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Politics and Religion
Catholic Churches
Modernisation and Faith - The Rôle of the Catholic Church in the Process of European Unification
Will our national identity be lost?
Address to the Pontifical Theological Academy - Cracow - 13-14 September 2002 - by Stephen Biller, Acting Secretary General of the Robert Schuman Foundation
Visitors to the European Parliament are offered a souvenir, a comic postcard depicting caricatures in human form of the national image of each Member State of the European Union. What a perfect European should be - humble as a Spaniard? The figure shows a macho vain and arrogant man!
Many people have a superficial idea of what makes a person's identity. Often through that person an idea of the collective identity of a nation is formed.
In looking at Polish national identity, let me say that in the 1980s as Secretary General of a lobby for the Polish people in the European Parliament, the Amici Poloniae, foremost was the need to help the Polish people in fending off Soviet repression and to regain their national identity.
I want to look at Polish identity from three standpoints:
- how non-Polish people view the Polish nation
- how Polish people define themselves
- the spiritual dimension of human identity in shaping the image of Poland
Let me say now that if Polish national identity will be lost by Polish membership of the European Union, then the European Union would lose the soul and energies of a great nation.
The reality is that Polish engagement in the process of European unification challenges Polish identity and the ability of Polish people to shape history in co-operation with other peoples.
I shall show that Polish engagement in Europe can strengthen Polish identity.
Let me put you at ease politically!
Robert Schuman, whose cause for beatification is being prepared, one of the Founding Fathers of the European project, wrote:
"Our European states are a historical reality. It would be psychologically impossible to make them disappear. Their diversity is something very salutary, and we should neither wish to level them nor to equalise them."
In its programme for the European elections in 1999, the parliamentary Group of the European People's Party - Christian Democrats stated: Europe must further develop its existing common cultural and political identity. Europe defines itself in equal measure through its common intellectual and spiritual heritage, its diverse national origins, and its will for a common future."
Outside Poland the picture of the Polish nation is one of faded grey and plastic, when Poland was an occupied socialist state after the second world war.
The Polish landscape was dominated by huge grey apartment blocks, utilitarian factory buildings, Soviet style houses of culture, paintings and sculpture that lauded Socialist Man, photographs in almost every office and public space of the leader of the Party.
Literature, poetry and economic statistics were dedicated to the marxian-socialist cause for those who could understand Polish.
Poland was known for an economy planned to produce an excess of anything except something of quality and performance, where there was no room for private initiative.
Somewhere in the memory of the non-Polish person there was something about Polish courage, with recollections for twentieth century Man of the Battle of the Vistula, of the Warsaw Uprising, the Poznan insurrection in 1956 and the demonstrations in Gdansk in 1971.
Of course there is much more to the mosaic of Polish history than this. I am telling it to you as it is, not as I would like that knowledge to be! For foreign cognoscenti, Polish film producers have through the decades impacted their mind with one or another aspect of Polish life and history.
Almost thirteen years have passed since the implosion of the marxian-socialist system.
A Polish Pope and the Polish nation played a significant part in ending an ideology that divided the European family.
Poland is no longer the drab grey nation.
The world outside Poland recognises this historic achievement.
It is an achievement that paves the way for the continuing unification of Europe.
It is an achievement that is part of contemporary Polish identity.
There are other pictures given of the Polish nation.
For instance, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund publish regular reports on the economy and the extent to which it is friendly for foreign investment: the business identity of Poland.
Then the European Commission publishes an annual report on Polish progress towards European accession, a document awaited like a school report on a diligent pupil. This report describes the current institutional, political, judicial, social and economic identity of Poland.
Important as these reports are, none of them identify the spiritual dimension of Polish life. We'll come to that in a moment.
Let us look at Polish identity expressed by Poles themselves.
The Polish Government now wants P O L S K A recognisable by a red and white kite, borrowing script from the Solidarnosc logo and with an anthropomorphic letter ' K '.
But a Polish person defining himself or herself as Polish will say: I am Polish.
A Polish person inherits Polish history, language, cultural traditions and Christian faith - all elements of Polish identity.
A Polish person feels a frisson of joy in hearing the Polish national anthem and raising the Polish flag.
A Polish person represents Poland with dignity and competence at the Olympic Games and in international sporting and athletic events.
A Polish person recalls with pride Polish achievements in science, medicine, engineering, literature, art, music, sports and athletics - all elements of Polish identity.
A Polish person speaks with love of the importance of his or her family, of thorough preparation for life and for work, of initiative and of creativity, all elements of the Polish identity.
A Polish person emphasises the importance of values in personal life and in the life of the nation, all elements of Polish identity.
A Polish person explains with pride the courage and sacrifices made by Polish people down the centuries for liberty and independence of Poland, all elements of Polish identity.
All these elements of Polish identity are unchanged by joining the European Union.
These elements are for always part and parcel of the historic treasury of the Polish people.
The question is: will this treasury of the Polish identity be lost by joining the European Union?
The answer can be found in the following considerations.
Even before Poland joins the European Union, the European Commission is using the General Budget of the European Union for programmes in Poland, namely the Leonardo, Socrates, Youth and Culture 2000, and Media cultural programmes, the energy conservation and alternative energy programmes, a health programme, a programme on social exclusion and a programme for the European Environment Agency. In one way or another these programmes serve the identity of the Polish nation.
Of course, the real or material world is one of cut throat competition, be it for packaged food or packaged culture!
The commercial dimension of globalisation presents a challenge to national identity.
Polish people have to ask themselves whether 39 million people can cope alone, effectively, with the onslaught of global industrial and commercial market forces.
And there I ask all who are concerned with the salvation of the Polish Nation to consider validity of the following observations.
I believe that joining the European Union is essential to the survival of Polish identity, enabling that identity as an image of the Polish nation to evolve and to strengthen.
Outside the European Union the Polish nation would be vulnerable.
Inside the European Union the Polish nation becomes the primary slav speaking nation with all that means for the use of the Polish language in the European institutions and for the presentation of Polish culture.
Through membership of the European Union, the Polish language gains equality with other languages in official use.
Through membership of the European Union, Poland is included in decision making rather than isolated.
Through membership of the European Union, Poland partakes in developments decided by the European Union rather than stagnating or frustrating outside.
Through membership of the European Union, Poland is in control of its destiny rather than being passively swept along outside.
Through membership of the European Union, Poland is at the heart of events in Europe rather than at the periphery.
Through membership of the European Union, Poland becomes part of the motor of European prosperity, with all that means for social and cultural growth in Poland, a welcome underpinning for Polish identity.
Through membership of the European Union Poland acquires the economic stability to support the security gained through membership of NATO.
Let us turn to spiritual identity. Here I want to repsond to teh desire of Professor Bartoszewici yesterday for spiritual discernment by Polish Youth.
I am partisan of the idea that every nation in Europe has a special vocation. Thus the collective vocation of individuals through faith is the opportunity to change the course of human history, as Jesus did through His death and resurrection.
There has to be more to the European project than organising markets and the legal framework for life.
The European project has to have spiritual and moral dimensions if it is to have a proper scale of priorities.
An eleventh century monk, Nikitas Stitathos, wrote" The unconfused union and conjunction of soul and body constitutes, when maintained in harmony, a single reality, whether on the visible level or in the inner being."
The single reality of Polish identity through a history marked by a Calvary of varying intensities is Christian faith.
The Polish people can, if they choose, bring a new harmony and a new vigour to the body and soul of the European project.
Can we adapt the words of Saint Paul to the Colossians to the identity of the Polish nation: Your life is hidden with Christ in God?
The Polish nation has often been humiliated through conquest by its neighbours. Each occupation left the Polish people stronger in their faith, in their culture and in their dignity.
Where did the Polish people obtain this strength?
Perhaps more than any other European nation, the Polish people have known immense suffering, none more than in the 20th century.
The deliberate attempt to annihilate the then current and future leadership of the Polish nation at Katyn, as well as the proximity of the Polish nation to the Nazi death camps, are indelibly written into the Polish identity and the history of Europe.
Was the Soviet occupation the last nail in the cross of the Polish nation before a resurrection?
For all its imperfections, being man-made, is the European project an acceptable new worldly innovation by which European history can be shaped differently from the past?
Put bluntly, can the European project be transfigured by a more powerful Christian identity within it, that of the Polish nation?
Like the man in Saint Paul's vision reported in the Acts of the Apostles: That night Paul had a vision of a man standing and begging him. Come over to Macedonia and help us.
Two reflections on that vision:
one, that pagan western Europe needs the Polish nation
two, that the Polish nation has a key Rôle to play in future expansion of the European Union, especially in working-up unity with peoples having a bedrock of orthodox Christianity.
Could it be that like a bride and groom the Polish nation is married to two cultures?
To western Christianity which endows Polish people with belonging to the family of nations lying geographically westwards, and a Slavic culture which brings about an empathy for peoples whose spiritual wellspring is orthodox Christianity.
The shared spiritual wellspring flows from the baptism of Slav peoples by those Patrons of Europe, the brothers Cyril and Methodius.
This duality in the Polish identity could be helpful in bringing about the unity of Christianity as well as of Europe.
Are we persuaded that that the work for European unity is a human and worldly response to Christ's last prayer before His crucifixion:
according to St John:
I pray that they may all be one. Father! May they be in us, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they be one, so that the world will believe that you sent me.
Perhaps the greatest challenge to any national identity is that of pardon for a neighbour.
To this day, my own country, unlike Poland, has not yet forgiven the German people for the Second World War. The Polish Bishops did so in 1971. An act of pardon to the Austrians, or to the Russians, would that be possible?
The European project depended in its infancy on Franco-German reconciliation and on new forms of solidarity and co-operation. These were the instruments for eliminating war in Europe.
How much more does Europe need today a spiritually strong nation to show the same leadership?
As a Christian nation the Polish people can, if they choose, fulfil that need.
Then, the Polish nation will disclose to the world an identity in constant metamorphosis, always Poland, always new, always strong and always courageous.
In concluding let us hear the witness of the German writer, Günther Grass:
"I have always said that the Poles are gifted,
Perhaps too gifted. But gifted for what?
They are masterly kissers of hand and cheek,
And, what is more, past masters of Melancholy and Cavalry
Don Quixote himself, you know, was a highly gifted Pole,
Who took his stand on a hillock near Kutno
With the rays of the sunset carefully at his back,
Lowering his lance, with its red-and-white pennants,
He mounted his highly ungifted charger,
And quite dependent on such beastly horsepower
Rode straight at the flank of the Field Grey ranks....
Whether it was done in a masterly fashion or otherwise,
And whether they were sheep, or windmills, or panzers,
Which kissed Don Quixote's hand, I cannot tell.
At all events, he was embarrassed, and blushed in masterly fashion,
So I cannot say exactly; but Poles are gifted."
Don't be embarrassed, don't blush, when I say to you, exactly, the peoples of Europe, indeed of the world, will discover more and more of Polish identity.
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