the conservative Law and Justice party (PiS) in Poland’s recent parliamentary elections, the interference of European Union authorities in Polish political affairs, and the state of Catholic leadership in the country. 

 

Seen from abroad, the political situation in Poland seems rather chaotic, with ministers arrested after the new government took office, and public TV station executives evacuated by the police. What’s the situation in Parliament?  

It’s not too chaotic right now. We have a stable majority of center and left progressive forces. The arrest you mentioned was very controversial and, in my view, not in line with the Polish Constitution and law. But the situation is stable.  

I believe our legal, legislative systems and our Parliament operate in a transparent way. And I think that the Polish democratic and political culture is overall quite healthy. We do have issues with some institutions and procedures, but not with our democratic process.  

Politicians debate harshly, but we have no political violence in Poland. Elections are very well organized. The fact that we have major political changes after most elections is a proof of that.  

I actually believe that beside the necessary institutional fixing, Polish democracy could be a good example for other European countries.  

 

What is your take on the defeat of the conservatives in the 2023 national election? Why didn’t your right-wing coalition join forces with the Law and Justice party (PiS) to prevent the center-left coalition from coming to power?  

First of all, it’s quite normal in our Polish democracy that people, after one or two terms of a party, get tired and want some political change. There is no historical example of a political party accumulating three mandates in a row.  

In my opinion, PiS lost not because of their political line, but mostly because of economic and public-relation issues. 

From the perspective of the Confederation Liberty and Independence, a party which represents true right-wing parties, national conservatives or conservative libertarians with traditionalist views, we believe that PiS supported centrist or even globalist and leftist agendas, which discredited them with the public opinion.  

For example, they introduced an open-border policy, which resulted in an explosion of legal immigration that reached millions, mostly from Ukraine, Belarus and Russia, but also from Central, Eastern Asia and India. Many came also from Northern Africa, and to a lesser degree from the Middle East. That’s how they started building a multicultural society in Poland. And they avoided any honest debate in Parliament about this issue; in fact, they even tried to hide the data. They were very hypocritical on immigration, publicly criticizing immigration and multiculturalism, while supporting a policy of open borders to our labor market on a practical level.  

The second big issue is the European Union. They supported almost all the bad ideas coming from the EU, such as the Green Deal, the appointment of Ursula von der Leyen as head of the European Commission, the long-term LGBT agenda.  

They also made problematic decisions in the agriculture field that favored Ukrainian farmers on the Polish market, to the detriment of our local farmers.   

Their economic policy was also center-left-leaning. They increased public debt, raised taxes and introduced many new ones; they expanded social expenses more than any government since the communist era. They centralized almost everything. They’ve always believed in big government.  

During the COVID crisis, their policy was mainstream: They introduced lockdowns; they tried to introduce, in vain, the “green pass,” mandatory vaccination; they bought many more vaccines than we have people in Poland.  

Now, they represent for many people in Poland, including conservatives, an example of ineffective and unprofessional governance.  

 

It seems that abortion also weighed heavily on the outcome of the vote, with the unprecedented mobilization of women seen by analysts as the result of the PiS government’s policies on the issue.  

I don’t think this analysis is accurate. Women in Poland are very divided on the issue of abortion, like on every other issue. There are many pro-life women, there are pro-abortion women, and there is a big part of women in the middle who don’t have any strong opinion on the matter.  

It is also important to underline that, regarding the defense of life, PiS did nothing for the past five years. Prior to the 2020 Constitutional Court’s ruling which prohibited eugenic abortion, they ignored the citizens’ pro-life petition signed by hundreds of thousands of Poles. And they waited for months before making the constitutional ruling public. Again, their stance was not that of a pro-life party but rather that of a centrist party. They’ve been avoiding this issue as much as possible.  
 

If the previous government was centrist, how do you explain the fact that the EU hierarchy decided to release the funds allocated to Poland just after the PiS left power, without waiting for any concrete proof that the improvement of the rule-of-law mechanisms — a sine qua non condition for obtaining the funds — was effective? 

For Eurocrats, being a mainstream-center-right party in Poland already means being conservative on many issues, starting with the LGBT agenda. I should say that PiS didn’t promote any LGBT agenda and was openly against it, but its leaders did nothing against their affiliated organizations in Poland. They have been steadily operating and growing in the country over the past years. But the mere criticism of these lobby groups is enough to become a public enemy in the eyes of the EU technocrats.  

Basically, they attacked the PiS government because of its rhetoric that sounded too patriotic and sovereigntist.  

And, of course, what was also a problem was its close ties with Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and the building of initiatives designed to strengthen Central-East European alliances, like the Visegrad Group, against the Western establishment. It was halted by the Russian aggression against Ukraine since Poland and Hungary adopted different response strategies. But bureaucrats and European Union officials remember this ambition to build something independent, a regional center of political power.  

The whole picture is complicated, but it’s obvious that bureaucrats in Brussels used the term “rule of law” only cynically, using their political power to support their ally Donald Tusk and his government, made of people who have good connections with bureaucrats.  

We have a joke in the Polish public debate, concerning the so-called milestones for obtaining EU funds, such as COVID or recovery funds, that the most important but hidden milestone for the EU hierarchy was to change the government. And that’s what happened.  

 

The greatest concern for Christians outside Poland is that, in the context of rampant de-Christianization, they have regarded Poland as a bastion of spiritual resistance. Yet, with the recent series of measures like the ban of religious signs in public spaces or the reduction of religious education in schools, the landscape seems to have changed so quickly. Is it the end of Catholic Poland?  

Poland is undergoing, like every European country, a constant and slow secularization process. But public opinion abroad is noticing radical consequences of such a process just now. The Polish society is becoming post-Christian, too, but these changes are quite slow and not homogeneous. Eastern and southern Poland is more Christian, more traditional, while western and northern Poland, as well as big cities, are more secular.  

We also have evil forces operating in public life to push Polish society to be more progressive, more post-Christian, even anti-Christian.  

In many Polish institutions, such as universities, the media and cultural establishments, the staff remained the same after the fall of communism. In the early ’90s, our democracy began with 100% of the administration obeying the communist regime. Society itself remained fairly traditional and religious, but university staff, particularly in the humanities and media, were controlled by the Communist Party. These people were all socialists and Marxists. Some of them still hold the highest positions. 

The Church in Poland has suffered from the same phenomenon. A large part of the Catholic elite grew up during the communist era, with all the positive and negative aspects that this entails. Some prominent Catholic bishops and intellectuals fought against communism and are sometimes quite tough. But they may also be unfamiliar with the language of liberal democratic society and don’t always know how to address today’s young people. Their language is still that of the ’80s and ’90s.  

Moreover, the mainstream of Polish Catholicism at the end of the 20th century was often shaped by intellectual trends close to existentialism, humanism and Marxism. Now is not the time for dialogue with Marxists or progressive liberals. It’s time to win the cultural war against them. And older Catholic leaders, whose minds are still stuck in the ’80s, continue to prioritize dialogue with everyone. This has proved totally ineffective at every level and in every field.  

Add to this the lack of religious education of a majority of Polish Catholics to deal with current ideological threats, and new religious communities from outside Europe, and the situation is indeed critical.  

 

In this light, is there any future for Christian and pro-life politicians in Poland? Do you see any possibility of renewal? 

Of course, the need for lucidity in the face of the country’s realities does not prevent me from being optimistic. I’m convinced we have a bright future before us. Because we, Christian politicians, are in political life; we are in Parliament; we are in the public debate; we speak in mainstream media; we can defend our values. 

But we have to work hard. We also need support from abroad, especially from the U.S., by sending more educated speakers to Poland, for example. It’s important to extend cooperation with Catholic organizations to alert as many people as possible to the threat facing the West.  

In fact, the typical leader of a Catholic community in Poland, who lives in a smaller town, grew up in a quite conservative environment, tends to believe that their historical culture and religion is still a given, and that it will be for the generations to come. They do not see the civilizational dangers. This is why I’m here at this international gathering, for I believe that we need more international alliances to awaken consciences and create a stronger Christendom together.   

But I’m optimistic because I believe Christianity is somewhat still part of the Polish DNA. The bright side of the mass experience of communism is that it made the Poles generally very skeptical towards any radical policies undermining their freedom. We’re quite close to the American political culture, in this regard. Civil liberties, the independence of our community is very important to us. And we are also a strongly pro-family nation. Although the birth rate is quite bad now, declared values are still pro-family and pro-children.  

I also hope we can restore a decent birth rate in Poland. I’m one of the few who believe it’s possible to reverse the trend if we create the conditions for a new collective mindset.