Skip to main navigation menu Skip to main content Skip to site footer
Teka Commission of Legal Sciences Polish Academy of Sciences Branch in Lublin

Vol. 7 (2014)

Articles

Law as an Instrument of the Communist Authorities in the Fight Against Orders in Poland

DOI: https://doi.org/10.32084/tkp.6254  [Google Scholar]
Published: 2014-12-31

Abstract

Law whose noble aim is to protect values important for man, the Nation and the state seen as the common wealth of people forming it, in its history has often been used for the fight against man and used for forceful imposing of systems unaccepted by the Nation. It was instrumentalised, becoming a tool of harm, pressure and planned repression. Instrumental treatment of law may be discerned in the cases when the behaviour of addressees of norms was manipulated in such a way that it raises moral stipulations, finding no grounds in particular either in the protection of rights of other people, or in the character, or the purpose of individual institutions. Systematic and planned actions of the communist authorities in the Polish People's Republic aimed at limiting the significance of the Catholic Church in social life. To achieve this goal, all available means were used, among them legal regulations which were treated as an important instrument of anticlerical and antimonastic policy. If Catholics in communist Poland in principle were treated as second-class citizens (limited in promotion prospects, even if they were loyal towards the regime), nuns were treated as third-class citizens, incessantly pushed off to the margin of social life, deprived not only of social promotion, but above all of basic civil rights and liberties guaranteed to every Pole by the Constitution. With the help of appropriate interpretation of legal documents the authorities of the state tried to take total control of functioning of orders, their activity and the financial base. Forms of the fight against orders in the Polish People's Republic kept changing. In the sixties, direct coercive action was abandoned, like arrests and show trials which in the assessment of security service officers brought the opposite effect, because they „gave the Church more glory of martyrdom” – whereas harassment of monastic communities with administrative and penal administrative methods was getting more and more widespread. The change of methods did not mean the abandonment of purposes i.e. the liquidation of orders.

References

  1. J. Dziobek-Romański, Pozycja prawna Kościoła katolickiego w latach 1944–1989, in: Prawo i polityka wyznaniowa w Polsce Ludowej. Materiały II ogólnopolskiego sympozjum Prawa Wyznaniowego (Kazimierz Dolny, 26–28 październik 2004), ed. A. Mezglewski, P. Stanisz, M. Ordon, Lublin 2005, pp. 145–164. [Google Scholar]
  2. B. Fijałek, Partia wobec religii i Kościoła w PRL, vol. II, part II 1964–1970, Olsztyn 2001. [Google Scholar]
  3. A. Grześkowiak, red. Represje wobec osób duchownych i konsekrowanych w PRL w latach 1944–1989, Lublin 2004. [Google Scholar]
  4. A. Mirek, Siostry zakonne w obozach pracy w PRL w latach 1954–1956, Lublin 2009. [Google Scholar]
  5. A. Mirek, Przystosowanie i opór żeńskich zgromadzeń zakonnych wobec władz komunistycznych w Polsce. Zarys problemu, „Studia z Prawa Wyznaniowego” vol. 15(2012), pp. 217–220. [Google Scholar]
  6. A. Mirek, red. Zakony żeńskie w PRL. Prawo instrumentem walki władz komunistycznych z Kościołem i zakonami w Polsce, Lublin 2009. [Google Scholar]
  7. M. Pietrzak, Prawo wyznaniowe, Warszawa 1993. [Google Scholar]
  8. B.W. Zubert, T.M. Bach, Ograniczenia w realizacji własnego charyzmatu przez instytuty zakonne w okresie rządów totalitarnych w Polsce, „Roczniki Nauk Prawnych”, vol. 4 (1994). [Google Scholar]
  9. J. Żurek, Prawo jest dla nas, a nie my dla prawa…(duchowieństwo katolickie przed sądami komunistycznymi), in: Represje wobec duchowieństwa Kościołów chrześcijańskich w okresie stalinowskim w krajach byłego bloku wschodniego, ed. J. Myszor, A. Dziurok, Katowice 2004. [Google Scholar]

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.