- Non possumus has to be said – asserts Archbishop Marek Jędraszewski, Metropolitan of Kraków in an interview with Paweł Lisicki, Maciej Szymanowski and Wojciech Wybranowski.
Q. Archbishop, in your opinion, today do we find ourselves in Poland and in the European Union, in a situation of 'non possumus' in terms of civil rights and the rights of Catholics to express their own opinions?
Fr. Abp. Marek Jędraszewski: I am certain that this is the last moment to say "non possumus" out loud. I don't know if the West has tried to communicate it so clearly. It rather seems that the purely functional side of democracy was believed in - as if the mechanism of democratic elections were a value in itself, creating other values. However, in my opinion, one should uncompromisingly bear in mind what John Paul II wrote in the "Centesimus Annus" encyclical, published in 1991 on the one hundredth anniversary - as the title of this document indicates - of the first social teaching encyclical of the Church "Rerum Novarum", published by Leon XIII. In the 46th issue of Centesimus Annus, the Holy Father stated that 'history teaches that democracy without values can easily turn into open or disguised totalitarianism'. I remember well the discussions that took place in the Polish press a month later, in June of the same year, when the Pope came to Poland with another pilgrimage, making it along the "Decalogue trail". Some media wrote then: how dare he say such a thing to us, he knows nothing about democracy, he was good at fighting against communism, but he will not teach us about democracy. Meanwhile, during this pilgrimage, John Paul II referred to fundamental issues: who we are as people, what our civilization and culture should look like, just when we, as Poles, finally have the opportunity, more than fifty years after the outbreak of the Second World War, to shape our national and state existence. He emphasized with great force that this existence must be built on the principles of the Decalogue. The left-wing and liberal circles felt particularly affected by the Pope's words, which were heard all over Poland from Kielce, where he practically shouted, warning against the fiction of freedom associated with abortion presented by these circles as a manifestation of freedom. ("Beyond the truth, freedom is not freedom. It is a pretence, a slave. (...) Maybe that's why I speak as I do, because this land is my mother, my Homeland" – edit.). I was in Kraków at that time, sitting my postdoctoral examination, and I could not understand how some of the local priests said: "What right did he have to say that?". Already then, not only in openly liberal circles, but also in other circles, the narrative about the superiority of democratic procedures was stronger than the continuation of certain values as the foundation of a genuine democracy.
Q. Is the youngest generation somehow a special addressee of the Archbishop's message on fundamental rights?
A. This is a message for everyone, both older and younger. However, young people are not yet entirely contaminated with various narratives, there is a certain purity of thinking, a certain sensitivity to truth, to goodness and beauty - and if they come across a clear and demanding message, but on presenting good prospects for life, they accept it.
Q. This is a victory for legal positivism in Europe. So in truth what really matters is the will of the legislator. If the legislator - that is, the majority - decides 'yes', then it is 'yes', and if 'no', then it is 'no'. Yet we have the experience of the Second World War, where Nazi and Communist totalitarianism, crossing all borders, were based on the cult of the legislator's will. Both Hitler and Stalin said: “I am the state”. Why the victory of this radical legal positivism, which believes that everything that man determines is right?
A. For some time after the Second World War this positivism was questioned, but it was a very short and not thought through properly. Not properly - because at the Nuremberg trial, during which the concept of natural law was reinstated, only Hitler’s Nazism was condemned, but no words of criticism or judgment were directed against the even more criminal totalitarian communist system. Legal positivism, which you mentioned, appeared in the second half of the 19th century. In my opinion, it is a certain consequence of the questioning the objective values that already existed at that time. However, if we were looking for a time caesura, indicating when, after the Nuremberg trial, natural law was abandoned and legal positivism returned, I would point to 1968. The authors of the revolution of '68 were three gentlemen starting with an "M": Marx, Mao Tse Tung and Marcuse. Through the base and superstructure theory, and therefore through the simple dependence of people's way of thinking on socio-economic conditions, Marx questioned the objective nature of all values. In 1966 Mao Tse Tung carried out the so-called cultural revolution, which consisted in a total negation of the entire great and wonderful history of China, trying to build the whole civilisation anew together with the Red Guards and a red book in his hands, which supposedly contained in itself the answer to all human and social matters. In turn Herbert Marcuse in his book "Eros and Civilisation", published in 1955, undermined all moral limitations that relate to the sexual life of a human being. One of the symbolic manifestations of the fact that something radically burst in 1968 was the slogan of the revolted youth studying at the Parisian Sorbonne: "Ni Dieu ni Maître, Dieu c'est moi", that is: "Neither God nor master, I am God"...
Q. Or the "It is forbidden to forbid" phrase...
A. "Il est interdit d'interdire" - that's how the famous slogan sounded in French. In essence, it constituted a challenge to the Decalogue itself, since, in addition to the third and fourth Commandments, it was formulated in a negative way, that is, in the form of prohibitions. Meanwhile, the revolution of ‘68 in the name of absolute human freedom challenging the Judeo-Christian heritage, which was built on the commandments of the Decalogue, starting with the first commandment: " Thou shalt have no other gods before me," and which has become the foundation of all Western culture. Let’s not be surprised, therefore, that by rejecting this foundation, the revolution of 1968 turned to a typically pagan world. Marcuse, for example, rejecting the sixth commandment, in his book "Eros and civilization" introduced the figures of Orpheus and Narcissus, taken from Greek mythology, as archetypes of human behaviour in the sphere of sexuality. He depicted Orpheus as a symbol of one great praise for hedonism and use, while for him Narcissus was an archetype of a man who was only looking at himself, at his own ego. The Woodstock Festival, which took place a year later, in August 1969, under the slogan "Peace, Love and Happiness", was supposed to be the realization of these archetypes "in real life" in the intentions of the organizers. Meanwhile, the reality of Woodstock was truly shocking: it is said that the wonderful "flower children" became a crowd of several hundred thousand young people, rolling in mud, half naked, under the influence of alcohol and drugs, with blaring sounds of rock music.
Q. Do you agree that the fate of János Esterházy is symbolic of the fate of Poles, Hungarians and the whole Central Europe in the 20th century?
A. This is a difficult question, but to some extent the answer is that in the spring of this year in Krakow his beatification process began at the first, i.e. diocesan, stage. This event was allowed to take place because the Holy See, at my request, gave its nihil obstatement consent. From that moment on, János Esterházy can enjoy the title of Servant of God. It is now necessary to continue to act in accordance with the provisions of the Code of Canon Law. If the result of the process at the diocesan level is positive, all the procedural documents will be forwarded to the Vatican. There, further procedures will take place in the Congregation for the Causes of Saints. If they are also successful and God bestows a miracle upon us through the cause of the Servant of God, János Esterházy, he will be proclaimed a blessed of Catholic Church. Therefore, we still have a long way to go, and hence a lot of time which may be blessed for all of us, because it will hopefully be an opportunity for the nations of Central and Eastern Europe to recognize and welcome their patron saint. In the spiritual dimension, János Esterházy will become "a symbol of the fate of Poles, Hungarians and the whole Central Europe in the 20th century".
Q. But you were touched by him…
A. Indeed, this individual moved me deeply. The history of this man is truly a picture of a kind of the history of this part of Europe: Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. A man who grew up in the belle époque, and certainly his parents grew up in that era: his mother, Elżbieta Tarnowska, Count Stanisław Tarnowski's daughter, and a father from the old aristocracy in Transylvania. Suddenly, unexpectedly, for almost everyone, although the European conflict had been simmering for many years, in August 1914 the Great War broke out - this is how the First World War was called then. A certain world order irretrievably ended, and a new one began. To some extent, the Battle of Łódź painting is a depiction of it. Do you know what the battle was, gentlemen?
Q. No…
A. I didn't know either, until a few years ago when I found myself in Łódź. It was the most bloody battle in the history of mankind, even more bloody than the one at Verdun. According to statistics, about 3,000 soldiers per day died in Verdun and about 10,000 soldiers per day in Łódź. It was a battle that took place from mid-November to early December 1914 between the Russian army and the German army. Unfortunately, many Poles were also killed fighting on both sides: in the "Posen" Corps on the German side, and on the Russian side in the Siberian divisions, where, especially in the 24th Siberian Regiment, Polish lads from Mazowsze and other areas were incorporated by force. The battle was not decisive, but it was the first time that armoured weapons were used, and the first time that combat gases were used several years before Ypres - which is hardly. About 280,000 people died within a month. Łódź itself, as a city, did not suffer much, but became a great hospital for both sides of the war. A terrible slaughter, which to some extent became a harbinger of what was to happen during the Second World War.
For us, Poles, the First World War ended happily, because as a result we regained independence, but for our invaders - for Russia, for imperial Germany and for Austria-Hungary - it became a huge defeat. It was also a disaster for Hungary itself, which, under the peace treaty of Trianon, lost territory. Among other things, they lost Upper Hungary, which became part of Czechoslovakia. In the new political situation, János Esterházy, living in that country, became the spokesperson for its Hungarian minority. When the Second World War broke out, Esterházy, a politician representing the Hungarian minority, became a man who understood that in the face of the confrontation with both totalitarian systems - the Bolshevik and Nazi - the time had come to fight for the Holy Cross, for a Europe built on Christian traditions. It was to this end that he dedicated his entire life, until 1945, helping all those who expected this help: not only Hungarians, but also Poles, Jews, Czechs, Slovaks. In 1939, after the September defeat, he took General Sosnkowski by car to Budapest, allowing him to continue his journey to France. After the war he was arrested by the Czech communists, then sent to Soviet camps and sentenced to death in Czechoslovakia. He miraculously avoided the execution of this verdict, because almost at the last moment a member of the Czechoslovak government of that time, a Jew by origin, whom Esterhazy saved during the war, stood up for him. The death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. The last years of his life saw him being sent from prison to prison, to the ever worsening conditions of his prison existence, which he lived in a spirit of profound faith in Christ, helping his fellow prisoners, strengthening, giving hope, though he suffered greatly, incredibly exhausted and deprived of the most basic medical aid. Finally, he asked God to die after receiving sacramental absolution. And so it happened - he died in the hands of a fellow prisoner, who was a Greek Catholic bishop.
Q. He saw people in need...InA. For him, every person, especially a co-prisoner, was someone who had to be saved in the name of the True Cross - especially from a moral decline so easy in the Soviet system of camps and then in Czechoslovak prisons. Now that the EU is being created mainly on economic principles, with a brutal game of business dominating, it turns out that there is someone who has brought together Polish, Hungarian, Czech and Slovak peoples by his origin, history and achievements, and who was faithful to the principles of the Christian faith to the very end. The story of János Esterházy shows that Europe still needs a Christian spirit, thanks to which it can emerge victorious from all the dangers - today mainly neo-Marxist - trying to deprive it of its own noble tradition and identity.
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