Catholicism and Nationalism

Catholicism and Nationalism

This book addresses the adaptation of nationalism to the sharing of sovereignty with other nations in supranational arrangements beyond the state or with nations and nationalities within the state. It compares two cases, Poland and Spain, where the outcome of these processes of transformation differed: whereas in Spain a unified right wing partially reconciled Spain with the Catalonian, Basque and Galician nationalisms, in Poland the right wing was structured around two opposed conceptions of Polish nationalism and their relation to other nations. The book relates the transformation of nationalism in Poland and Spain, where the national and religious identity was closely interconnected, with the interaction between the Catholic Church and the political regimes in the second part of the 20th century. Catholicism and Nationalism argues that the decision of the Polish hierarchy to mobilize National Catholicism as a political identity in the early years of democracy had a lasting impact on the shape of the right wing and, ultimately, also on the consolidation of an introverted nationalism skeptical of European integration. Madelena Meyer Resende is Senior Lecturer at the Department of Political Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanistics, New University of Lisbon.

Extremism and Democracy Series Editors: Roger Eatwell, University of Bath, and Matthew Goodwin, University of Nottingham. Founding Series Editors: Roger Eatwell, University of Bath and Cas Mudde, University of Antwerp-UFSIA.

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Catholicism and Nationalism Changing nature of party politics

Madalena Meyer Resende

First published 2015 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2015 Madalena Meyer Resende The right of Madalena Meyer Resende to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-0-415-67007-4 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-74992-1 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Taylor & Francis Books

Contents

List of figures Preface Abbreviations Introduction

viii ix xi xiii

1

Nationalism and Catholicism: concepts and processes

2

National Catholicism and the church under authoritarian regimes

15

3

The church political strategies during the transition

35

4

The impact of church strategies on party system consolidation and survival of National Catholicism 50

5

The outcome: the reformulation of the nationalist discourses in Spain and Poland

71

Conclusion

88

References Index

91 104

6

1

Figure

1.1 Trajectories of church, parties and nationalism

3

Preface

My work on this book started several years ago in Lisbon and was finished in Berlin. The book is at the intersection of distinct literatures: of religious actors as political agents, of political parties and of nationalism, and it aims at providing a coherent argument linking the three strands of scholarship. During the research and writing of the book I have been fortunate to have the support of mentors, colleagues and friends in academia, in Portugal, Britain and Germany. I started the project as a researcher at the Portuguese Institute for International Relations in Lisbon, where a conducive environment for research and creativity was established thanks to the commitment of Carlos Gaspar, who is partially responsible for the journey that led me to this book, and Nuno Severiano Teixeira. My colleagues and friends Isabel Alcario, Carmen Fonseca, Daniel Marcos and Monica Fonseca were a daily company who made the vicissitudes of research much more joyful. At the Department of Political Studies of the New University of Lisbon I later came to enjoy the privilege of a collegial environment of teaching and research. I would like to thank first José Esteves Pereira and Pedro Tavares de Almeida for their support, but also my colleagues Marco Lisi, Tiago Moreira de Sá, Catherine Moury, Rui Branco and Tiago Fernandes. As a guest researcher at Europa Universitaet Viadrina I profited from the helpful advice of Michael Minkenberg and the enthusiasm of Anja Hennig, who read several parts of the book and provided invaluable comments. Equally, I express my appreciation for the friendship of Mirjam Künkler, who has inspired my interest in the theme of religion and politics, and of Katarzyna and Jan Skórzyn´ski, for their generous help and sharing of precious insights on the processes described in the book. I would also like to thank the editor of the series Extremism and Democracy, Roger Eatwell, and the editorial assistants at Routledge, as

x

Preface

well as two anonymous reviewers for supporting the project from its early stages. Last, it is my family who have made it all possible. First, my parents Antero and Teresa Resende, who have been the pillars of our family. Last, Michael, my husband, who together with Sofia and Charlotte are the companions of many adventures throughout Europe. It is to them that this book is dedicated.

Abbreviations

ACNdP AP AWS CCCO CD CiU ETA EU HOAC ISKK SAC KAW KIE KIK KLD KOR LPR PCE PDC PDP PiS PL PNV PO PP PSL PSOE PZPR RPR RS AWS SdRP

National Association of Catholic Propagandists Popular Alliance Electoral Action Solidarity Workers’ Commissions Christian Democrats [Catalan] Convergence and Union Basque Homeland and Freedom European Union Workers’ Brotherhoods of the Catholic Action Catholic Church Statistical Institute Catholic Electoral Action Committee for European Integration Club of Catholic Intellectuals Coalition of Liberal Democrats Committee for the Defense of Workers League of Polish Families Spanish Communist Party Democratic Pact for Catalonia Christian Democratic Party Law and Justice Liberal Party Basque National Party Civic Platform Popular Party Polish Peasant Party Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party Polish United Workers Party (Polish Communist Party) Movement for the Republic AWS Social Movement Social Democracy of the Polish Republic

xii

Abbreviations

SKL SLD UCD UD UDF UW ZChN

Conservative People’s Party Democratic Left Alliance Union of Democratic Centre Union for Democracy Union for French Democracy Union for Freedom Christian National Union

Introduction

This book addresses the adaptation of nationalism to the sharing of sovereignty with other nations in supranational arrangements beyond the state, like the European Union, or with nations and nationalities within the state. The book compares the adaptation of nationalism in Spain, where a unified right-wing partially reconciled Spain with the Catalonian, Basque and Galician nationalisms, and Poland, where two opposed conceptions of nationalism divided the post-Solidarity right. The book relates the transformation of nationalism in Poland and Spain and the Catholic Church’s interaction with political regimes in the second part of the 20th century. The main point of the book is that the decision of the Polish hierarchy to mobilize National Catholicism as a political identity in the early years of democracy had a lasting impact on the shape of the right wing and, ultimately, also on the consolidation of an introverted nationalism skeptical of European integration. The effects of the engagement of the Polish church with National Catholic forces appear more vivid when compared with the neutrality of the Spanish Catholic church regarding political parties during the transition. With no support from the Spanish hierarchy, Catholic political forces remained fragmented; the religious divide declined in political relevance and was no longer a source of disagreement among the right wing forces. The comparison between Spain and Poland highlights the importance of the politicization of religious identities for the development of party systems. Although the Catholic Church was a relevant actor in the transition to democracy of other countries in Southern and Central Europe, in no other case its social and political weight was of such high strategic importance for the fate of political divisions and the reformulation of nationalism. The comparative trajectory of the two cases serves as a fitting illustration of the causal relations between the

xiv Introduction trajectories of the church in Poland and Spain during the instauration, establishment and the demise of authoritarian regimes and the prominence of nationalist parties in opposition to European integration. Whereas the Polish church saw democracy as an opportunity to increase its authority after decades of persecution by the communist regime, in Spain the Catholic hierarchy, satisfied with its hegemonic position in social and cultural spheres but weary of its association with Franco, was willing to trade state privileges for freedom from political interference, and thus saw transition as an opportunity to disengage from the political sphere. The next pages summarize the key points of the trajectories of church and state interaction, and its effect on the shape of the party systems and the reform of introverted nationalism.

The interactions between the Polish church, political parties and nationalism The church response to the communist regime in Poland was determined by the resolve to survive the attack of a totalitarian atheist regime. In 1945, as Stalin imposed communist rule on Poland, the main strength of the church was the identification of Polish national survival with Catholicism and a renewed support for the church as a protector of the nation against foreign assault. Unlike other Central and Eastern European countries under communism, the church in Poland maintained a substantial degree of autonomy. After the crisis of communism in October 1956, the rehabilitated communist leader Stanisław Gomułka established a pact with Cardinal Wyszynski. In exchange of freedom of cult, which the church used to strengthen its position, the regime won clerical support to stabilize the country. To mobilize the faithful the church started in 1960 the Novena of the Millennium, a program to prepare for the celebration of the millennium anniversary of the baptism of First Polish King Miesko I in 966. Inspired by the introverted National Catholic conceptions, the program postulated the primarily religious roots of the Polish nation and the role of the church as its protector against foreign attack. Because Cardinal Wyszynski consolidated church resistance to communism on nationalist grounds, the doctrinal changes of the Vatican Council II, in particular those regarding the independence of the religious and political spheres. Introverted nationalism was the basis of a protective attitude against Vatican interference on Polish affairs. Nevertheless, the Council strengthened the universalist and progressive faction of the Polish church, which had its basis on the Clubs

Introduction

xv

of Catholic Intellectuals (KIK) and their publications, legalized by the regime during the 1956 crisis. Due to its role in the Council, Karol Wojtyła, Archbishop of Krakow since 1964, became the author and protagonist of a universalist resistance to the regime: that communism infringed on Human Rights and was thus illegitimate. In the late sixties, partially as a result of Vatican Council II’s influence, Catholic liberal lay groups grew stronger and politically more relevant (Gregg 2002: 60). In the pre-transition period the response of the church to communist repression was marked by the alliance with former Marxist dissidents estranged by the regime during the Warsaw student revolts of 1968. A loose anti-communist cooperation between the “Church and the Left” developed, involving new dissident organizations such as the Committee for the Defense of Workers (KOR). Left-wing intellectuals formed the core of KOR, but progressive Catholic clerics such as Father Jan Zieja were also founding members and the group had strong links with the Warsaw KIK (Osa 2003: 181). The election of Karol Wojtyła to the papacy in 1978 gave this anti-communist alliance a new thrust and a global dimension. The alliance of workers, the Catholic Church and the secular dissidents resulted in the creation of the Solidarity trade union in 1980, which caused a far-reaching mobilization of Polish society from its legalization in September 1980 until its legal extinction in December 1981. During the 1980–81 crisis the Polish church acted both as a supporter and as a mediator between Solidarity and the communist government. It can be argued, however, that the church’s long-lasting impact on Solidarity was the joint formulation of a conception of friendly relations with other nations, which resulted in a reversal of Poland’s historically strained relation with its neighbors during the democratic transition. After the imposition of martial law and the suppression of Solidarity in December 1981, the Pope upheld the credibility of the underground opposition through his apostolic visits to Poland. The Polish church, despite the division between National Catholics and progressive universalists, was united in its plight against communism. In 1988 progressive bishops took the mediators in the negotiations with Solidarity and the church remained a key facilitator of agreements between the regime and the opposition during and after the round table negotiations. Between 1989 and 1993 Polish Foreign Minister Krzysztof Skubiszewski implemented a pro-European policy, resulting not only in the primacy of the policy of Polish membership of Euro-Atlantic institutions but also in the improvement of relations with neighboring nations. Skubiszewski’s priority was the establishment of relations with Germany

xvi

Introduction

but, from 1991 to 1994, Polish diplomacy also signed bilateral treaties of friendship and good-neighborhood with Ukraine, Lithuania and Belarus. Both policies were based on Solidarity’s formulation of a Polish extroverted nationalism. Although the church was an important source of Solidarity’s universalist spirit, after the split between the liberal intelligentsia and Lech Wałe˛ sa, the hierarchy engaged with National Catholics. The progressive intelligentsia’s preference for a secular state went against the Polish church’s strong resolve to use the opportunities offered by the transition to gain clerical authority over issues of morality and public affairs. Thus, the Episcopate took sides with Lech Wałe˛ sa, arguing that he was the “real” Pole in the National Catholic tradition. In the October 1991 parliamentary elections the hierarchy supported National Catholic parties and the ‘Catholic block’ accounted for 25 percent of the parliamentary seats. Also, the church’s direct influence on decision-makers, both during the ordinary legislative process and in the framing of the concordat and a new constitution contributed to the further politicization of religious issues. Left and liberal forces fought the Polish hierarchy and National Catholic political forces over the concession of extensive privileges to the church. The demand of extensive privileges was defended on the basis of National Catholic arguments, which portrayed the nation as a millennial community of Catholic Poles forged in war and under foreign occupation. Although the divide between National Catholics and liberal minded political elites continued to deepen in the late nineties, in the summer of 1996 the post-Solidarity forces formed a temporary alliance – the Electoral Action Solidarity (AWS), to compete in the autumn 1997 elections. However, the heterogeneity of political forces prevented its consolidation. The demise of the AWS in 2001 cleared the way for the institutionalization of the division between liberal conservatives and National Catholics. The party of the twin brothers Kaczyn´ski, the Law and Justice party (PiS), adopted the National Catholic mantle and a triad of liberal conservative politicians established the Civic Platform (PO). The PO and the PiS adopted opposing attitudes towards other nations and European integration; the PO’s Europhilism contrasted with the PiS assigning to Poland the statute of a millennial Catholic nation fighting for survival against Russian and German enemies. The party’s National Catholic identity was first established in Jarosław Kaczyn´ski’s programmatic speech at the party’s National Constitutional Convention in 2003, and was further developed in the following

Introduction

xvii

decade. The two parties translated their national doctrines into foreign policy. Intense squandering with Poland’s neighbors and skepticism towards European integration marked the PiS term in office (2005–07), whereas the PO governments since 2007 restored the pro-European path of Polish foreign policy, turning Poland into an important partner of Germany in Europe.

The interactions between the Spanish church, political parties and nationalism In Spain, the political polarization of the Second Republic (1933–1936) resulted in the mobilization of the church at the eve of the military coup of August 1936 against the threat posed by left-wing atheism. The violence against Catholic clerics during the early months of the war in the zones under Republican control further pushed the hierarchy to support Franco’s military coup, and to legitimate it as a crusade against communist infidels. The only significant exception to the support of the church to Franco was the Basque church’s support for the Republicans. The victory of the nationalist forces in 1939 resulted in the establishment of church privileges by the Franco regime, in what turned out to be a forty-year embrace of church and state. In 1942, as a consequence of the declining fate of the axis powers in World War II, Franco started to downgrade the Fascist elements in the Movimiento Nacional. To mitigate the international ostracism and isolation that the regime faced after the war, two months after the formal defeat of the Axis in May 1945, Franco performed a cabinet reshuffle in which he replaced influential Falangist ministers with Catholic figureheads and elevated National Catholicism to the regime’s ideology (Payne 1978: 350–367). The concordat between the Spanish state and the Vatican was signed in 1953, sealing the completion of a National Catholic regime, where the church was given political representation, social recognition and ideological hegemony over Spain. Franco gave the church a large set of privileges, such as mandatory canonical marriages for all Catholics and exemption from government taxation, and in return he obtained the right to name bishops and a veto over the appointments of all clerics. The Catholic hierarchy took full advantage of the new situation by re-establishing its position, in particular in those regions where it had lost ground during the Republic and the Civil War: Catalonia and the Basque country. The church was thus an instrument for the reestablishment of a “united, strong and free Spain” and continued to uphold the introverted rhetoric that positioned Catholic Spain against peripheral nationalisms.

xviii

Introduction

Despite the privileges granted to them, the Catholic hierarchy maintained a lingering skepticism towards National Catholic system, in particular towards Franco’s control over clerical appointments. By the end of the fifties Catholic political groups constituted the backbone of the reformist wing of Franco’s party, the Movimiento Nacional. The opposition of Basque Catholics to Franco’s centralist model was equally a stumbling stone to the unity of Catholicism and the Spanish nation. In the late sixties the Vatican Council II brought doctrinal changes that strengthened the progressive groups within the Spanish clergy and laity (Linz 1991a: 166), and strenghened the aperturista wing of the Movimiento (Palomares 2005: 143). The abandon of the church doctrine stating that the state had special duties towards God undermined the legitimacy of the Franco regime, whereas the encouragement for the political engagement of the laity in Lumen Gentio resulted in the alliance of Catholics and the left wing. In the late sixties Pope Paul VI started using its veto over bishops’ appointments to force a change in the Episcopal Conference, most crucially through support to the appointment of moderate reformer Archbishop Vicente Tarancón as leader of the Spanish hierarchy. Despite the regime’s power over the appointment of bishops Pope Paul VI forced the promotion of progressive clerics to auxiliary bishops in vacant dioceses. In 1971 these bishops were given the right to vote in the Episcopal Conference and quickly proceeded to call a Joint Assembly of Bishops and Priests, and issued the first statement condemning the association of the church with Franco. After assuming the chairmanship of the Episcopal Conference Tarancón promoted the church’s disengagement from the Franco regime, and the Episcopate became progressively a pro-democratic force, defending that a plurality of political opinions could be derived from faith (Patino 1984: 164). Although conservative counterforces in the church, such as the Opus Dei, tried to oppose the reformist trend and attempted to form a National Catholic political party, with no support from the Spanish hierarchy nor the Vatican, the effort was unrewarded. On the eve of the transition the combination of lay opposition movements, the Catholic political elite in the semi-opposition, the Basque nationalist priests and the majority of the bishops under the leadership of Cardinal Tarancón made the church an important pro-democratic actor. Crucially, the church was willing to exchange the privileges obtained under Franco for the freedom to devote itself to its religious function. Despite its intense political role during the first half of the 1970s, the hierarchy of the Spanish church took the transition as an opportunity to disengage from politics, in particular by abandoning the project of

Introduction

xix

creating a strong confessional party. This was a crucial step because Christian democrats, although being central actors among the semiopposition and holding key ministerial positions in the transitional government of Adolfo Suarez (July 1976–June 1977), were also extremely fragmented. Without the weight of the hierarchy to sway them into one party, these forces remained divided and weak. During the negotiation of the new democratic constitution (August– September 1977) the hierarchy supported church disestablishment and the Episcopate used caution and restraint when arguing for the church recognition. The result was a mitigated secularism where religious freedom was guaranteed and the role of the church acknowledged. The framers of the 1978 constitution also reached a partial compromise on the territorial formula, although the ambiguities, internal contradictions and omissions in the constitutional provisions resulted in an incomplete settlement. By failing to distinguish properly the historical nationalities (Catalonia, Basque Country and Galicia) from the remaining regions, the constitution left the final form of the territorial organization to be decided by ordinary politics. A hybrid semi-federal regime where all regional autonomies gained similar powers took form through secondary legislation, leaving Catalan and Basque unsatisfied. The second pillar of the National Catholic system – a centralized state – was replaced by a semi-federal system. The pacification of both the secular-religious and the center-periphery conflicts was concomitant with the victory of a center-right coalition of Christian democrats, liberals and nationalists, the Union of Democratic Centre (UCD), in the June 1977 parliamentary elections. Although the UCD disintegrated in 1981, the party played a crucial role in resolving the conflicts between liberals, Christian democrats and nationalists and provided a model for a future center-right party. The ex-Francoist Allianza Popular replaced the UCD as the largest right-wing party in the 1982 elections with 25 percent of the vote. In 1989 the AP transformed into the Partido Popular (PP) – a coalition of center-right forces that repeated the UCD’s formula (minus de social democrats). A young liberal conservative politician, José María Aznar, was elected party leader. In the PP the balance of power tilted in favor of the liberal reformist caucuses, thus allowing Aznar to reformulate Spanish conservative nationalism, and reaching out to the Basque National Party (PNV) and the Catalan Convergence and Union (CiU). In the likely scenario of the party winning the 1996 national elections but not reaching absolute majority, the PP would need the support of the PNV and the CiU. The new centrist platform showed that the national and religious

xx

Introduction

divisions had faded and confirmed the temporary formula of the UCD (minus the social democrats) could be repeated. The PP thus initiated an ideological revision of Spanish nationalism based on extroverted principles: the party now postulated that Spain was not threatened by the autonomy granted to the regions in the 1978 constitution. Regional autonomy was thus compatible, and could even be beneficial, to Spain’s development. The ideological revisionism of Aznar was, however, only partial, and fell short of recognizing the peripheral nationalities as political entities. Aznar reconciled Spanish conservatives with the ‘state of the autonomies’ – the symmetric semifederal state born out of the constitutional formula. Aznar anchored the reform of Spanish nationalism by invoking prominent political and intellectual personalities of the first half of the 20th century. The party remained reserved about a complete federalization proposed by the Catalan and Basque nationalists. After winning an absolute majority of seats in the March 2000 parliamentary elections, and in face of the growing pressure for devolving powers to the regions, the PP added civic elements to its narrative of Spanish nationalism and stressed that no further devolution of powers was necessary. Spanish modern and civic nationalism was conflated with freedom and democracy, whereas peripheral nationalisms were accused of being based on ethnic and anti-liberal conceptions. Despite all the caveats to the PP’s revision of conservative centralist state, the party effectively buried the faded cleavage between introverted National Catholics and extroverted nationalists within the Spanish right.

Conclusion The Catholic Church’s political involvement during and after the democratic transition had a relevant effect on the survival of introverted nationalist forces in Poland. In Spain, partially due to the withdrawal of church support to political groups favoring the introverted nationalist cause, National Catholic forces declined and became irrelevant. During the transition the Spanish church abandoned National Catholicism both as a model for church-state relations and for the relations between Spain and its historical nationalities. The downgrading of the religious and national divisions during the transition and in its aftermath enabled liberals, Christian democrats and exFrancoist nationalists to form a broad coalition in a center-right party in the late 1980s. This party would then proceed to reformulate Spanish nationalism.

Introduction

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The political withdrawal of the Spanish church after Franco’s death contrasts with the involvement of the Polish Catholic Church with the National Catholic forces after the split of Solidarity in 1990. Church political activities contributed to the deepening of the religious cleavage and the survival of National Catholic political forces. Although a temporary alliance between liberals and National Catholics was formed between 1997 and 2001, the animosities between the groups ran deep. When the accession negotiations with the EU began in 1997 the differences between National Catholics’ introverted nationalism and liberals’ extroverted attitudes to European integration came to light. The splinter parties resulting from the AWS’s implosion, the PO and the PiS, were divided by their different conception of relations with other nations and European integration.

1

Nationalism and Catholicism Concepts and processes

In the process of forming a party, Polish and Spanish conservative political elites faced the task of reforming the legacies of National Catholicism, the dominant right-wing ideology in both countries during most of the 20th century. In both countries the prominence of National Catholicism led to an identification of the nation with the Catholic faith, and the submission of Catholic universalism to the logic of an introverted nationalism that opposes sharing sovereignty, either with other nations and nationalities within the state or with forces beyond the state. This book compares the formulation and reformulation of Catholic Nationalism in Spain and Poland before, during and after their transitions to democracy in 1975 and 1989. In Spain rightwing political elites pursued this transformation, and conservative forces came to partly accommodate the devolution of significant power to the regions and integration into the European Union. In Poland, introverted National Catholicism remained an important political identity, suspicious of both internal and external constraints on national sovereignty. The revisionism of National Catholicism will be studied as part of the process of forming a center-right political party and its identity as enabling conditions for the reformulation of introverted National Catholicism and, in particular, its impact on the political strategy of the church and its interaction with political forces, in particular National Catholics. Crucially, National Catholics—in Poland within the Solidarity movement, in Spain among the ex-Franco elite—were important actors during the transitions. Their presence among centerright groups—and their opposition to European integration or the devolution of powers to the regions—was a roadblock in the process of party formation. In Spain, liberal conservatives led the formation of center-right parties and absorbed the National Catholic forces, resulting in the reconciliation of nationalism with the sharing of sovereignty.

2

Concepts and processes

In Poland, National Catholicism survived as an elite identity and fostered a division with liberals, resulting in the deepening rather than the reform of introverted nationalist conceptions. The book takes the comparison between the two countries as an opportunity to shed light on the impact of the Catholic Church’s strategies on party formation in new democracies (Casanova 1994; Kalyvas 1996; Warner 2000), and sees the hierarchy’s ambitions as crucial for the politicization of National Catholicism. To explain the church’s strategies in Spain and Poland, the analysis starts by characterizing the positions in which the religious hierarchies found themselves in the democratic transitions of the two countries. In Poland, the communist regime (1945– 1989) tried to suppress the church, and barely tolerated it as a spiritual force. In Spain the Franco regime (1939–1975) was built on a coalition of church and state where National Catholicism was the dominant ideology. Before and during the democratic transitions, the Spanish church was a status quo institution, while the Polish church was a frontline warrior. In Poland, the church’s political involvement made it a supporter of National Catholic political groups such as the Christian National Union (ZChN). In contrast, the Spanish Catholic hierarchy under Cardinal Tarancón decided to disengage from politics and maintain equal contacts with all political forces, rather than supporting a particular political sector. This significantly weakened the ideological and organizational strength of nationalist conservatives, who defended the centralization of power in Madrid and ultimately created the conditions for the emergence of a coalition between liberal reformists and nationalist conservatives, where the latter carried out the transformation of Spanish nationalism, in particular in its relations with the Catalan, Basque and Galician nationalities. The book thus links the trajectories of church, nationalist parties and types of nationalism from the authoritarian period to the consolidation of party systems and the reform of nationalism. Figure 1.1 summarizes the argument.

Church trajectories and the formation of political parties The book follows the steps of institutional scholars, whose research has dealt with the way intermediating institutions shape different reactions to historic trends and events. The formation of political parties and party systems is one field where the literature on the effects of intermediating institutions in shaping outcomes is most developed. Several prominent scholars have dwelt on the role of religious institutions in providing a setting for the formation of political parties. Lipset and Rokkan’s cleavage theory set the path for other institutionalist scholars studying the impact of

Figure 1.1 Trajectories of church, parties and nationalism

4


religion on the long-term political development in Western Europe. The social cleavages formed by these interactions later determined the shape of the party systems (Lipset and Rokkan 1967; Flora, Khunle and Unwin 1999: 26). Numerous analyses followed in their footsteps by considering the interaction between states and churches in 19th-century Europe, and how different church–state relations influenced the format of different religious parties, both in Catholic and Protestant lands (Madeley 1989; Whyte 1981; Scully 1992). More recently, scholars have incorporated elements of strategic actor-centered analysis in the classical comparative-historical analyses of institutions (Gould 1999: 16; Kalyvas 1996). Rather than relying solely on historical macro-structures to explain the politicization of a religious cleavage, these analyses link the former to the “dynamics of political reform,” that is, to the strategies pursued by political actors (Gould 1999: 120). Our analysis follows this approach by tracing the interaction between the Catholic hierarchies and the political realm during the authoritarian regime, the transition to democracy and the consolidation of the party system. It distinguishes between the church’s direct influence on the legislative arena—both during the framing of church–state relations in the constitution and the formulation of morality policies (see Hennig and Haynes 2011; Hennig 2012)—and the hierarchy’s support of political parties. The comparison of the Spanish and Polish trajectories suggests that church intervention had a bearing on the deepening of a religious/national cleavage that impacted on the emerging party system, and, ultimately, on the reform of nationalism. Whereas in Poland the church intervention in the political processes fostered a symbiotic relation between religion and nationalism, thus contributing to the deepening of the socio-cultural divide, in Spain the church’s neutrality allowed the reconciliation between liberal, Christian democratic and nationalist forces and the reformulation of nationalism along extroverted lines. The comparison between the two countries suggests that the strength of National Catholicism as a socio-political identity is not a sufficient condition to explain the emergence of a National Catholic political space characterized by salient pro-clerical and introverted nationalist positions. Rather, the strategic choices of the religious hierarchies were crucial for the mobilization of confessional identities and their translation into resilient political forces. The transformation of National Catholicism into a functional political cleavage was induced by the national hierarchies’ political strategy, in particular their interaction with the emerging political forces.


5

Defining the outcome: adapting nationalism to sharing sovereignty with other nations Nationalism was the ideology informing resistance to the emergence of supranational forces and the devolution of authority to sub-national entities in post-war Europe. However, not all nationalisms oppose the sharing of sovereign powers among nations. The literature gives several examples of conservative parties that hold on to a conception of the nation and support for European integration (Hooghe, Marks and Wilson 2002: 930; Marks and Wilson 2000: 170). This points to the fact that nationalisms may differ in their attitude towards sharing sovereignty with other nations. The book suggests that nationalism’s tolerance regarding the sharing of sovereignty depends on its narrative on relations with other nations, and thus proposes a typology of nationalism which distinguishes between extroverted nationalists, who view positively the nation’s relations with other nations, and introverted nationalists, i.e., nationalists who view relations with other nations as inherently ridden with conflicts. Rather than just a form of moderate nationalism, or a product of national altruism, the cosmopolitan convictions of extroverted nationalists stem from the recognition of other nations’ rights and a positive view of relations among nations. Extroverted nationalists put their nation’s interests first, but consider that the pursuit of national goals can be compatible with arrangements that imply the sharing of sovereign powers. Extroverted nationalism is thus favorable to the joint exercise of sovereignty with other nations. By rejecting a narrow account of history that focuses exclusively on the nation’s characteristics, extroverted nationalists contrast with the emphasis on the nation’s particular history and culture which is generally associated with the perception of inherent conflict among nations. Introverted nationalists amplify the specificities of their national history and culture, setting it apart and superior to all others, to the point of seeing other nations as enemies. As a result, introverted nationalists vie for strict coherence between nation and state sovereignty. For both introverted and extroverted nationalists there are two separate dimensions: one in terms of how they deal with other nations or nationalities within the state, the other focusing on relations with forces outside the state, especially with supranational integration. Extroverted nationalists accept belonging to supranational institutions such as the EU, where, unlike in other international institutions, member states transfer parts of their sovereignty and this results in the common sharing of sovereign powers and their joint exercise by member states (Cooley and Spruyt 2009: 128).

6


Civic vs. extroverted nationalism There are important similarities between the introverted and the extroverted typology of nationalism and the classic distinction between civic and ethnic nationalism. However, extroverted nationalists go beyond the claims of civic inclusivism: whereas civic nationalism considers that heterogeneous ethnic or national groups within a state should integrate as citizens into the dominant national group, extroverted nationalism considers the possibility of resolving tensions between minority and majority nations and nationalities within the state through a federal structure. Going against the grain of traditional nationalists’ description of nations as eternal and unchanging entities, modernist theories of nationalism depict nations as a product of modernization. Ernst Gellner explains nation formation as part of the modernization of traditional societies through the creation of a common “high culture.” Applying a Marxist analysis to the formation of nations, Hobsbawm depicts the emergence of nations in the modern period as the unexpected outcome of the call for the emancipation of exploited classes (Gellner 1983; Hobsbawm 1990). In Imagining Communities Benedict Anderson focuses on the importance of culture by detailing the importance of the formulation of shared narratives of the national political community for nation formation (Anderson 1983). Modernist theorizers stressed the constructed character of nations, inferring that individuals can be integrated through mass literacy into the nation, independently of their ethnic background. The modernist authors thus provide a further explanatory background to the concept of civic nationalism, first developed by Hans Kohn’s 1955 classic Nationalism, to distinguish Western from Eastern European types of nationalism (Kohn 1955). Civic nationalism was further developed by Rogers Brubaker in Citizenship and nationhood in France and Germany, where the author characterizes the sets of values that guided the process of nation-building in France and Germany. Whereas the French Revolution brought the concept of a nation of citizens to its pinnacle, in Germany a shared sense of an ethnic community linked by blood was key in the process of forming a nation (Brubaker 1992). The modernist/civic school is often assimilated with a tolerant attitude towards sharing sovereignty with other nations, but civic nationalism has, at best, a neutral attitude towards federal-type or supranational institutions. It is thus important to clarify the similarities and differences between the two concepts. Civic nationalism’s toleration for ethnic diversity and the emergence of multicultural nations bears similarities with extroverted nationalism’s positive view of relations among nations and nationalities. However, extroverted nationalism is fundamentally


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different from the civic vision of a multicultural nation. Whereas civic nationalism is tolerant regarding the internal composition of the nation, extroverted nationalism has little to say about the nation’s composition, as it characterizes the nation’s external relations. The two concepts lead to substantially different policies in dealing with ethnic diversity. Whereas extroverted nationalists tend to solve tensions between minority and majority nations and nationalities through the federalization of the state, civic nationalism considers that ethnic or national groups should either integrate as citizens into the dominant national group or that modern polities should be ruled by the principle of multiculturalism, which shirks the need for ethnic minorities to assimilate in the dominant culture (Kymlicka 1991, 1995). The formulation of extroverted nationalism is not about “taming nationalism” in modern political societies or finding civic solutions based on individual rights.1 Rather, extroverted nationalism is an adaptation of nationalism that accepts multi-national democratic federalism as the solution providing for recognition of polities with multiple nations and nationalities “in a dynamic process of on-going renegotiation” (Máiz 2004: 75).

Ethnic nationalism and introverted nationalism Like extroverted and civic nationalisms, ethnic/primordial and introverted conceptions of the nation share a set of similarities. Primordial theories of nations view the nation as a category of human association stretching back several centuries. Those that believe in the historical antiquity of nations stress the continuity of fundamental features of ethnic communities through history (Hastings 1997; Gillingham 2000). The sociobiological theory, such as Van den Berghe’s (1994), explains the continuity of ethnic communities through centuries as the product of “common descent” maintained by endogamy. Ethnic communities, as nations, are simply kinship writ large (Berghe 1994). The primordial conception of nationalism is thus based on a view of ethnic groups as extensions of kin groups. Ethnic/primordial accounts of the nation have a tendency to focus on the nation’s primordial roots, and thus tend to amplify the importance of conflict in national history, portraying nations in a constant fight for survival. Traditional ethnic/primordialist theories of nationalism thus share with introverted nationalism an inherent pessimism regarding other nations’ intentions, and thus shun the joint exercise of sovereign powers. In this account the authors tend to see the state as a protective shell regarding the ethnic community.

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There are, however, authors of the ethnic school who hold a more nuanced assessment of the nation’s relations with other nations. Anthony Smith, in Ethno-symbolism and Nationalism (2009), straddles the civic/ethnic division, by considering the importance of ethnic communities as the basis for the emergence of nations, but nevertheless stresses the importance of the period of modernization and mobilization for the formation of modern nations. Smith thus considers that during the period of national mobilization more than one ethnic group may claim national status within a state, thus yielding on a strict congruence between nation and state in the classic pledge of Giuseppe Mazzini (1805–72) “every nation a state—only one state for an entire nation” (Smith 1999: 60). It can be inferred that Smith considers that nationalists do not always strive for exclusive sovereignty, but accept arrangements implying the sharing of state powers. Smith’s work shows that, despite some analogies between the two types, introverted nationalism is independent from the ethnic/primordialist theories of nationalism. Introverted nationalism is solely characterized by its defensive attitude towards other nations and the defense of the congruence between the national and state sovereignty, whereas the ethnic conceptions of the national community are concerned primarily with the internal composition of the nation, and only secondarily with attitudes towards other nations. The spelling of the introverted/extroverted categories contributes to a conceptual clarification of nationalism by limiting and defining the scope of the civic/ethnic types of nationalism. As several authors have claimed, the overuse of the civic/ethnic typology has led to a conceptual overstretch which makes it difficult to distinguish the limits of the two categories (Conversi 2002; Diez-Medrano 1995; Keating 1996, 2000). Other authors point that, in practice, nationalist discourses frequently combine civic and ethnic elements (Ceobanu and Escandell 2008). Hence, by extricating the external (introverted/extroverted) dimension of nationalism from the internal dimension (civic/ethnic), increase the precision of both concepts. More specifically, by showing that the attitudes regarding European integration or the federalization of the state can be partially delinked from the discourse on the internal composition of nations, the book contributes to a conceptual clarification of the national phenomena.

Origins of introverted and extroverted nationalism Like civic and ethnic discourses on the origin of nations, introverted and extroverted types of nationalism derive from the centuries-long


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processes of nation formation in Europe (see Brubaker 1992). The relation with other nations has been an element of national discourses, since the mobilization of ethnic identities into modern nations. This dimension of national identity was particularly prominent in the processes of nation formation in Central and Eastern Europe. Central and Eastern Europe in the 19th century was the turf of conflicts between emerging nationalisms and the different centers of authority of the Hapsburg, the Russian and the Prussian Empires. Because these national movements had to choose between full independence in separate nation-states and accommodation with other nations within a federal state, some national doctrines emerging in the region chose the latter by formulating a friendly attitude towards other nations. National movements within the Hapsburg Empire illustrate the importance of extroverted views of relations with other nations: alongside political forces demanding independence and the dissolution of the Empire, there were nationalist movements which, although preserving the central role of the state as a major actor in national politics, defended federal solutions (see Hroch 1995). Prominent among these was the national doctrine of Austrian social democrats Karl Renner and Otto Bauer, who in 1908 proposed the establishment of sub-state territorial units divided along national boundaries—to which cultural and educational competences should be granted—and their federation in a common state (Renner 2005; Stargardt 1995: 87). Renner and Bauer came in the footsteps of the formulation of minority nations of the Empire, such as that of the leader of the Czech national movement, Frantisek Palacky, who in the 1848 Prague Slavic Congress defended the reform of the Hapsburg Empire into a common federal state based on equal rights for its nations (Schulze 1996: 212). Miroslav Hroch’s study of the ideologies of 19th-century national movements in Central and Eastern Europe shows that Austrian and Czech extroverted nationalists were all but alone in promoting the sharing of state sovereign powers with other nations. Hroch states that “even at the beginning of World War I only a few politicians aimed towards the independence of their nation” (Hroch and Richova 1995).

Introverted and extroverted nationalism in the Spanish and Polish national revivals Beyond the context of small nations and crumbling empires, national discourses have created extroverted narratives in the national revivals

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of Spain and Poland, two Catholic medium-sized countries of the European periphery. In both countries the importance of traditional religion as a key element of national/ethnic identity (Hastings 1997) was reinforced during the countries’ late modernization (Zubrzycki 2000: 34; Torres 2002). Also, during the authoritarian period the fusion of nationalism and Catholicism was consolidated as a mass identity by the church, making the two countries an example of the compatibility of the religious and national identities (Kellas 1998; Greenfield 1992). The historical depth of this ideology is significant in both countries. The fathers of the synthesis of Catholicism and nationalism were foremost intellectual and public figures in the early 20th century; their theories evoked the idea of a nation defined by its Catholic faith fighting against fragmentation and external enemies, and reflecting and justifying the political involvement of the Catholic Church with the process of nation- and state-building. From the late 19th century in partitioned Poland, the development of a modern Polish national consciousness gave rise to two alternative national projects, one following extroverted precepts and the other based on an introverted understanding of Poland’s relation to other nations. Marshal Piłsudski, leader of the Polish Socialist Party, after abandoning the idea of a multinational Polish nation, embraced the project of a large federation of ethnically defined Central European nations under Polish direction. Piłsudski spelled out an ethno-linguistic conception of the nations (Polish, Jewish, Ukrainian) which would constitute a Polish state organized according to federal principles, and contrasting with the multicultural nationalism of the Old Commonwealth (Walicki 2001: 274). Piłsudski’s extroverted conception of Polish nationalism was opposed by the National Democrats, whose inimical vision of Poland’s neighbors justified the formation of an ethnically cohesive national state (Walicki 2000: 19). Roman Dmowski’s Thoughts of a Modern Pole (1953) took resource in Catholicism as a source of Polish national identity, to justify the formation of a modern nation under the principles of national homogeneity (Dmowski 1953). Opposition between Roman Dmowski and Marshal Józef Piłsudski’s definition of Poland became the defining political cleavage in the re-born state of the inter-war period (1918–1939). In Spain the emergence of Catalan and Basque nationalisms in the late 19th century fuelled the debate on the nature of the Spanish nation, in particular on the meaning of the emerging sub-national peripheral nationalisms in Catalonia, the Basque Country and, in a weaker form, Galicia. The Spanish conservatives’ narrative on the unity of Spain was eventually challenged by a more liberal discourse which attempted to formulate an articulation between the central state and Catalonian and


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Basque claims for autonomy within Spain (Balfour and Quiroga 2007: 31–33). Whereas liberals partially accepted the devolution of powers to Catalonia and the Basque Country, the nationalist right rejected it on the basis of a National Catholic synthesis of Spanish nationalism (Botti 1992; Anderson 2003a: 139). The birth of the Second Republic in 1931 gave autonomous powers to Catalonia and the Basque Country, but the radicalization of politics during the 1930s made the conflict between the centre and the periphery increasingly divisive (Balfour and Quiroga 2007: 34–35). The breakout military insurrection of 1936 claimed to be saving Spain from the threat posed by peripheral nationalisms to Spanish national unity (Lannon 2002: 27–29; Casanova 2001: 56; Payne 2004: 134–36).

Selecting cases The choice of cases was relatively straightforward: Spain and Poland are two countries where a late transition to democracy coincided with the strategy of joining the EU and implementing the territorial decentralization of the state. Crucially, in both countries, the national identity was characterized by an introverted tradition of National Catholicism, where Catholic universalism was subordinated to an introverted nationalism that saw nations and nationalities as enemies. The comparison between Poland and Spain can be considered, in terms of Lijphart’s methodology on most similar and most different research designs, as a comparison between most similar systems (Lijphart 1971: 684–85). In both countries, the periodic alliance of the church with nationalist groups and regimes was motivated by the double challenge of socialism and anti-clericalism. This alliance gave support to the ideological formulation of a close congruence between the state and the nation, both defined by their Catholicism. In both countries the Catholic opposition to the regime was instrumental in the change of regime (Palomares 2005; Acherson 1981; Osa 2003; Bernhard 1993), making the Catholic Church a crucial promoter of regime change. The comparison highlights the importance of church intermediation for the formation of a clerical/introverted identity, the structuration of political forces and the formation of political alliances. The Polish hierarchy’s choice for direct intervention in the political sphere, resulted in the mobilization of the national Catholic identity. In contrast, the Spanish church’s detachment from politics led to the collapse of National Catholicism as a viable political identity. The book thus goes beyond the study of the church intervention in the transition and tackles the complex relation with nationalism and party formation.

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Wider issues The book contributes to the understanding of conservative parties’ attitudes to European integration. Conservatives’ identification with the nation as the political community and their centrist position in the party system makes them important actors in the transformation of the national discourse (Marks and Wilson 2000). The evolution of the French right after 1945 exemplifies the difficulty of reconciling nationalism and European integration. In France, where no Christian democratic party survived the Fourth Republic, the right struggled to overcome the Gaullist introverted national discourse. The Gaullist camp was effectively split in 1976, when Jacques Chirac formed the Union for the Republic (RPR) and Giscard d’Estaing created the Union for French Democracy (UDF) (1978). Both parties reclaimed the Gaullist legacy but, while Chirac tried attempted to reoccupy the Gaullist high ground on the issue of French national sovereignty with Eurosceptic rhetoric, Giscard d’Estaing took a pro-European stance. The division between an introverted and Eurosceptic and an extroverted and Europhile understanding of national identity divided the French right until the 1990s.

Chapter structure The book develops over four critical junctures: Chapter 2 deals with the authoritarian period, Chapter 3 with the transition to democracy, Chapter 4 with the re-alignment of parties in the right-wing spectrum and Chapter 5 with the formulation of national discourses by conservative forces. The first critical juncture (Chapter 2) centers on the trajectory of the church in its relation with the authoritarian regime and the ideology it developed regarding the national issue before and after the Second Vatican Council (Vatican Council II). In Poland, the communist regime (1945–1989) tried to suppress religion, and the church answered with a defensive strategy based on National Catholicism. In Spain, the Franco regime (1939–1975) was built on a coalition of church and state where National Catholicism was the dominant ideology. The second critical juncture (Chapter 3) considers the contrasting positions in which the national churches of Poland and Spain found themselves during the transition. In 1989 the Polish church had an immense social and spiritual power, but no state privileges, and saw democratization as an opportunity for gaining additional clerical authority. During the 1975 transition in Spain, the church’s top hierarchy abandoned National Catholicism, disengaged from direct


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influence over the political order and abstained from taking a stance on the territorial re-organization of Spain. Satisfied with the privileges attained during the Franco regime and willing to free itself from the state’s embrace, the hierarchy devised a strategy of disengagement from politically divisive issues, one of which was the relations between Spain and its historic nationalities. During the transition, the Spanish church abandoned National Catholicism both as a model for church–state relations and for relations between Spain and its historical regions. Thus, whereas in Spain the church’s abstention from political involvement in party politics resulted in the de-politicization of the introverted/extroverted conflict, the Polish church’s long-term struggle for increased clerical authority during the transition fuelled clerical/ anti-clerical conflicts that overlapped with the emergence of two competing formulations of the nation’s relations with other nations. The third critical juncture (Chapter 4) pertains to the importance of the national church’s political strategy for the formation of center-right parties in the early stage of democracy, in particular by contributing to the formation of a political-cultural cleavage dividing liberals and nationalists. The outcomes, i.e. the fate of introverted and extroverted nationalism, are treated in Chapter 5, and hinge on the formulation of nationalism, along the introverted/extroverted dimension. Whereas from 1989 the unification of the right-wing political forces in the Spanish Partido Popular (PP) confirmed the defeat of National Catholicism and the partial revision of Spanish nationalism in its relation with the nationalities, in Poland the two new right-wing parties created in 2001 (the PO and the PiS) embodied the divisions between the two visions of Poland’s relations with its neighbors: one open to sharing power with other nations in the European Union, the other espousing a view of enmity with its neighbors. Chapter 6 summarizes the main conclusions, and positions them in the context of other possible explanations.

Note 1 For a fundamental criticism of civic nationalism and the evolution of the thought of several civic minded authors see The myth of civic patriotism: Nationalism under the veil of the Republic in France (Requejo and Caminal 2010).

2

National Catholicism and the church under authoritarian regimes

This chapter traces the policies of the authoritarian regimes, Francoism in Spain and communism in Poland, towards the Catholic Church and describes the consequences for church–state relations. It then analyzes the church responses towards the regime at four different levels: the Vatican, the national episcopates, the clergies and the lay organizations. Because of the significant changes brought by Vatican Council II to the Catholic doctrine on state–church relations, the chapter distinguishes the strategies of the churches before and after the Council. The post-conciliar phase overlaps with the pre-transition process; thus the chapter concludes by characterizing the church’s institutional standing regarding the state and the regime in the late authoritarian period, and considers how this affected the preferences and ideology of its prelates. During the authoritarian regime in both Spain and Poland the religious hierarchies formed a set of preferences regarding relations with the state and the political authorities. Crucially, the type of authoritarianism conditioned the church’s process of adaptation to the liberalization of church doctrine by Vatican Council II: whereas in Spain the church progressively adopted the Council’s doctrines, namely on the separation of church and state, the Polish hierarchy remained largely estranged from the doctrinal innovations of the Council, with only a minority of prelates embracing the Council’s postulates on religious freedoms.

From the establishment of the authoritarian regime to Vatican Council II The persecuted church: the Polish church under communism Communism had paradoxical effects for Polish Catholicism: on the one hand the church suffered persecution by the regime and lost the

Under authoritarian regimes

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privileges it had attained during the Second Republic (1918–1939); on the other, Catholicism consolidated both institutionally and socially. The church’s main resource was the fusion of Polishness and Catholicism, an identity that became widespread among the peasantry in the mobilization of Polish-speaking peasants to national politics in the transition to the 20th century. The conflation between religion and nationalism in the modern period was furthered by the politicization of Catholicism by right-wing political forces in the interwar period (Zubrzycki 2000: 34–63). Politics in the interwar Second Republic was marked by Dmowski’s National Catholic inimical view of neighboring nations and national minorities, which constituted one-third of the population of interwar Poland (Rothschild 1974: 30). During World War II, the church suffered by the side of the nation under German and Soviet occupation. After Poland fell to the Soviet sphere of influence in 1945, the Polish church entered a new period of persecution (Coutouvidis and Reynolds 1986: 267). In 1945 the newly established Polish communist government denounced the 1925 concordat, and in 1952 adopted a new communist constitution which, by ignoring the church, resulted in the loss of a legal basis for it to defend its existence (Monticone 1986: 21–22). In 1948, as a result of the imposition of Stalinism in Poland, the church suffered an assault on its properties and freedom of cult (Monticone 1986: 15–23). In September 1949, the state nationalized the church’s network of hospitals. In January 1950 the regime brought Caritas, the church assistance organization, under its umbrella and, in April, Cardinal Wyszyn´ski signed an unfavorable agreement with the regime, the Statute of March 20, which resulted in the nationalization of church-owned landed estates and in priests having to sign a declaration of allegiance to the state (Monticone 1986: 17). Also, the government tried to undermine the church by sponsoring pro-regime “patriotic priests” and Catholic groups (Osa 2003: 64). However, the regime allowed religion to be taught in state schools and the church to maintain chaplains in the armed forces, prisons and hospitals. The response to persecution from the state was conceived and carried out primarily by Stefan Primate Wyszyn´ski, Primate of Poland (1947– 1981). Cardinal Wyszyn´ski, called by Poles the Primate of the Millennium, combined resistance to the regime with the flexibility to negotiate with the communist authorities, and was recognized for always knowing exactly “where the edge of the abyss was” (Weigel 2010a: 210). Wyszyn´ski folded to the regime’s restrictions on the church described above (Acherson 1981; Casanova 1994: 87; Zubrzycki 2000: 63). Only when communists demanded a veto on the appointment of bishops and

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initiated shaming show trials of prominent priests in October 1953 did the Cardinal refuse to compromise, which led to his confinement in a monastery (Monticone 1986: 23; Rothschild and Wingfield 2000: 86). The regime also closed the only remaining independent publication by liberal Catholics, the Tygodnik Powszechny (Universal Weekly), when its editors refused to publish a eulogy to Stalin upon his death in March 1953 (Manetti 2012: 309). In the absence of Wyszyn´ski’s authority, the Polish bishops compromised in an agreement that effectively granted the regime a veto over the choice of bishops and all other ecclesiastic appointments. In October 1956, a crisis arising from the conflicts between Muscovite hardliners and the national communist faction resulted in the victory of the latter. Thus, the leader of the national communist faction, Władysław Gomułka, after being named General Secretary of the Party, released Cardinal Wyszyn´ski from his monastical confinement (Rothschild and Wingfield 2000: 152) and proposed to him a patriotic alliance aiming at stabilizing the country and saving Poland from Soviet intervention. In exchange for support to the regime, Gomułka promised Wyszyn´ski an increase in the church’s freedom of cult and association. Wyszyn´ski took the crisis as an opportunity to launch a campaign to mobilize the laity and reinforce the position of the church. Declaring the survival of the Polish nation and the church to be under imminent threat, the episcopate initiated a 9-year program of celebrations in preparation for the commemoration of the millennial anniversary of the baptism of the Polish King, Miesko I in 966, the Novena of the Millennium (Weigel 1992: 114). The underlying premise of the 9-year Novena was the assumption that the origins of the nation were primordially religious, and both were under permanent threat from Russian communism. During the Novena, these ideas were brought to all cities and villages of Poland (Osa 2003, 67–75). The effort of mobilization of those social groups previously estranged from the church was very successful, with church attendance becoming synonymous with resistance to the regime and resulting in a two-fold increase in priestly vocations. By the mid-1960s, Poland had over 60 bishops in 17 dioceses, served by 18,000 priests, 28,000 nuns and 4,000 students at 700 seminaries (Luxmoore and Babiuch 2000: 137). Moreover, to fend off infiltration from the secret services, the church hierarchy closed ranks, maintaining a strict observance of clerical hierarchy (Monticone 1986: 203). Cardinal Wyszyn´ski’s “Theology of the Nation” attributed to the church the title of God-given protector of the nation against Russian communism, thus justifying this strategy not merely as a defense of the Catholic faith, but also as national salvation. Based on the hope of


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salvation, Wyszyn´ski transformed Catholicism into an introverted nationalism that relieved Poles from the humiliation of occupation by recovering several elements of Polish romantic nationalism, and adapting and reconfiguring them to the reality of communist Poland (Zubrzycki 2000: 25). The shrine of the Black Madonna of Cze˛ stochowa, the main site for the celebrations of the Novena, was key to the Novena’s symbolic vocabulary by portraying the Polish nation united under the banner of Our Lady, resisting the communist state (Osa 2003: 62). Wyszyn´ski attributed to Mary, the Mother of God, the official title of “Advocate, Helper, Benefactress and Mediatrix,” giving Mary the status of mother of the Polish church and nation. National Catholicism reinforced the cohesion of the clergy and strengthened its legitimacy for confronting the communist authorities. The 1956 pact between church and state also included the legalization of liberal groups of Catholic intellectuals open to the modernizing winds of European progressive Catholicism, the Clubs of Catholic Intellectuals (KIK) and the liberal Catholic publications, Tygodnik Powszechny, Znak and Wie˛ z (Acherson 1981: 145). The groups became the only legal bodies outside the realm of the party, bringing together lay intellectuals and clerics, which would play a crucial role in linking the church and the dissident groups, such as the Committee for the Defense of Workers. By the 1960s the Polish church was the only church in the Eastern bloc to have survived as an independent force. Taking advantage of the 1956 crisis, Cardinal Wyszyn´ski launched a double-edged campaign, aiming on the one hand at mobilizing the peasants through the use of National Catholic myths and on the other at establishing groups of Catholic intellectuals, which gained legally protected status. Privilege and submission: the Catholic Church under Franco In contrast with Poland, post-war authoritarianism in Spain strongly privileged Catholicism. The identification of the church with the Nationalists in the course of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) (Payne 1978: 202) marked the outset of almost four decades of a close merger between the church and the state, Catholicism and the nation (Linz 1991b: 168). The violence directed against the clergy in the Republican territories that resisted the military insurrection victimized 6,700 priests and nuns (Payne 1978: 180). In response, the church provided political, financial and spiritual support to the military insurrection, becoming the strongest domestic pillar of the Nationalist forces. From the early days of the war the church took the victory of Franco as an

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opportunity for re-Christianizing Spain, especially in the former Republican territory (Casanova 2001: 126). Spanish clerical authorities defined the war as a crusade against infidels and foreign influences. Early in the war, in 1936, Bishop Pla y Deniel’s Letter, “The two cities” applied the Augustinian distinction between the terrestrial city, where selfishness prevails, and the celestial city, where love of God replaces all sense of self, to underpin the nationalists’ crusade for Holy Spain: The empty struggle of the February 1936 elections … was transformed into the cruel battle of a people divided into two tendencies: the spiritual, on the side of the rebels who come to the defense of order, social peace, traditional civilization and country and, obviously, in great part as a defense of religion; and on the other side, the materialist, calling itself Marxist, communist, or anarchist, that wanted to substitute for the old civilization of Spain … the novel “civilization” of the Russian soviets. (Pla y Deniel 1936: 23) On the same day of Pla’s publishing of the pastoral letter, Franco was proclaimed head of state, and the tendency for an absolute identification of the Nationalist cause with Catholicism was further accentuated. The bloody context of one of the most violent and fratricidal wars of the 20th century sealed the marriage of Nationalism and Catholicism into an ideology fervently shared by some and hated by others. As the military coup transformed into a full-fledged civil war in the winter of 1936, Catalonia and the Basque Country, together with Madrid, became the core of Republican resistance to the Nationalists. Because they offered the strongest resistance to Franco in the civil war, the antagonistic relationship between Spain and peripheral nationalisms became one of the central tenets of the Nationalists, who took the protection of Spanish unity as one of their central objectives. Thus, since the civil war, the National Catholic ideology contained an introverted element, and the status of autonomy granted to Catalonia, the Basques and Galicia during the Second Republic was reported as a threat to “the eternal and Catholic Spain.” This narrative was, however defied by the fact that the Basques, the only sizeable group of Catholics to remain loyal to the Republic, compromised the unity of support of the Spanish Catholic Church to the Nationalist cause. The Basque church’s identification with Basque nationalism was the main challenge to the narrative of the unity between the church and Franco’s Nationalists. The defiance of the Basque church towards the Spanish hierarchy was considered so serious that


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Archbishop Gomá waited for the surrender of Bilbao on 19 June 1937 to publish the “Joint Letter of the Spanish Bishops to the other Bishops of the Whole World Concerning the War in Spain” (Casanova 2001: 45). The letter was finally published on 1 July, thus showing the importance of the Basque church’s resistance to the Spanish church’s pro-Franco stance. When the war ended, National Catholicism became the ideology of domination of the winners over the losers (Casanova 2001: 125; Payne 1984: 176–180). During the civil war Franco organized political support through the fascist party, the Falange (FET y JONS), and gradually transformed it into a wide-ranging nationalist coalition, the Movimiento Nacional. Although Falangists and Catholics held different attitudes regarding regional autonomy, it was the Falange’s centralist conception of the state that prevailed as Franco’s policy (Payne 1978: 322). Catalonia and the Basque Country lost the autonomous status conquered during the Second Republic. The Nationalists’ complete military victory over Republican Spain on 1 April 1939 did not end the church’s crusade, and clerics played a major part in the conversion of the enemies of Franco, in particular in Barcelona and other cities where the anti-Franco forces had most influence (Payne 1973: 662). In the years after the civil war the Catholics collaborated with fascists in the Movimiento Nacional, and in the early years several of the most prominent Catholic clerics adhered to a combination of fascist and Catholic ideals (Casanova 2001: 138). The National Catholic synthesis in Spain was, however, not harmonious: animosity between the Falangist and the Catholic politicians resulted in conflicting factions within the Movimiento, which repeatedly challenged the National Catholic project. However, as a consequence of the declining fate of the Axis powers in World War II in 1942, Franco demoted the fascist elements in the Movimiento and promoted the “Catholic family,” whose members were mainly recruited from the Spanish Catholic Action.1 The defeat of the Axis in May 1945 accelerated the rise in influence of the Catholics within the Movimiento: in July Franco reshuffled the cabinet and replaced influential Falangist ministers with Catholic figureheads and elevated National Catholicism to the regime’s ideology (Payne 1978: 350–367). One important function of the Catholic politicians was the mitigation of Spain’s international ostracism and isolation. The most prominent personality of the first cabinet of the post-fascist era was the head of Catholic Action, Alberto Martín Artajo, who held the post of foreign minister for 12 years. Artajo was crucial in overcoming the international isolation of Spain by using the international Catholic

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networks, his chief accomplishment being the signing of the concordat between Spain and the Holy See in 1953, and the pact of Madrid, in which the American President Eisenhower pledged to give economic and military aid to Franco in exchange for permission for building military bases. Franco gave the church a political presence that it had not held since the early 19th century: prelates were given the role of senior advisor in most boards of governments, the Cardinal being assigned one of the three seats on the new Regency Council and sitting ex officio at the board of the Council of State, both introduced in 1947. Seven other clerics were appointed by Franco to the Cortes, and two priests were among the corporatively elected deputies in the first session (Payne 1978: 198). In May 1946 Franco formally proclaimed: “For us the perfect state is the Catholic state. It is not sufficient that the people are Christian in order to fulfill this order of things: laws are necessary to maintain its principles and correct its abuses” (quoted in Payne 1978: 369). Legislation was passed to abolish civil divorce, and Catholic religious instruction was made mandatory in all schools. Education aimed at re-Christianizing Spain, and the church was given the right to establish universities, to operate radio stations and to publish newspapers and magazines, thus gaining cultural predominance in post-war Spain. The Spanish concordat of 1953 provided recognition of the regime by the Vatican and confirmed the accomplishment of the Spanish National Catholic system, where the church was given political representation, social recognition and ideological hegemony over Spain. Along with mandatory canonical marriages for all Catholics, exemption from government taxation, ecclesiastic subsidies for the building of new churches and protection from police intrusion into church properties was given by Franco and, in return, the regime obtained the right to appoint diocesan bishops from the set of three presented by the Vatican, as well as to hold a veto over appointments of all clerics. The Pope preserved, however, the entitlement to appoint auxiliary bishops, a right that he would use to reform the Spanish church in the 1960s and 1970s (Anderson 2003b: 30). The Spanish hierarchy, led by Primate Pla y Deniel regretted the loss of autonomy incurred by the institution of state patronage over episcopal appointments, but the pact effectively resulted in the interlocking of the church and the regime for almost 40 years. The Spanish Catholic hierarchy took full advantage of these privileges by re-establishing its position in those regions where it had lost ground during the Republic and the civil war. In the 1940s and 1950s the church was an instrument for the re-establishment of a “united, strong and free Spain,” espousing an introverted rhetoric that pitched Catholic


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Spain against peripheral nationalisms (Payne 1985: 171–191; Balfour and Quiroga 2007: 39). In Barcelona, the reconversion of the city to Catholicism as “an exercise to purify the Red City of its tendencies for anarchy and separatism, was considered as the only way to excise the root of these cancers” (Casanova 2001: 131). The formulation of National Catholicism thus held a special aversion towards Catalan and Basque nationalisms and developed an introverted narrative, setting the greatness of Spain against its internal enemies. Until 1960 the Basque clergy’s nationalism was repressed by the regime in collaboration with the hierarchy (Arahuetes 2001: 89). The hierarchy and the state used the right of presentation of bishops to de-politicize the Basque clergy. The redrawing of the map of dioceses was employed to attempt to divide the clergy (2001: 94). In 1956 Pamplona was elevated to archdiocese, but Bilbao and Victoria remained outside its jurisdiction, within the Burgos authority.2 In May 1960, 339 Basque clerics undersigned an open letter to the region’s bishops protesting against the church’s close alliance with Franco. From then onwards the use of the pulpit to denounce the suppression of national and social rights became more open. The coincidence of the clerics’ revolt with the formation of the left-wing terrorist organization ETA in 1959, whose support from the Basque church the regime took for certain, resulted in a cautious but persistent policy of repression, carried out first by the church hierarchy and later by the regime (Arahuetes 2001: 102). To summarize, from the first hour of the civil war the church provided ideological legitimacy to Franco’s struggle for power and gained, in exchange, a set of privileges and influence over the political, social and even economic sectors of Spain that were unparalleled in the modern history of Europe. Between 1945 and 1957 the “Catholic family” of the Movimiento Nacional was predominant in government (Payne 1978: 371). National Catholicism justified the church and Franco as the established order. As a result of building tensions between Catholics and Falangists, in 1957 Franco reshuffled the government, replacing National Catholic autarchy with a technocratic government composed of the military and the Opus Dei, whose main objective was to bring rapid economic development and to open the Spanish economy (Payne 1984: 189). The epoch of hegemonic National Catholicism, symbolized in civil society by the prominence of Catholic Action, thus came to a close. In sum, church privileges and Catholic social and cultural hegemony were maintained for the remainder of Franco’s rule. The Franco regime gave the church a privileged position that allowed it to achieve

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immense clerical influence in moral legislation, education and almost total religious monopoly for 40 years. In exchange, Franco asked for the legitimation of the regime and gained partial control over all clerical appointments. The National Catholic character of Francoism was linked to the prohibition of regional nationalisms and their political and cultural manifestations (Balfour and Quiroga 2007: 76).

From Vatican Council II to the transition Vatican Council II (1962–65) resulted in a fundamental evolution in Catholic political doctrine, in particular regarding the reconciliation of the church with liberalism and democracy. Itself a result of the understanding by the church that totalitarian regimes were a bigger threat to the church and to human dignity than liberalism (Perreau-Saussine 2012: 133), the Council’s contributions to the doctrine on relations between Catholicism, nationalism and democracy had a strong impact on the political role of the Catholic Church throughout the world, and in particular in the two countries under study, Poland and Spain. In Spain, the Council’s abandonment of the doctrine that the state had specific duties towards God, or that political life ought to be founded on a close collaboration between civil and ecclesiastic hierarchies, went against the principles of Franco’s confessional state. The Council thus influenced and strengthened the position of those in the Spanish laity and clergy who strove for increased freedom for the church, especially in the matter of the regime’s power to appoint bishops. Equally, the Council’s termination of the long-held tradition that the Catholic character of the nation was a legitimating condition for the government’s temporal autonomy (Perreau-Saussine 2012: 131) greatly weakened the National Catholic legitimacy of Franco’s regime. In Poland it was the Council’s Declaration on Religious Freedom, with its principled recognition of religious liberty and its elevation of this principle to the cornerstone of Catholic political thought, which emboldened the Polish clergy in its fight against the restrictions of the communist regime over religious practice in the country. In Poland the Catholic hierarchy resisted the Council’s opposition to the National Catholic doctrine. Also, in both countries, the Council’s emphasis on the political role of the laity (in Lumen Gentio) gave a doctrinal foundation to an emerging politicized Catholic lay opposition and semi-opposition to authoritarian regimes. The Council’s emphasis on the laity’s political engagement, combined with the endorsement of the human rights agenda, was a powerful encouragement for an alliance between the


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politically engaged progressive Catholics and the secular intelligentsia. The human rights platform, understood as common ground between liberals and Catholics, became the basis for the collaboration of liberals and Catholics to oppose the repression of the authoritarian regimes. However, and despite the controversy surrounding the interpretation of its main documents, neither the Spanish nor the Polish hierarchy took the Council’s conclusions to mean that the church should give up influence over the social and cultural order. Poland: National Catholicism and the universalist doctrine of Karol Wojtyła The influence of the Council in Poland was significant both within the laity and the hierarchy. In both realms, the modernizing winds from the Council strengthened the liberal factions at a time when National Catholic orthodoxy had reached its peak in the millennium celebrations of 1966. Internationally, Wojtyła gained in stature and recognition by his contributions to the Pastoral Constitution of the Council on the church in the Modern World, Gaudium et Spes, and to the Dogmatic Constitution, Lumen Gentium (Gregg 2002: 60). Wojtyła cultivated relations with the network of Central and Eastern European clergy, by inviting the German and Austrian churches for the millennium celebrations in Poland to be held in 1966. The Pastoral Letter of the Polish Bishops to their German Brothers became a landmark for its carefully crafted conciliatory stance towards Germany, coined by the sentence, “we forgive and ask for forgiveness” (Monticone 1986: 39). The letter was exchanged during one of the last sessions of the Council in 1965 and reflected the growing cooperation between Wojtyła and Archbishops Koenig of Vienna and Alfred Bengsh of Berlin (Raina 1996: 227).3 However, the ambiguous response of the German bishops to the letter gave the communist regime leeway to condemn it and launch a campaign against the church under the motto “We shall not forgive and we shall not forget” (Luxmoore and Babiuch 2000: 139). Rather than confronting the traditional National Catholicism held by the top hierarchy, the liberals’ most prominent leader, Karol Wojtyła— Archbishop of Kraków since 1964 and named Cardinal during the Council—founded a new pole of opposition to the regime. Increasingly seen as the leader of the Polish progressive clergy (Weigel 2001: 500–501), Wojtyła represented an alternative discourse to Cardinal Wyszyn´ski’s introverted National Catholicism. Wyszyn´ski’s introverted nationalism was congruent with a defensive attitude against Vatican intromissions into Polish church affairs, in particular when Secretary of State

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Agostino Casaroli attempted to establish formal relations with the communist state.4 Wyszyn´ski’s defense of sovereignty over the Polish church was based on the conviction that only those who dealt daily with the communist authorities were prepared to resist its invectives against the power of the church (Casaroli 2000: 302–303). The communist authorities tried to use the Vatican’s Ostpolitik as a way to weaken the Polish church. In 1966, at the height of the millennium celebrations of Poland’s baptism, communist leader Stanisław Gomułka started talks with Casaroli with the view to establishing a permanent apostolic delegate in Warsaw.5 Wyszyn´ski’s comment on this attempt illustrates his position: “The church is fully aware of its historic mission vis-à-vis the nation, for which it has often stood in the past when the state had to keep silent” (quoted in Monticone 1986: 156). In 1974 when the Vatican established permanent contacts with the Polish state, Wyszyn´ski launched a counter-offensive directed at preventing the signing of a concordat, arguing that the recognition of the regime by the Vatican ignored the persecution that communism inflicted on the Polish church (Luxmoore and Babiuch 2000: 187). Wyszyn´ski’s National Catholicism came to mean both a fusion of Polishness and Catholicism and a justification of the hierarchy’s autonomy towards the Vatican. “The church and the left” The 1970s saw the emergence of an alliance of progressive Catholics and dissidents against the regime, now led by Edward Gierek (1913–2001), and based on communism’s violation of human rights.6 For Wojtyła and progressive Catholics, Marxism was based on an erroneous conception of human nature, one that considered matter to rule over spirit (Gregg 2002: 70; Zmijewski 1991: 170). In this way progressive Catholicism redrew the lines of the battle against communism and a particularist Polish identity, and adopted a more fundamental accusation towards the regime for violating basic human rights, above all that of religious freedom (Williams 1981: 267).7 Although Wojtyła was initially seen as more conciliatory than Wyszyn´ski, he came to embody a new type of preaching based on religious freedom and human rights, which became the common ground for cooperation with left wing dissidents (Luxmoore and Babiuch 2000, 197).8 The violent repression of workers by the communist regime in the 1976 protests led ex-Marxists turned liberal dissidents to organize the Committee for the Defense of Workers (KOR) (Bernhard 1993: 88–90). Left-wing intellectuals formed the core of KOR, but progressive Catholic clerics such as Fathers Jan Zieja and Zbiegniew Kaminski


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were also founding members (Bernhard 1993: 137), and the group had strong links with the Warsaw KIK (Osa 2003: 181). This development reflected the affinities between the two groups, who shared a universalist agenda of human rights (Lipski 1985).9 The church and Solidarity The election of Karol Wojtyła to the papacy in 1978 gave this anticommunist alliance and extroverted nationalism a new thrust and a global dimension (Snyder 2003: 276). The Polish Pope became an important actor of the Cold War. During the apostolic visit in 1979 John Paul II laid out what he later stated to have been the program for his papacy: the unification of Europe. In the Holy Spirit’s Prayer at a mass in Gniezno, the birthplace of the Polish nation, Wojtyła pleaded: Does Christ not want (the unity of Europe)? Does the Holy Spirit not order so? That through this Polish Pope, the Slavic Pope, the spiritual unity of a Christian Europe is demonstrated, constituted by two great traditions, the Eastern and the Western? We, Poles, that have been always part of the Western tradition, as well as our Lithuanian brothers, have always estimated the traditions of the Oriental Christianity. Our lands were invited by these traditions, that have their origins in a new Rome—in Constantinople. (John Paul II 1979) The following day, during the initial address to the Bishops Conference John Paul II again pointed to the goal of unifying Europe on the basis of common Christian roots. In this speech he holds the view that only when the “two lungs through which it should breathe: the left and the right,” Western and Eastern Europe, are united, can the continent be complete (John Paul II 1979). Less than a year passed between the Pope’s visit and the emergence of the Solidarity movement. During an occupation strike in Gdansk, a powerful alliance of workers, the Catholic Church and the secular dissidents resulted in an unprecedented mobilization of civil society, with the emergence of a protest movement and its organization in the form of a trade union, Solidarity. From its legalization in September 1980 until its suspension in December 1981 the self-limited revolution of Solidarity mobilized 10 million members and became the most serious challenge to communism (Osa 2003: 131; Acherson 1981: 135–167). During the 1980–81 crisis the Polish church acted both as a supporter and as a mediator between Solidarity and the communist government.

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The progressive and the traditional factions of the church, laity and clergy were united in support of Solidarity. KIK leader Tadeusz Mazowiecki drafted one of the first appeals in favor of the striking workers, the letter of 64 intellectuals (Acherson 1981: 156). Father Henrik Jankowski’s masses and confessions in the strikers’ yard became, together with crucifixes, Polish flags and posters of John Paul II hanging on the yard’s walls, an intrinsic element of the emerging movement. Progressive clerics had a strong influence on Solidarity leader Lech Wałe˛ sa, encouraging him to try to moderate the trade union, especially at times when radicalization threatened to derail the movement. The church was also an integral part of the tripartite Joint Commission between the government and Solidarity, where Bishop Da˛browski, secretary of the episcopate, Bishop Kaczmarek of Gdansk, Archbishop Stroba of Poznan and Father Orszulyk, spokesman of the episcopate, attempted to find common ground between the workers’ movement and the government (Acherson 1981: 222). Besides the mediating work, one of the church’s most significant impact on Solidarity was the influence it exerted on the spelling of the “Solidarity ethos.” Clergy such as Father Józef Tischner and, above all, John Paul II and his Gospel of Freedom, provided the doctrine underlying the ideological program of Solidarity (Acherson 1981: 267). Also, the Polish Pope used his position in Rome to act as a go-between for the Polish opposition and the Carter and Reagan administrations (Weigel 2010a: 197; Bernstein and Politi 1997: 235–391). After the imposition of martial law in December 1981, resulting in the outlawing of Solidarity, the Pope’s visits to Poland in 1983 and 1987 continued to influence the now illegal opposition (Weigel 2010b: 263–296). In doctrinal terms the Pope’s teachings on the dignity of the human person (Wojtiła 1988), and his insistence that relations among nations should be based on mutual recognition and solidarity, reinforced the ideological basis of Solidarity (Gregg 2002: 203). The reformulation of Polish nationalism initiated by Karol Wojtyła in the 1970s was, after the formation of Solidarity, developed into an instrument of unification of the Christian nations in a post-communist Europe (Gregg 2002: 202). Rather than a re-enactment of Polish messianism, Wojtyła abandoned the romantic mythology of Polish nationalism that made Poland a mere symbolic protagonist, and formulated a Polish nationalism that made Poland the key to the unification of Christian Europe. This formulation of nationalism was directed to action: from Yuri Andropov’s death in 1984 the Pope perceived the rapid decay of communism and saw the potential of the Polish opposition to catalyze the fall of communism in the Eastern bloc. Poland’s


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reconciliation with its neighboring nations was the foundation for future European unity (Hanson 1987: 52). As the Pope would later write: “on the one hand, national differences should be maintained as a basis for European solidarity, on the other hand, national identity can only be realized through openness to other nations and solidarity with them” (John Paul II 2003). Solidarity translated this new national doctrine into policy by enacting policies of reconciliation with its neighbors, with whom Poland had a history of conflict and rivalry (Snyder 2003). From the mid-eighties a policy towards Western Europe was developed through a structured debate among leading personalities of Solidarity under the forum “Poland in Europe” (Skorzynski 1990: 98–100). The debates were crucial to establishing integration in Western Europe as the consensual priority for a free Poland among some of the most significant personalities of the Catholic and secular intelligentsia milieus, such as future Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki and Foreign Minister Krzysztof Skubiszewski (Czaputowicz 2009: 57–63).10 The group would gain influence during the transition by becoming, from 1987, one of the recruiting grounds for the reconstituted Solidarity National Executive Commission (Borowski 2005: 139). Solidarity’s extroverted nationalism enabled its liberal leadership to recognize the legitimacy of its eastern neighbors’ aspirations for independence, and to support the establishment of emerging national opposition groups in Ukraine and Lithuania, whose historical enmity with Poland had remained a source of tension (Snyder 2003: 229–230). Solidarity’s enthusiasm for the emerging nationalist movements in these countries was thus a novelty in Polish foreign policy (Snyder 2003: 256–276; Spero 2004: 42). However, despite the predominance of the progressive alliance within Solidarity in the late 1980s, Cardinal Józef Glemp, Wyszyn´ski’s successor (after the latter’s death in 1981), continued to uphold the National Catholic tradition, as testified in the preface he wrote to a 1985 new edition of Roman Dmowski’s 1927 pamphlet, “Church, Nation, and State” (Dmowski 1985). The introverted and extroverted visions of Poland’s foreign relations were a latent division in both the church and Solidarity.

Spain: the end of hegemonic Catholicism The response of the Spanish church to the Franco regime changed substantially after Vatican Council II. In the late 1960s the age of hegemonic Catholicism came to an end and the church developed a more complex relation with the regime. The openness of parts of the young

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clergy and some bishops to Vatican II doctrinal evolution was concomitant with the formation of a Catholic reformist wing in the Movimiento Nacional, an increasingly strong student activism, an emerging labor movement and a more vocal Catholic Basque nationalism. The impact of the Council was almost immediate among the progressive factions of the “Catholic family” of the Movimiento Nacional. Since 1957, after Franco reshuffled the government and appointed Opus Dei technocrats to run the ministries, members of this group had been free from direct association with the regime (Payne 1984: 189). Progressively, this group endorsed Catholic social doctrine and expressed more openly their criticisms to the regime (Payne 1984: 192–199). In 1963 several progressive Catholic groups attempted to engage in politics, one prominent example being the establishment of the Cuadernos para el Diálogo (Paper for Dialogue) by Joaquín Ruiz-Giménez. Like other members of his generation, Ruiz-Giménez evolved from part of the Francoist establishment to dissidence, in dialogue with Marxists and other opposition intellectuals (López 1990: 33). Strengthened by the doctrinal changes of Vatican Council II, this group also formed the backbone of the regime’s aperturista wing (Heubel 1977b: 132; Palomares 2006: 56, 143). Within the workers’ organizations Catholic Action, such as the Workers’ Brotherhoods (HOAC) and the Workers’ Youth Organization (JOC), unrest and opposition had already been visible since the late 1950s (López 1990: 50; Payne 1984: 188).11 In the 1960s the HOAC cooperated with the Spanish Communist Party (PCE) and together they formed the Workers’ Commissions (CCOO). From 1962 the Workers’ Commissions started organizing widely attended strikes, with the indirect support of parts of the hierarchy. Other members of Catholic Action demanded more autonomy from the regime (Heubel 1977a: 134). It was thus not surprising that in the mid-1960s the episcopate judged that Catholic Action had left the realm of the regime. Franco tried to bring it back to its control by determining the exclusion of radicalized worker organizations, but the move provoked the collapse of Catholic Action as a mass organization (Payne 1984: 198). In Spain the Vatican Council’s endorsement of human rights gave Catholic progressives a basis for an entente with Marxists and communists that boosted the Catholic labor organizations, the only legal organizations outside the realm of the state, to a leading status in the opposition to the regime. The impact of the Council doctrinal changes was also important among the clergy, in particular the younger priests with an elective affinity with liberal Catholicism (Payne 1984: 196; Linz 1991a: 168). This encouraged a process of intellectual, social and political change


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within the Spanish clergy and the formation of a religious subcommunity, thus breaking its unity (Péréz-Díaz 1991). Change within the higher ranks of the hierarchy was initially slower due to the regime’s control over the appointment of diocesan bishops. However, in the late 1960s Pope Paul VI’s use of veto to freeze bishops’ appointments (1965–68) accelerated change and nominated progressive clerics as auxiliary bishops to 20 vacant dioceses. When the appointments resumed in 1968, the regime was under pressure from the Vatican to choose moderate reformers, rather than conservatives, to fill the empty seats (Payne 1984: 198). To replace Archbishop Enrique Pla y Deniel after his death in 1968 the regime agreed on the appointment of the moderate reformist Vicente Enrique y Tarancón as Archbishop of Toledo and Primate of Spain (1984: 199). The powers of the Primate and his Metropolitan Council were transferred to the Episcopal Conference where, from 1971, auxiliary bishops were given the right to vote (Heubel 1977b: 134). This meant that, on the eve of the transition, reformist bishops outweighed conservatives at the Episcopal Conference. Amidst a crisis of priestly vocations caused by the secularization of thousands of priests and a sense of theological and moral upheaval within the church, the episcopate convened the Joint Assembly of Bishops and Priests to examine the crisis and determine a course of action (Heubel 1977a: 135). The Assembly questioned the intimate relationship between the church and the regime (Secretariado Nacional del Clero 1971: 159–161). The Assembly voted upon a symbolic abjuration of the church’s crusade during the civil war, as a sign of its changing attitude to the National Catholic regime instituted in Spain: “We humbly recognize and ask pardon for not being, when it was necessary, true ministers of reconciliation in the midst of our people torn by a fratricidal war” (Lannon 1987: 114).12 In the midst of the uproar caused by the declaration condemning the church’s association with Franco by the conservative hierarchy, Pope Paul VI acted decisively in favor of the progressive faction by appointing the Archbishop of Toledo Cardinal Tarancón as Chairman of the Episcopal Conference after the death of Archbishop Casimiro Morcillo in May 1971. Tarancón sided with the Vatican in the negotiations with Franco on the 1953 Spanish concordat, in particular regarding the attempt to end state patronage of bishops (Callahan 2000: 530). In January 1973, in the context of the negotiations between the regime and the Vatican on the 1953 concordat, the episcopate wrote the letter “Sobre la Iglesia y la comunidad política” (On the church and the Political Community), where it stated that, although state and church had the common aim of establishing justice in the world, the

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two “are independent and autonomous, each in its proper terrain” (quoted in Heubel 1977: 136) in what was the first endorsement of democracy (Patino 1984: 164).

The church and Basque nationalism (1960–1974) The introverted and anti-regionalist National Catholic orthodoxy was also challenged by the increasingly open nationalism of the Basque Catholics. The effect of Vatican Council II liberalization was deeply influential on the Basque clergy, which was by the end of the sixties in “a state of almost constant agitation” (Payne 1984: 197). The worries caused by the radicalization of the Basque clergy were compounded by the rise to prominence of Basque Homeland and Freedom (ETA) and the increasing reluctance of the church hierarchy to punish Basque nationalist clerics for their nationalist preaching. ETA’s escalation of the conflict with its first assassination in 1968 provoked great shock and a hardening of the regime’s attitude towards Basque “separatist clerics.” The increasing resistance of the hierarchy to collaborate with the regime in punishing these priests led to the establishment of a concordatarian prison in Zamora where more than 100 “political priests” were detained by the regime. ETA’s assassination of Prime Minister Admiral Carrero Blanco, Franco’s presumed successor, in February 1973, unveiled the deep animosity between the regime and the conservative clergy against the progressive clerics. The shouting “Tarancón al paredón!” (Tarancón to the execution wall!) heard at Carrero Blanco’s funeral mass showed the conservatives’ enmity towards the progressive wing of the church (Linz 1991a: 170). After the death of Franco’s most likely successor, the ties between the conservative forces in the church, such as the Opus Dei and the Hermandade Sacerdotal del Clero (Priestly Brotherhood of Clerics), became tighter (Callahan 2000: 542).13 However, with no support from the Spanish hierarchy or the Vatican, the efforts of the group of intransigent defenders of authoritarianism—known as the “bunker”—to form a unified National Catholic political force remained unrewarded (Linz 1991b: 168). The response of the progressive aperturista Catholics to the increasingly uncertain political situation materialized in May 1973 with the formation of the 90-member study group Tácito. Tácito was a product of the process of renovation of the Spanish church since 1965, being particularly indebted to the influential heritage of the National Catholic Association of Propagandists (ACNdP). Although Tácito was not a formal opposition group, it formulated a set of programmatic lines


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following Christian Democratic principles. Other Christian democratic groups were created simultaneously, such as José Maria Gil Robles’s Federación Popular Democrática and Joaquin Ruiz-Giménez’s Izquierda Democrática. However, without endorsement by the hierarchy to sway the group leaders into a common political force, the block remained split (Palomares 2006: 184; Callahan 2000). The Añoveros affair in the spring of 1974 triggered a definite break in relations between the Spanish church and the regime. After Bishop of Bilbao António Añoveros defended Basque autonomy in a public homily, the regime attempted to put pressure for him to renounce the bishopric and go into exile. Archbishop Tarancón defied the verdict and Pope Paul VI threatened to excommunicate Prime Minister Arias Navarro. The Spanish Government was forced to withdraw its condemnation of Añoveros, but by then most bishops were convinced that a negotiated transition to democracy was the right path to follow (Callahan 2000: 305; Payne 1984: 205). On the eve of the transition, a majority of the bishops had abandoned National Catholicism as a model for relations with the state, and demanded independence from the regime. The Episcopal Conference’s commitment to change, the Catholic-inspired aperturista groups, the militant activism of Catholics within trade unions and the new Catholic grassroots political movements, although not presenting a common front against the regime, gave the church legitimacy to become an actor in democratization.

Conclusion Both the Polish and the Spanish church responded to the imposition of authoritarian regimes by adopting an introverted National Catholic ideology with strong introverted tones. In both countries Vatican Council II challenged the fusion of religious and political power implied in National Catholicism but, whereas in Spain the top hierarchy abandoned the premise, in Poland it was merely suspended during the transition. In 1974–75, as Franco’s health declined rapidly and attempts to reform the regime appeared unlikely to succeed, the majority of bishops supported democratization even if this would mean the loss of influence by the church (Callahan 2000: 530–551; Anderson 2003c: 27–31). Cardinal Tarancón pleaded for a negotiated transition to democracy which would “allow all citizens to participate freely and actively in the country’s life” and a change in civil–ecclesiastical relations, in which the church did not seek more than the right to preach

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its religious message (quoted in Callahan 2000: 381). After 40 years of intimate church–state relations, based on the National Catholic pact sealed during the civil war, the Spanish church had come to trade the privileges granted by Franco’s confessional state for the “liberty of the church” that would allow it to focus on its pastoral role and to shed its political function. The response of the Spanish church in late Francoism was the fruit of its paradoxical position. On the one hand, it had imprinted its authority on almost all moral issues and spread into all social sectors (Callahan 2000: 389), on the other hand, after the doctrinal changes of the Vatican Council, the church changed tack regarding its tight relations with the state. In Poland, exclusion and repression of clerical authority created an equally complex position for the church. A powerful institution in the spiritual and social domain, the church was persecuted by the regime. Although supporting democracy and temporarily allying itself with the liberal dissidents within Solidarity, the Polish hierarchy was willing to gain privileges and see its moral and spiritual status recognized in the new political order.

Notes 1 Catholic Action and the National Catholic Association of Propagandists (ACNdP) were lay movements formed in the early 20th century aiming at reactivating faith among laymen. From the 1930s to the late 1950s, the Spanish Catholic Action and the ACNdP were the main promoters of National Catholicism. 2 One other objective of this reform was to weaken the seminary in Victoria, a notoriously subversive institution for the regime. 3 The letter had particular importance because it was sent before the Vatican recognized the incorporation of the Polish Western dioceses (in the Potsdam territories) into the Polish Catholic church. The final protocol between the Vatican and Poland was signed only after the Treaty between the Federal Republic of Germany and Poland recognizing the Oder-Neisse border in January 1970 (Rothschild 1989: 195). 4 The defensive attitude of the Polish church against the Vatican had been reinforced by the perceived Germanophile policy of Pope Pius XII during and after World War II (Rothschild and Wingfiled 2000: 82; Pease 2009: 245–246). 5 In his memoirs Agostino Casaroli admitted being torn between the desire to establish normal diplomatic relations with an apparently solid regime and loyalty towards the only independent hierarchy in the communist block (Casaroli 2000: 134–135; Monticone 1986: 160). 6 From the time of his appointment as Bishop of Kraków in the early sixties Karol Wojtyła had used the defense of human rights as a justification for opposition to the authorities over his ambitious program of church


7

8

9 10

11 12 13

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building, the establishment of a catechetical network for the religious education of youth and the government’s drafting seminarians from his Archdiocese into the army (Weigel 2010a: 133–136). The Pastoral Constitution for the church in the Modern World laid the doctrinal basis for the cooperation between Catholic groups and secular dissidents by loosening the need for a theological grounding of human rights, thus opening Catholics to cooperation with liberal dissidents. The leading dissident Jacek Kurón reported in his memoirs that in the winter of 1974–75 Karol Wojtyła had promised him that the church would never trade the defense of human rights for concessions from the regime towards the church (Kurón 1989: 347–349). Examples of this cooperation were the ecumenical Catholic community at the Laski Monastery near Warsaw. Other leading personalities included Andrzej Wielowieyski, Andrzej Drawicz, Brosnislaw Geremek, Jan Olszewski, Adam Strzembosz, Jan Nowak Jezioranski, Janusz Reiter, Piotr Nowina-Konopka, Jan Kułakowski and Jacek Saryusz-Wolski. The church was the only institution allowed, by virtue of the 1953 concordat, to run independent labor organizations. The vote reached the approval of a simple majority of the assembly, but not the requisite two-thirds majority for formal acceptance. From 1969 to 1974 in the form of a “monocolor government,” whereby Opus Dei ministers held power over four economic ministries and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (López 1990: 123).

3

The church political strategies during the transition

This chapter seeks to link the political strategies of the church hierarchies during the transition to the fate of introverted National Catholicism as a political identity. Comparing the Polish and the Spanish churches as actors in the negotiations leading to democratic transitions (1975–78 in Spain and from 1988 to 1991 in Poland) shows the importance of church strategies for the mobilization of political identities. Although church actors were central in the transition in both countries, the Polish hierarchy’s engagement in the political process contrasts with the neutrality chosen by Spanish Cardinal Tarancón, and this had an impact on the mobilization of the religious and national identities. The chapter first describes the changing dynamics of the Polish church’s political involvement and explains it in terms of the hierarchy’s struggle for recognition of clerical authority in the new democratic regime. After the Solidarity break-up in the run-up to the 1990 presidential elections the church changed coalition partners: the association with the Solidarity liberal leadership was replaced by Cardinal Glemp’s support for the emerging National Catholic political groups. Struggle for privilege and recognition from the state was clad in nationalist arguments; the church was thus in dissention with the transitional elite’s establishment of a Polish foreign policy based on respect and friendliness towards other nations. The Spanish church’s preferences for a new framework for relations with the state and the abandonment of National Catholicism were on the basis of a self-restraining political strategy during the transition. The church adopted a neutral attitude towards the territorial arrangements and accepted a modest recognition of its relations with the state in the 1978 constitution. Equally Cardinal Tarancón abstained from promoting a confessional party, thus creating the conditions for the depoliticization of the religious/national cleavage.

During the transition

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The Polish church in the transition The Polish church was a key supporter of the opposition during the transition to democracy and an important partner in the negotiations (Linz and Stepan 1996; Linz 1991a). When in January 1988 a wave of strikes started in Nowa Huta and later spread to the whole country, the regime concluded that it could not overcome the crisis without the support of Solidarity. Just the year before, Pope John Paul II had visited Poland and showed once again the church’s mobilizing capacity, and his implicit support to Solidarity gave the weakened and illegal opposition much-needed credibility. Under the spell of Mikhail Gorbatchev’s Perestroika, the Polish communist leader General Jaruselski announced the creation of a higher chamber in parliament during the plenary of the Central Committee on 13 June 1988. The plan was to create more pluralistic representation and include the opposition in the political system. However, hardliners within the party refused direct negotiations with Solidarity, whose activities had been outlawed in December 1981. The moderate wing of the party thus decided to ask for the church’s support to serve as intermediary. On 3 May 1988 the secretary of the Central Committee Stanisław Ciosek—charged with negotiating with the opposition—told the head of the Warsaw Club of Catholic Intellectuals, Andrzej Wielowieyski, that the party was ready to initiate negotiations with Solidarity. Henceforth, the church, in particular the moderate wing of the episcopate, was a key element for the establishment of the round table negotiations and its success in overcoming the differences between Solidarity and the regime (Ziemer 2009: 79–80). The prelates that had formed the joint church-state commission in 1980–81 were again engaged in negotiating relations between the regime and the opposition. Despite the support given by Pope John Paul II and a great part of the priests to the opposition, the regime considered the church its best bet to serve as intermediary in the negotiations (Ziemer 2009: 90). After Mikhail Gorbatchev declared to Jaruselski during a visit to Warsaw in the summer of 1988 that he saw no obstacles to the inclusion of Solidarity in the political sphere, the negotiations gained speed. Father Bronisław Dembowski, spiritual director of the Warsaw KIK, Father Alojsy Orszulik, the episcopate’s secretary, and bishops Jerzy Da˛ browski and Tadeusz Goclowski were involved in the pre-round table talks, often helping to overcome deadlocks in the negotiations (Ziemer 2009: 80–87). In November 1988, when the talks between Wałe˛ sa and the government stalled over disagreements on Solidarity’s request that the trade union be legalized before talks continue, the mediation of

36


Orszulik and Archbishop Da˛browski brought the opposition—Solidarity leader Lech Wałe˛ sa—and the Minister of the Interior, General Czesław Kiszczak—back to the negotiating table (Elster 1996: 29). The church formula prevailed: the two sides agreed that the legalization of Solidarity would be the result of the negotiations, not its starting point (Skórzyn´ski 2009: 145). Clerical mediators were also present at the talks held at the Minister of Interior’s villa at Magdalenka, close to Warsaw, where key decisions were taken before the formal start of the round table negotiations (Elster 1996: 30). Father Orszulik and the Bishop of Gdansk Tadeusz Gocłowski joined the round table in February 1989 and Orszulik was always present at the informal talks between regime and Solidarity moderates held at Magdalenka (Orszulik 2006: 605; Ziemer 2009: 93).1 The government and the opposition signed the round table agreement on 5 April 1989, which included a provision that Solidarity would be allowed to participate in the semi-free elections to the parliament in June 1989. The Solidarity election lists won 99 per cent of the seats it was allowed to compete for and the party was obliged to accept the formation of a mixed government led by Solidarity. The seeds of the future division between the liberals and the church were already visible in the round table negotiations. Despite the church’s support for democracy, Cardinal Glemp showed his concern with the liberal intelligentsia’s rise to prominence within Solidarity during the round table talks. As progressive bishops and Solidarity’s liberal and Catholic intelligentsia, such as Tadeusz Mazowiecki and Bronisław Geremek, won a central place in the negotiations, the implicit entente between the two groups elicited concern among the more conservative parts of the episcopate. Cardinal Glemp worried that Orszulik and Mazowiecki’s concessions to the communist government would hinder the church’s ambitions for privileges in a post-communist scenario (Orszulik 2006: 605). Also, Glemp and other traditionalists within the episcopate feared that the collaboration of liberal clerics with the intelligentsia would result in the predominance of liberal political forces after the transition. Thus, in the June 1989 semi-free elections, despite supporting the Solidarity lists against the communists, the church’s conservative forces, with the consent of Cardinal Glemp, proposed alternative candidates in constituencies where they judged that the contestants proposed by Solidarity were too liberal (Ziemer 2009: 94; Bingen 1996: 9). The liberal prelates’ contribution to the formulation of an extroverted nationalism by Solidarity (Snyder 2003: 256–276; Spero 2004: 42) was also a matter of suspicion by the traditionalist faction. Despite the increasingly open division among the clergy, church mediators fulfilled one last task after the June 1989 elections. After the


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landslide victory of Solidarity, the communists feared that the trade union would not stick by the agreement that 65 per cent of the seats in Parliament would remain within communist hands. In the post-election period the church negotiators were instrumental in reassuring the communists that Solidarity would abide by the round table pact, and helped to hammer out the agreement resulting in the formation of a coalition government of Solidarity and the communists led by Solidarity’s leader Tadeusz Mazowiecki in September 1989 (Ziemer 2009: 96). Fulfilling Glemp’s worst expectations, Solidarity’s representation in the Mazowiecki government was almost exclusively composed of the liberalminded intelligentsia. The conservative and introverted nationalists, including Lech Wałe˛ sa, were left out. This activated a latent conflict between liberals and conservatives that resulted in Solidarity’s demise. In the months preceding the May 1990 elections, as post-Solidarity forces started to form separate parties, Cardinal Glemp gave his support to the National Catholic political forces, with which they shared a conservative worldview. The era of cooperation between liberal dissidents, Catholic progressives and the moderate church hierarchy thus came to an end. The alliance had achieved a compromise with the communist regime which resulted in the semi-free elections in June 1989 (Ziemer 2009; Kloczowski 2000: 342). However, the liberal-church alliance did not serve the objectives of Cardinal Glemp’s hierarchy. At stake was the defense of the Catholic identity and the institutionalization of church influence in the building of post-communist Poland. During the initial deliberations on a new constitution in 1990, the episcopate demanded extensive clerical influence over the state, arguing that the communist regimes had misused the doctrine of separation as a constitutional foundation for a repression of religious freedom (Osiatynski 1991: 129).

Changing allies The democratic revolution for which the church had fought was understood by its conservative majority as an opportunity to use the church’s social and spiritual legitimacy as a basis to demand extensive recognition of the church’s role, which would justify extensive privileges by the state (Kloczowski 2000: 230). The church’s foundation for these demands was Catholicism’s essential link with the nation, in particular in those issues related to morality and education, which were considered crucial for the fate of the nation (Kloczowski 2000: 341; Casanova 1994: 106).

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Although one of the Polish communist parliament’s last acts in May 1989 was the enactment of the statutes on religious freedom, which gave the church a legal basis for operation, the church saw the transition to democracy not merely as a goal in itself but also as an opportunity to gain extensive priviledges and enable it to impose its views on morality policies. Many of the arguments for increased clerical authority, in particular those related to the formal relations of the state with the church, revolved around issues of national identity. In a 1992 speech Cardinal Józef Glemp stated: “We always want to serve the nation in any way we can, and no one can tell us how to do this. We understand the nation and we wish to serve it to the best of our abilities” (quoted in Borowik 2013). The split in the Solidarity movement, caused by the rivalry between the liberal intelligentsia—which held the most influential positions in the first post-communist government—and the faction of Solidarity’s leader Lech Wałe˛ sa, provided the opportunity for Cardinal Glemp to delink the church from the liberal group and support the emerging National Catholic political forces. As foreseen by Glemp, the preferences of Solidarity’s progressive intelligentsia for a secular state went against the Polish church’s resolve to use the opportunities given by the transition to win clerical authority over issues of morality and public affairs. Thus, despite Pope John Paul II’s warnings against the formation of Catholic parties (see John Paul II 1988), the Polish episcopate tried to promote a pro-church block in parliament. The church’s strategy was publicized during the campaign for the May 1990 Presidential election. Rather than backing the Prime Minister—and progressive Catholic—Tadeusz Mazowiecki—Glemp took the side of Solidarity leader Lech Wałe˛ sa (Bingen 1996). Underlying the support for Wałe˛ sa was the Polish hierarchy’s argument that Wałe˛ sa was the “real” Pole in the National Catholic tradition, and the calculation that his political faction backed the church’s plea for increased clerical authority. Mazowiecki won only 18.8 percent of the vote, and was overtaken by Stanisław Tymin´ski, a previously unknown émigré millionaire who fought against Wałe˛ sa in the second round of the Presidential election. Fearing the victory of Tymin´ski, the church issued an official statement in favor of Lech Wałe˛ sa (1996: 10).

Developments on Poland’s relations with neighboring nations Democratization resulted in the reorientation of Polish foreign policy to Western Europe and a dramatic improvement in the relations with its neighbors, with most of which Poland had a history of conflict and


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enmity during the 20th century (Snyder 2003: 133–193). Solidarity’s extroverted nationalism was translated into a program of reconciliation with its neighbors and a pro-European policy (Spero 2004). Between September 1989 and May 1993, Polish diplomacy under Foreign Minister Krzysztof Skubiszewski oriented Polish foreign policy according to the principles of extroverted nationalism. Skubiszewski survived four changes of government, and implemented the Westernization of Polish foreign policy and the adoption of a friendly attitude towards other nations as the basis of a pro-European foreign policy (Kuzniar 2009: 29). Relations with Germany and with Western Europe gained prominence over a privileged relationship with Russia, which, some advocated, should take priority. According to this reasoning, after establishing friendly relations with Russia, Poland would be able to improve its standing towards Western Europe (Snyder 2003: 256–257). Foreign Minister Skubiszewski thought otherwise and focused on improving relations with Germany, as a key partner in Poland’s bid to integrate into the EU. Polish diplomatic efforts at reconciliation with Germany were accompanied by the demand for recognition of the Polish–German borders. Alarm bells rang in Warsaw during the negotiations for German reunification in November 1989 when Chancellor Helmut Kohl omitted the recognition of the 1945 German–Polish border at the Oder-Neisse Rivers in his ten-point speech on German reunification to the parliament. The response of the Polish Foreign Minister Skubiszewski, in a speech to the Polish parliament, was that the “unconditional recognition of the western border of Poland was a precondition for Polish-German reconciliation” (quoted in Kuzniar 2009: 34). The Polish request was recognized and the 2+4 Treaty on German Reunification, signed on 12 September 1990, recognized the Polish border (Snyder 2003: 235). In June 1991 the two states celebrated a Treaty of Friendship and Good Neighborhood, followed by several bilateral initiatives (Bingen 1997: 5).2 In 1991 the Polish efforts were crowned with the beginning of the trilateral cooperation between Germany, France and Poland—the Weimar Triangle—in which Germany showed itself to be willing to multilateralize the privileged relationship with France through annual meetings of the heads of state and governments, and of foreign and defense ministers. From the first days of democracy, Polish diplomats tried to get Western leaders to commit on EU accession and on 19 September 1989 Poland signed the agreement for trade cooperation with the European Community (EC), which was to become the basis for Polish–EC relations. In February 1990 Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki gave

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a speech on the European Parliament in which he expressed Poland’s intentions to apply for membership. On 19 May 1990 Poland started negotiating an association agreement with the EU, which was signed in December. In June 1991 Skubiszewski declared in the Polish Parliament that Poland was determined to become a member of the European Community (Kuzniar 2009: 30). In addition to the reconciliation with Germany and integration in the Euro-Atlantic institutions, the extroverted nationalism of the liberal Solidarity elite also inspired efforts for an improvement of relations with Poland’s eastern neighbors. In 1988 Solidarity’s contacts with the nationalist opposition movements in Ukraine and Lithuania were crucial first signs of the Polish democratic opposition elite’s respect for Ukraine and Lithuania’s national aspirations (Snyder 2003: 240). The Solidarity-led government built on these contacts to establish, between 1990 and December 1991, a so-called “two-track” policy, in which Poland established the first diplomatic contacts with the autonomyseeking national communist leaders of the Soviet Republics of Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania. While trying to minimize conflicts with Moscow during the complex negotiations over the dismantling of the Warsaw Pact (signed in 1991 and completed in 1993) and the retreat of Soviet troops from Polish soil, Polish diplomacy continued its efforts at mending the historically inimical relation with the neighboring Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania. In this vein Poland was the first country to recognize the independence of these nations in 1991. After the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Polish diplomacy continued to take advantage of the window of opportunity to implement the stabilization of borders and the improvement of neighboring relations in the region. Poland thus opened negotiations leading to treaties of recognition of the 1945 borders and of reconciliation on past aggression. This policy was coined by Polish diplomats as being based on the “European standards” of relations between nations (Snyder 2003: 258). Even as Solidarity split into contending forces, the movement’s extroverted nationalism continued to be translated into a policy of reconciliation with the nations with whom Poland had been enemies for most of the 20th century. By associating a new form of perceiving and treating its neighbors with its European accession, Foreign Minister Skubiszewski signaled and anchored its efforts in the East on Poland’s Western European priority. The reconciliation between nations in the aftermath of World War II, leading to the 1958 Treaty of Rome, was thus invoked as an inspiration for Poland’s new foreign policy. Several Treaties of Reconciliation and Friendly Neighborhood were signed between 1992 and 1994. In May, June and August 1992 the


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Polish–Ukrainian, Polish–Belarusian and Polish–Russian Treaties were signed. After difficult negotiations with Lithuania regarding the Polish minority and recognition of past conflicts, the Polish–Lithuanian Treaty was signed in January 1994. By acting swiftly Polish diplomacy “to introduce European norms before alternatives could crystalize” (Snyder 2003: 258). It was in the context of the tense negotiations on the dismantling of the Warsaw Pact that Poland aligned with Czechoslovakia and Hungary in a trilateral relation aiming at upholding each other’s sovereign rights, supporting the democratization of the region and integrating the EuroAtlantic institutions (Kuzniar 1991: 10). The Presidents Lech Wałe˛ sa, Vaclav Havel and József Antall signed on 15 February the Visegrád declaration instituting permanent foreign policy cooperation between the three countries. Although relations between Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic had not been openly hostile, it was the first time in modern history that the three countries (plus Slovakia, after 1993) aligned their foreign policies based on a conception of common interests.

Spain: from the transition to the first democratic elections The moderate strategy of the Spanish church during the transition (1975–78) helped to untie the knot between nationalism and Catholicism, and thus helped the pacification of relations between the center and peripheral nationalisms. As the declining health of Franco made a change of regime imminent, the church hoped that Spain would avoid a left-wing revolution and was, by the time of Franco’s death on 20 November 1975, decidedly in favor of democracy. The chosen successor of Franco, Juan Carlos de Bourbon, was anointed king in the Holy Spirit Mass on 27 November 1975, presided over by Cardinal Tarancón. Replacing the coronation ceremony by a mass, the monarchy borrowed legitimacy from the church. Cardinal Tarancón’s seminal homily restated the church’s hopes that the new King would use his powers to build a democratic regime supportive of toleration of religious freedom. Tarancón asserted the church’s duty to preach, especially “when it is a question of promoting human rights, of strengthening just liberties or of helping to promote the causes of peace and justice as methods which are always in agreement with the Gospel” (Heubel 1977a: 138). Tarancón also pledged the church’s withdrawal from political functions and a neutral position regarding the emerging political forces (Linz 1991: 171), and declared that “the political community and the church are independent and autonomous” (quoted in Callahan 2000: 561).

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The willingness to trade privileges for freedom from state control led Cardinal Tarancón to limit demands for recognition of the church’s priviledges (Péréz-Díaz 1991: 34). Also, the church abstained from persuading the divided Christian democratic political groups to form a unified center party (Callahan 2000: 547). In contrast with the Polish church’s approach, the Spanish hierarchy calculated that the church’s position and influence in society would be ultimately harmed by too much intervention, which could reawaken the polarization of the past over clerical influence (Callahan 2000: 562). The church’s hopes for a gradual and negotiated transition were fulfilled when on 1 July 1976 King Juan Carlos replaced Arias Navarro with Adolfo Suarez, the leader of Franco’s Movimiento National, as President of the Government (Heubel 1977a: 138). Although Suarez was not one of the reformists of the “Catholic family,” his first cabinet (June 1976–June 1977) included seven ministers who were members of the Catholic-inspired Tácito group (see previous chapter). According to one of UCD’s prominent ministers, Miguel Herrero de Mignon, their presence gave the government the badly needed reformist credentials (Palomares 2006: 167). Ex-Tácito ministers in Suarez’s first government were the main authors of the Law on Political Reform, the key legislative initiative leading to the dismantling of the Francoist political system. In the summer of 1976 the reformist Christian Democrats also became pivotal actors in charge of talks with the opposition socialists and communists, which advocated a break with Francoism and an accelerated transition. Through their centrist positions the Catholic reformists were key to the success of the negotiated transition, which bore fruit with the adoption of the Law of Political Reform by the Francoist Cortes in October 1976 (Palomares 2006: 168). The law’s approval by popular referendum on December 1976 marked a new phase of transition, centered on elections and party formation. From the last months of 1976 to June 1977 the formation of right-wing political parties and the legalization of the Communist Party marked the political agenda. Franco’s ex-Minister Manuel Fraga’s alliance of conservative forces, the Alianza Popular (AP), was the first to be created. Although Fraga had been a reformist, the party was composed of National Catholic forces defending a “perfecting continuity” with Francoism, and the AP opposed the recognition of the Catalan and Basque claims for powersharing with Madrid (Palomares 2005: 176–186).3 With the far right space occupied, reformist Catholics organized in Christian democratic parties and political forces started competing for the center, but their fragmentation played against them. Although in early 1977 a larger and more organized political force, the Christian


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Democrats (CD) was created, many political personalities did not join it (Palomares 2006: 184). Tácito’s most important political personalities, Marcelino Oreja, Alfonso Osorio and Calvo Sotelo as well as RuizGiménez’s Izquierda Democrática, Federico Silva and José María Gil Robles’s Federación Popular Democrática remained out of the coalition (Palomares 2005: 126). Crucially, Cardinal Tarancón abstained from using the church’s weight to sway Christian democratic leaders into joining into one party. In a speech to the Club Siglo XXI in June 1978, Cardinal Tarancón justified the church’s political neutrality, by stating that the church’s main political concern was now to attempt to “recover progressively the religious, rather than the political, function of our church, in a legal order that favored neutrality and pulled away from a system that fostered all intromissions and confusions” (quoted in Patino 1984: 169). Third, although the president of the transitional government, Adolfo Suarez, considered Christian democracy as the most credible political identity for a centrist party, he was not willing to risk defeat in the 1977 elections (Palomares 2006: 184). In face of a divided Christian democratic camp and in need of broad political and social support to carry out the transition, Adolfo Suarez proceeded to form a party composed of heterogeneous political forces, the Union for Democratic Center (UCD). The party won the June 1977 election. In the UCD Christian democrats shared influence with liberals nationalists and social democrats. The UCD’s electoral program proposed: To offer the electorate a moderate position, like the one represented by non-Marxist preponderant parties in Europe, of Christian democratic, liberal and social democratic affiliation, in order to support president Suárez’s policy in the next elections, in the definite and peaceful consolidation of a stable democracy in Spain. (UCD Electoral program, 1977)

Drafting the 1978 constitution: defining church–state relations and territorial arrangements regulating relations between Spain and nationalities The UCD government provided crucial support to the church during the drafting of the constitution between the autumn of 1977 and the summer of 1978. The UCD’s parliamentary majority allowed the party to nominate three of the eight-MP constitutional committee, which meant that the party held the key to finding an agreement between secularists and Catholics. The constitutional acknowledgment of the

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Catholic Church was important to avoid agitation among one-fifth of conservative bishops (Callahan 2005: 570). The first version of the constitution, drafted in near secrecy by the parliamentary committee, did not include recognition of the Catholic Church. When this fact was leaked to the press, the episcopate lobbied the UCD and AP members of the constitutional committee and issued a document on 26 November 1977, asserting that the constitution should recognize the importance of the church in the political reorganization of the country. Crucially, the bishops did not base this claim on the essential link between the church and the nation, but rather on the “sociological fact” that a great majority of Spanish were Catholics (Callahan 2005: 552). Article 16 of the constitution reflected the consensus between the church and moderate UCD politicians: “No religion shall have a state character. … The public authorities shall take into account the religious beliefs of Spanish society and shall consequently maintain appropriate cooperation with the Catholic Church and other confessions” (Constitución Española 1978). The formulation of article 16 did not totally satisfy the minority of traditionalist bishops but was sufficient to ensure that the Episcopal Conference suggested collectively that Catholics should follow their conscience when voting in the December 1978 referendum on the constitution (Gunter and Blough 1981: 380; Anderson 2003c: 36). The consensus-driven spirit of the transition, of which the church’s strategy was an important element, also guided the diplomatic settlement between the Vatican, the government and the episcopate on the renegotiation of issues of relations between the Vatican and Spain. King Juan Carlos, by relinquishing ecclesiastic patronage in 1975, opened the way to the signing of a partial agreement with the Vatican, which was signed on 28 July 1976 (Callahan 2000: 553). The UCD government continued negotiations over the basic provisions of state relations with the Vatican to replace the 1953 concordat, which was signed in 1979. While confirming the end of the confessional state, the Acuerdos maintained a series of other rights and privileges for the church, such as basic guarantees regarding the legal status of the church, the rights of parents to choose religious education for their children, religious service in the armed forces and collaboration between church and state on the financing of priests’ salaries and religious schools (Callahan 2000: 552). The constitutional committee also had to solve the conflicts between center and periphery that threatened to derail the transition process. A wave of terrorist violence by the ETA (1976–1978) polarized even further the political forces and heightened public


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conflict over the demands of the Basque and Catalan nationalists for autonomous status. The Spanish church had been a steadfast supporter of the unity of Spain; now its declared neutrality regarding the national question became an ingredient of the incremental and pragmatic approach taken by the political forces involved in the negotiation of the territorial question during the constitution-making process. The abandonment of the nationalist rhetoric by the Spanish hierarchy facilitated the achievement of a compromise in the form of the “state of the autonomies.” The constitutional committee was sharply divided between those parties supporting a symmetric federation—the PSOE and the regional Basque and Catalonian parties—and the ex-Francoist AP who defended the unity of Spain. The UCD was the pivot forcing parties to compromise and the AP—who opposed the demands for autonomy of the historical regions—progressively abandoned their positions, and a compromise dictated by the necessity to keep communists and regional nationalists within the constitutional process emerged (Balfour and Quiroga 2007, 52). Article 2 resulted in the recognition of competing visions of Spanish national identity in that it recognized both the unity of the “Spanish nation” and the right of regional nationalities to autonomy (Constitución Española 1978: 1). Rather than choosing one vision, the framers of the constitution chose to juxtapose the two options. Article 2, by adopting such a term as “nationalities” to describe the historic regions of Catalonia, the Basque Country and Galicia, left some of the arrangements deliberately ambiguous, thus allowing for later interpretation (Balfour and Quiroga 2007: 53; Martinez-Herrera and Miley 2010: 10). The authors of the constitution also intended to determine the form and powers of the institutions and mechanisms of the regional autonomies in a title outside the constitutional text (Title VIII). However, the drafting committee failed to agree on their basic format and left the details of the shape of territorial organization to ordinary democratic deliberation. Title VIII did not set the territorial boundaries of the future regions and failed to distinguish “nationalities” and “regions.” The constitution thus left open the nature of the future state (Martinez-Herrera and Miley 2010: 8). Crucially, the constitution only foresaw two differences between the historic communities and the other regions: one that allowed a faster procedure for the autonomous institutions for Catalonia and the Basque Country, the second allowing the institution of a regional fiscal system in the Basque Country and Navarre (Balfour and Quiroga 2007: 112).4

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The compromise attained in the 1978 constitution resulted in the organization of Spain as an “autonomic state,” a mid-term between the federal system, proposed by the PSOE and the moderate Catalan national tradition, and a unitarian state, proposed by the right. As foreseen, the ambiguity of the term “nationalities” allowed part of the demands of the historical regions to be addressed, above all those from Catalonia and the Basque Country, but fell short of instituting a federal state and, in the long term, fostered a logic of competition among the Spanish autonomous regions (Balfour and Quiroga 2007: 209). Nevertheless the “semantic engineering” of Article 2 of the constitution led to a conceptual discussion on Spanish nationalism, as well as to the diffusion of the idea that the Spanish nation and the sub-national nationalities could co-exist in the new state. The constitution foresaw that historical nations could follow a fast track for the establishment of their autonomous institutions, and both Catalonia and the Basque Country did so in the year after the adoption of the constitution. The new statutes of autonomy were adopted by referendums in October 1979.5 The elections to the regional parliaments took place in March 1980, with the victory of moderate nationalist parties, the Convergence and Union (CiU) in Catalonia and the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV), respectively with 27 and 38 percent of the votes. However, despite the formal advantage given to the two historical autonomies, the fact that the constitution did not effectively differentiate the historical nationalities from other regions allowed for the elites of regions with no previous history of regional identity to emulate the statutes of Catalonia and the Basque Country, thus starting a process of competitive regionalism that would mark the evolution of Spanish democratic politics. During the period of institutionalization of the autonomous communities, the hierarchy in Madrid fell ever more silent. The Basque church’s increasingly vocal support to the nationalist cause made the issue ever more divisive. After recovering full power of appointment over bishops, Pope John Paul II appointed native clerics as bishops of the three Basque dioceses. Although the Pope chose clerics whose political positions were relatively moderate, the reconstructing of the Basque hierarchy resulted in increased unity between the region’s priests and bishops on the questions of autonomy. In 1981 the three bishops of the Basque diocese condemned the ETA for its terrorist attacks, but also criticized the excessive repression by the civil authorities and stated that the state of the autonomies fell short of satisfying Basque aspirations (Callahan 2000: 580–583).


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Conclusion In both Poland and Spain the church’s response to the changing political situation was of the highest strategic importance for the fate of transition. However, the hierarchies’ strategy was markedly different. The Polish hierarchy’s deprivation of state priviledge during communism led the institution to see the transition as an opportunity to increase clerical authority, and for that purpose supported National Catholic political forces. In contrast, during Francoism the Spanish church had a deep-rooted position in the political and social fields. The church supported the 1975 transition to democracy and accepted disestablishment, following a modest approach in defense of its privileges in the new regime, while adopting a neutral position towards emerging parties. Three years after the transition, the 1978 constitution reformed Spain’s territorial organization and instituted religious freedom, while acknowledging the importance of cooperation with the Catholic Church.

Notes 1 Secretary of the Party’s Central Committee Stanisław Ciosek, Solidarity leader Tadeusz Mazowiecki and Father Orszulik were the core members of these informal talks. 2 Traktat miedzy Rzeczpospolita Polska a Republika Federalna Niemiec o dobrym sasiedztwie i przyjaznej współpracy z 17.06.1991 r. (Treaty between Poland and the German Democratic Republic on Friendship and Good Neighborhood) signed on 17 June 1991 in Bonn by Polish Prime Minister Jan Krzysztof Bielecki and MFA Krzysztof Skubiszewski, and by German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and MFA Hans-Dietrich Genscher. 3 The AP’s results were highly disappointing, with the party coming in fourth place, after the PCE, with only 6.7 percent of the vote. 4 The new constitution was approved by the lower chamber of parliament on 31 October 1978, with only 14 abstentions and six “no” votes. The majority of the Catalan nationalists, represented by the coalition Democratic Pact for Catalonia (PDC), predecessor of the Convergence and Union (CIU), voted in favor, but all the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) MPs abstained. During the national referendum on the constitution on 6 December 1978, the Basque moderate nationalists called for abstention, while the radicals demanded a “no” vote. The referendum was approved by 88.5 percent of the cast votes (Ministerio del Interior—Gobierno de España, 2012). 5 The Catalan autonomous institutions were swiftly instituted in Barcelona through the recognition of the exiled government of Catalonia, the Generalitat, and its president, Josep Tarradelas through Law 41/1977. In the Basque Country the (failed) attempt to include Navarra in the Basque territories slightly delayed the process.

4

The impact of church strategies on party system consolidation and survival of National Catholicism

This chapter focuses on the analysis of the church’s strategy of intervention in the public sphere and considers its effect on the deepening of the religious and national cleavages dividing liberals and nationalists. The chapter begins in the immediate post-transition period and ends with the consolidation of the party system (1991–2001 in Poland and 1982–1996 in Spain) and describes the church’s pursuit of influence over democratic institutions and policy-making and its effects on the process of party formation on the right of the party system. In new democracies, creating a centre party typically implies the fusion of heterogeneous political forces into a larger unit (Smith 1990), demanding that political groups “find compromises, reach agreements and eventually collude in order to find the party profile that best serves the overall common interests of governmental competitiveness” (Bartolini 2000). The deepening of political conflicts makes it harder to establish a centrist party. If not solved or diluted, conflicts on the cultural/political dimension, such as national or religious issues, become roadblocks to the formation of a center block unifying all right-leaning political forces. In Poland and Spain, the church was a significant actor in the stirring or silencing of conflicts over national or moral issues, as well as over its own privileges. Given the stable role that the religious orientation of voters has on party choice, even as secularization erodes the levels of religiosity among the population (Knutsen 1989, 2004), it is thus pertinent to assume that the attempt to mobilize the Catholic vote by the church is relevant to the process of party formation in the countries under study. The chapter thus analyzes the impact of Polish and Spanish church strategies on the shaping of political conflicts and the process of cleavage formation. The Polish church’s struggle for increased clerical authority in politics and its support of National Catholic political

Impact of church strategies

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forces helped the fusion of the religious and the national identities; the competition between liberal and National Catholic political forces hindered the stabilization of the party system, in particular on the right. In Poland the church’s support to these political forces fostered the institutionalization of this divide. In contrast, the Spanish church’s restraint from direct involvement with political parties and moderate positions on political and economic issues helped the pacification of the religious conflict as a political dividing line between liberals and nationalist political families. In 1989, this allowed the unification of liberals, Christian democrats and nationalists in a single party, the PP, and created the conditions for a partial reform of Spanish conservative nationalism.

Poland 1991–2001 The first entirely free parliamentary elections in Poland after World War II took place on 27 October 1991, in a context of extreme fragmentation resulting from the splintering of Solidarity, in which 29 parties won seats. In the electoral campaign the hierarchy confirmed that it had changed allies: instead of the liberal intellectuals with whom it had negotiated the transition, the church, under Cardinal Józef Glemp’s leadership, supported the National Catholic post-Solidarity forces. Cardinal Glemp’s sympathy for the legacy of Dmowski’s National Catholicism had been publicly displayed in his preface to the 1985 new edition of Roman Dmowski’s 1927 pamphlet “Church, Nation, and State” (Dmowski 1985). However, Cardinal Glemp’s support for Catholic Nationalist forces was mainly motivated by the church’s struggle for increased clerical authority, in particular for the defense of increased clerical authority in the public domain. The church’s introverted nationalist rhetoric was the instrument of a policy of alliance with political forces sympathetic to its agenda. Part of the hierarchy and Pope John Paul II opposed Glemp’s policy of political involvement, and these internal divisions resulted in inconsistencies in the church’s political strategy. On 27 August 1991 the episcopate issued a document entitled “The opinion of the Catholic Church regarding the Parliamentary elections” in which the bishops advanced a policy of political neutrality, as conveyed by the Vatican Council II document Gaudium et Spes (see Bingen 1996: 12). However, four weeks later, on 29 September 1991, the episcopate changed tack and issued directives for the Catholics’ vote. In the “Pastoral Letter on the Catholics’ Duties in the Parliamentary elections” the episcopate

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showed its determination to create a pro-Catholic block in parliament by urging Catholics to vote for five Catholic parties, including the Christian National Union (ZChN) and the Catholic Electoral Action (KAW) (Stan and Turcescu 2011, 125). The list excluded the ex-Solidarity liberal parties, the Union for Democracy (UD) and the Coalition of Liberal Democrats (KLD), thus confirming Cardinal Glemp’s estrangement from the former liberal leadership of Solidarity. The document maintained that Catholic voters should be guided by Christian values and advocated a boycott of political forces favoring the preservation of the permissive abortion law, i.e. both the ex-communists and the ex-Solidarity liberal political forces. Despite the support of the church, the five parties of the Catholic block gained only 25 percent of the votes in the 1991 election. Between 1991 and 1993 the opposition between the UD and the ZChN on the imposition of clerical authority was a major source of friction among the post-Solidarity bloc, hindering an already difficult process of government formation among the post-Solidarity bloc. An analysis of the electoral manifestos of the two parties shows the different attitudes regarding the expansion of clerical authority in the social and political spheres. The ZChN, founded by Wiesław Chrzanowski in 1987 and semi-formally endorsed by Cardinal Glemp, defended the church’s establishment. The party’s ideological statement started with: “the Catholic religion is the expression of truth which binds not only private matters but also public life.” The party rejected “the concept of an ideologically neutral state according to individualistic and liberal conceptions. Social structures should encourage society’s observance of Catholic ethical principles” (ZChN 1989). The ex-Solidarity liberal elite, now organized in the UD, opposed extensive church support for Catholic parties, with the church–state relations figuring prominently in the party’s statement of political identity, stating that, although “the state—its system of law—is part of a defined system of values, which in our culture is rooted in Christianity and human rights,” it cannot be “taken over by any specific ideological group” (UD 1991). ZChN’s attitudes towards Poland’s neighbors also reflected the party’s introverted nationalism and went against the grain of Polish foreign policy for the region. Roman Dmowski’s heritage was manifested in ZChN’s demand for reciprocity in relations with its eastern neighbors, and in demanding that Poland should suspend relations with Ukraine until it apologized for the 1940s’ aggression (Snyder 2003: 275). The extreme party fragmentation in the 1991–93 parliament meant that the post-Solidarity Catholic and the liberal poles needed to


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coalesce in order to form a government. However, the conflict between the two groups was deepened by the active engagement of the episcopate in the political sphere. The liberals resented the church’s evasion of democratic deliberative methods by imposing preferences by governmental decree and avoiding a referendum on abortion. For example, early in 1990 the church had lobbied for the adoption of legislation on religious education in public schools, and the law was adopted by a decree by the minister of education in August 1990, with neither parliamentary deliberation nor public discussion (Bingen 1996: 5).

National Catholicism and the 1992 lustration process In early 1992, the failed attempts to form stable governmental coalitions showed the divisiveness of the National Catholic identity among the post-Solidarity elite. The importance of the definition of the Polish nation gained central stage in Jan Olszewski’s government, in particular during the polemics caused by the law on lustration. National Catholicism’s worldviews and its adversarial position towards other liberal political forces were a clear dividing factor among the elite. After a two-month negotiation to form a majority coalition, Olszewski refused to accommodate the UD’s conditions and formed a minority government with the support of the National Catholic parties and the small liberal party, the KLD (Sabbat-Swidlicka 1992). Jan Olszewski justified the exclusion of the UD as a measure to impede his government from “decomposing” (Rzeczpospolita, 12 June 1992). The Christian National Union (ZChN) became a strong supporter of Olszewski and came to dominate the minority cabinet and advance a National Catholic agenda, most clearly in the lustration process launched by the government.1 The process became notorious for its association with a particular political agenda, and as part of a project of building a national political community in which the communist past was erased. In the view of its promoters, this enabled the nation to resume its natural historical progression from where it had been forced off-course in 1939. On 4 June 1992, Antoni Macierewicz, the minister of the interior, answering to parliament’s request to provide a list of collaborators with the communist secret services, provided a list of 64 members of government and parliament that had been listed as secret agents in the archives of the communist secret police. Most of the collaborators mentioned on this list belonged to the liberal UD, showing the depth of antagonism between National Catholics against their former liberal allies. The list triggered a political crisis. Prior to the list’s public

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disclosure, on 29 May 1992 the liberal parties and the SLD submitted a no confidence vote to the Olszewski government. The government was brought down on 4 July 1992. According to Olszewski, the vote determined nothing less than to “whom Poland belongs” (Rzeczpospolita, 5 June 1992). The crisis showed how divisive the introverted National Catholicism was among the post-Solidarity political forces. The subsequent government (1992–1993), led by UD’s Prime Minister Hanna Suchocka, was based on a truce between the UD and the ZChN. The limits of this formula meant that the government could not lean too far either to the left or the right on moral issues. The liberals avoided antagonizing the ZChN and collaborated in the adoption of the restrictive abortion law. This was a significant step: abortion was one of the signature issues in which the church played a major role and about which liberals and National Catholics were usually deeply opposed.2 The liberals and National Catholic parties opposed each other not only on the substance of the legislation but also on the manner of amending the law. The left and the liberals, as well as civil society movements, demanded a referendum.3

The abortion law and the signing of the concordat The church intervention resulted in deliberation on abortion being carried out in parliament rather than by popular consultation in a referendum. After two amendments to the 1956 abortion law, the “Law on family planning, protection of the human fetus and conditions for legal abortion” was enacted in parliament in January 1993. The church strategy was motivated by the fact that the majority of the population was against it, with opinion polls showing that 58 percent opposed the restrictive law (CBOS 1994a: 10). The church’s heavy hand over the political processes was once again felt after the Suchocka government fell on 28 July 1993 over a no confidence vote. Despite the dissolved parliament, the nuncio Jósef Kowalczyk and caretaker foreign minister Krzysztof Skubiszewski signed the concordat. Without a sitting parliament the concordat could not be ratified, but a major public debate on the terms of the concordat was avoided (see next section for the process of ratification of the concordat). Summing up, the church’s influence on the policy-making process in the early years of democracy fuelled opposition to its political role. By 1991, church intervention was a divisive political issue. From 1990 to 1991 the rate of citizens considering the church as the most respected institution in Polish public life fell from 90 to 58 percent (CBOS 1994a: 3).


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The interaction between church influence and party formation in the 1991–1993 period resulted in fierce competition between liberal and National Catholic forces. By aligning with the national and Catholic political forces and antagonizing the liberals, the church’s intervention further politicized the National Catholic identity as an axis of party competition.

The left in power: the ratification of the concordat and the negotiation of the constitution In the September 1993 elections the episcopate, amidst strong controversy and public resistance against increased clerical influence, withdrew active support to political parties. The sharp decline in public support for the church was due both to the instrumentalization of the National Catholic identity by political parties, and the perception that the church abused its new freedom (CBOS 1994a: 10, 1994b). Drawing conclusions from the erosion caused by the intense involvement with political actors, the Polish episcopate took a step back from direct involvement in politics (Bingen 1996: 13). The church withdrawal was concomitant with the further fragmentation of the post-Solidarity forces and with the failure of National Catholic forces to enter parliament (Meyer Resende 2009: 138).4 The episcopate’s spokesperson, Tadeusz Pieronek commented on the defeat of Catholic parties in a laconic manner: “The parties have failed, that is all” (quoted in Gawryc 1993). In the 1993 elections, the liberal UD was the only post-Solidarity party to achieve parliamentary representation. Nevertheless, the period of the SLD-PSL (Polish Peasant Party) government (1993–1997) was marked by intense conflicts over the definition of Polish nationalism, with the church and right-wing forces joining efforts to press for the recognition of church privileges, particularly clear during the processes of ratifying the concordat and negotiating the constitution. The use of introverted Catholic rhetoric, portraying Poland as a nation besieged by enemies, was an important element in this process, and lead to an intense confrontation with the secular post-communist left. The victory of the ex-communist SLD in the September 1993 elections, with 20.4 percent of the vote, resulted in a new environment for the relationship between the church and the state. The ideological transformation from communism into a social democratic party was already visible in the closing resolution of the last Congress of the United Polish Workers Party (PZPR) in 1990 in which the party dissolved itself and formed the Social Democracy of the Polish Republic

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(SdRP), later Democratic Left Alliance (SLD). The closing resolution of the PZPR (Polish United Workers Party—Polish Communist Party) read: The long-term ideological aim is that of framing a new formula of democratic socialism away from the axiological system of communism. We are for the ideals of a rational society and against nationalism, chauvinism and for a religiously neutral state. (PZPR 1990) Responding to the intense lobbying from the Catholic Church, the SdRP countered with a defense of secular values, rebuilding its ideological foundations on the tradition of European socialism, ultimately anchored in the rationalist ideals of Enlightenment. The SdRP’s programmatic declaration states: The left must also change, anchored in the values of humanism and rationalism, the equality of chances and expectations of the majority of the society. (SdRP 1990) The 1993 coalition government between the SLD and the Polish Peasant Party (PSL), as well as the failure of the National Catholic block to enter parliament, meant that the church had no privileged interlocutor within the political system and was now facing unfriendly powers in a crucial moment for the institutionalization of its increased authority. The church’s recently declared neutrality was now challenged by the need to force the ratification of the concordat, and influence the negotiations for the new constitution. After taking office, the SLD’s MPs refused to ratify the signed concordat, arguing that it conceded too many legal privileges to the church: among other things, it renounced the separation between church and state. Article 1 of the concordat stated that “Poland and the Holy See confirm that the state and the Catholic Church are—each in their own field—independent and autonomous and that they take oath at respecting in full this principle in their mutual relations for cooperation and for human development and the common good” (Concordato fra la Santa Sede e la Repubblica di Polonia 1998). The SLD also opposed the provision of religious education in kindergartens and primary schools and the recognition of Catholic marriage as equivalent to a civil marriage. When the parliament’s constitutional committee started to draft the new constitution,5 the value of the concordat as the basis for regulating


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church–state relations became the apple of discord between, on the one hand, the left and liberals and, on the other, the church and the National Catholics (Bingen 1996: 23). The SLD’s constitutional draft defined Poland as “a secular state” where “no church or denomination can receive special privileges by any law or international agreement” (Article 7). The opposing camp, constituted by the reconstructed Solidarity and the Confederation of Independent Poland, argued for extensive privileges to the Catholic Church and for constitutional recognition of the concordat as an instrument regulating relations between the state and the Catholic Church. These proposals constituted the gist of the ‘Citizens’s Draft’ sponsored by Solidarity and supported by 1.5 million signataries.6 During the negotiation of Article 16 on church-state relations, from October 1994 until mid-1995, the Episcopal Conference issued several letters and communiqués, demanding explicit constitutional recognition of the church’s pre-eminent status, symbolized in the invocation of God in the preamble and constitutional protection against abortion, guarantee for the right to religious teaching in public schools and state support for priests’ salaries. Contention over the wording of relations between church and state between the church and the SLD was equally intense, with the church preferring “tolerance” of the state over “neutrality.” A compromise formula was reached by direct negotiations between the Episcopate’s Secretary, Tadeusz Pieronek, and the constitutional committee leader, Aleksander Kwasńiewski. The formula combined religious freedom with inequality of treatment of religion, with the constitutionalization of the concordat as the legal base for regulating relations with the Catholic Church. The drafting of the constitution was held in the background of a deepening antagonism of the public opinion regarding the interventionist style of the church, with 44 per cent of the populations defending a decline in the role of the church in Poland (CBOS 1996: 3–5). The committee debated the definition of the Polish nation as intrinsically linked with the characterization of church–state relations. The church’s defence of an essential link between Catholicism and the Polish nation was reinforced by the position taken by the recently formed post-Solidarity electoral coalition, the Electoral Action Solidarity (AWS), a coalition of parties from the post-Solidarity camp.7 The AWS initiated a campaign against the constitutional draft, in particular regarding the absence of an Invocatio Dei in the Preamble, which, according to its leader Krzaklewski, harmed not only the Catholic character of Poland but also its essential Polishness. The National Catholic rhetoric defined the Polish nation as a millennial community of

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Catholic Poles, forged in war and under foreign occupation, as the legitimate bearer of state sovereignty (Brier 2009b: 70). The conflict over the secular/religious character of the state became intrinsically linked with the narrative on Polish nationalism. The left (SLD) and the liberal parties (UD, later UW), defended an extroverted nationalism and a civic definition of the nation and opposed the appeal to God in the constitution’s preamble, as well as arguing for a friendly separation between church and state. In November 1996 the constitutional committee started drafting a preamble for the constitution. ExPrime Minister and leader of the UW (former UD), Tadeusz Mazowiecki, hammered out a compromise between liberals and National Catholic forces. Rather than choosing one or the other definition, the preamble juxtaposed the liberal and the National Catholic concepts (Halas 2005: 55; Zubrzycki 2001: 650–652), producing an assemblage of concepts. The preamble reads: We, the Polish Nation—all citizens of the Republic, both those who believe in God as the source of truth, justice, good and beauty, as well as those not sharing such faith but respecting those universal values as arising from other sources, equal in rights and obligations towards the common good of Poland, beholden to our ancestors for their labors, their struggle for independence achieved at great sacrifice, for our culture rooted in the Christian heritage of the Nation and in universal human values. (Konstytucja Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej 1997)

The 1995 presidential election The increasingly divisive conflicts between the church and the SLD over the constitution were the background for the church’s intervention in the November 1995 presidential campaign, which pitched the incumbent, Lech Wałe˛ sa, against the ex-communist leader Aleksander Kwasńiewski. Despite abstaining from openly supporting pro-Catholic candidates such as Lech Wałe˛ sa or Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz, the Polish bishops issued in August and September 1995 two pastoral letters which exposed the church’s hostility towards, Aleksander Kwasńiewski, not just because of his communist past but also due to his party’s anti-clerical stance (Bingen 1996:16). In this document the episcopate also suggested that priests were free to support their preferred candidate, the majority of which took the side of the incumbent Lech Wałe˛ sa. The confrontation between church and the left reached a new high in the 1995 presidential campaign. Playing for church support, Lech Wałe˛ sa,


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the incumbent contender and the more dependable ally of the church, pointed out that the relation between the church and the SLD-PSL government was similar to the church’s persecution by Władysław Gomułka’s communist government (1956–1970) (Bingen 1996: 30). The increasing importance of informal religious actors, most notably Father Rydzyk’s radio station, Radio Maryja, led to a radicalization of the National Catholic rhetoric, bringing the introverted nationalism to the political debate (Gluchowski 1999).8 The electorate responded to the polarization of the elites, with those of Catholic and/or anti-Communist orientation voting for Wałe˛ sa, while voters with secular views supported Kwasńiewski (Jasiewicz 1997). Kwasńiewski’s narrow victory against Wałe˛ sa further embittered the right and deepened the exclusion of church-friendly actors from the political sphere, making the referendum on the constitution in May 1997 another occasion for a heated debate on church–state relations (Borowik 1996: 134–135).

The constitutional referendum The effects of this polarisation were visible in late 1996 opinion polls, with public opinion roughly divided between left and liberal voters, who favored the limitation of the role of the church and the right-wing voters who considered the status quo as favorable (CBOS 1996: 10–12).9 The widening divide between supporters and opponents of the status quo in church and state relations was exploited during the highly polarized constitutional referendum campaign. The recently formed AWS and Solidarity trade union leader Marian Krzaklewski took the mantle of National Catholicism to oppose the constitution. The preamble became, predictably, the apple of contention, with the AWS publicizing an alternative constitution elaborated by the Solidarity trade union in 1994, where the invocation of God was linked with the nation’s revival (Brier 2009b: 67). The results of the referendum confirmed the polarization between liberal and National Catholic, with the constitution being approved by 55 against 45 percent of the cast votes.

AWS: The unified right in power (1997–2001) In the autumn of 1997 the right-wing electoral coalition Solidarity Election Action (AWS) won the parliamentary elections with 33 per cent of the vote. The party took office in coalition with the post-Solidarity liberal intellectuals from the Union for Freedom (UW—former UD). The AWS represented an attempt to replicate the Solidarity formula, both

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in terms of the breadth of the alliance and in the centrist strategy adopted. In the campaign for the autumn 1997 parliamentary elections the AWS leadership avoided the clerical and national issues, steering away from the positions it had taken during the referendum on the constitution early in the year. During the campaign for the 1997 elections the AWS recovered Solidarity’s pro-European stance, and the slogan “twice yes” to the EU and to NATO translated Catholic universalism into a party program. Following the Pope’s elaborations on Europe, the AWS spelled for Poland the role of missionary in a “Europe that is losing its roots” (AWS 1997; Pluta 2004). In a parallel metaphor to Mickiewicz’s famous image of Poland as the “Christ of nations,” the AWS portrayed its mission in Europe in religious terms (AWS 1997). Poland’s integration in the EU would bring Europe back to its Christian values: “We cherish our thousand-year long history, and these traditional values are what we need, first of all in Europe and then in the entire world” (Krzaklewski 1997). However, the divisions between extroverted and introverted visions of Poland’s relations with its neighbours started to be visible in the course of 1998. Early symptoms of dissent reflected in difficulties in formulating a coherant strategy on the EU accession period. Also, the attempt to form a unified party structure out of the electoral coalition was also hampered by the fact that no MPs left their original political group to join the recently formed AWS Social Movement (RS AWS). On the contrary, rather than diluting their differences and forming a larger political group, the AWS political families consolidated their separate ideologies. One example was the formation of the Conservative People’s Party (SKL) led by Jan Maria Rokita, the first conservative group to distinguish its liberal identity from the nationalists, led at the time by the ZChN.10 Programmatic differences and ideological divides between Catholic nationalists, and liberal and Christian democrats within the AWS/UW (former UD) coalition were exposed and deepened by controversies over the prospect of sharing sovereignty in the European Union, resulting in frequent conflicts. The European issue became politicized due to the Christian Nationalists’ aversion to relinquish sovereignty. The appointment in 1997 of ZChN’s leader Rychard Czarnecki as leader of the Committee for European integration (KIE), the body responsible for coordinating the efforts of different ministries in European integration, countered the expectations that the incentives of office would lead the ZChN’s leader to a pragmatic pro-European stance. Instead, it led to a slowdown of the transposition of EU legislation and to strong divergences with the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bronisław Geremek, and


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the Chief Negotiator with the EU, Jan Kulakowski. Ryszard Czarnecki’s stalling of the preparation process for European accession escalated into a conflict between National Catholics and liberals in June 1998. His dismissal from the post marked the high point of a conflict within factions in the government regarding attitudes towards European integration. The open conflict between the coalition partners resulted in a stalemate that impeded the prime minister from appointing a leader for the KIE for three following years (Zubek 2005: 601). As the relations between the European Union and Poland became prominent in the political agenda, the divisions among the AWS MPs on European integration crystalized along the political-cultural dimension. A study by Skotnicka-Illasziewicz on parliamentarians’ attitudes towards European integration showed that the religious/national divide determined different attitudes to European integration, i.e. that National Catholics expressed Eurosceptic attitudes and the liberal conservatives and Christian democrats maintained a pro-European attitude. The beginning of negotiations with the EU thus became the context in which an introverted vision of National Catholic forces was translated into an increasingly suspicious attitude regarding the sharing of sovereignty in the EU. The European issue had by 1998 integrated the cultural-political dimension (Skotnicka-Illasziewicz 1998). During the AWS’s tenure in power (1997–2001) the church took the back seat. On the one hand, most issues of relations between the church and state had been settled by the ratification of the constitution by referendum in May 1997 and the ratification of the concordat by parliament in February 1998. On the other hand, the conservative part of the hierarchy felt represented in the government by the AWS’s position both on internal and foreign policy. The pro-European interventionism of Pope John Paul II made church intervention on Polish political life rather complex. As National Catholics became more openly Eurosceptic and Radio Maryja a louder voice on the public sphere, the Pope intensified his campaign in support of Polish integration into the EU. Foreseeing the danger of National Catholic forces jeopardizing the negotiations initiated between Poland and the European Commission, Karol Wojtyła summoned the Polish bishops to an Ad Limina visit to the Vatican in 1998. In these meetings Pope John Paul II stated clearly his support for the EU. This was politically significant because, although pro-European bishops were the majority within the episcopate, Archbishoprics of Gniezno . and Lublin Henryk Muszyn´ski and Józef Zycin´ski, the Pope’s intervention was importnat to neutralize the voices of Euro-sceptic bishops. The Pope stressed the crucial role of the Catholic devotion of Poland

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as a source of support for the unification of Europe (John Paul II 1998). John Paul recalled the 1979 Gniezno Homilies during his first papal visit to Poland: The way to a true unification of the continent will be long. There will only be complete unity when Europe becomes a spiritual community, strengthened by Christianity and the Evangel’s understanding of Men, as well as its contribution to the development of nations. (John Paul II 1979) Although support for Polish accession to the EU was often justified in political and cultural terms, the Pope’s primary motivation was framed in ecclesiastic terms. In 1999, in the papal document “Church in Europe” John Paul II diagnosed the illnesses of the church in Europe, in particular the declining faith and adherence to the sacraments in most Western European countries. The vibrant Polish church would thus contribute to the renovation of Catholicism in Europe (John Paul II 2003). At the turn of the millennium, as the consensus on accession in Poland was imperiled, the Pope’s campaign in favor of European integration intensified. During his visit to Poland in 1999 the Pope made the issue of Polish European accession a priority. Speaking to a divided Parliament on 11 June 1999 the Pope argued: Poland is fully entitled to take part in the world’s general process of development and progress, and especially in that of Europe. The integration of Poland in the European Union has been supported by the Holy See from its beginning. The Polish nation’s historical experience and its spiritual and cultural wealth can contribute effectively to the common good of the entire human family, especially in consolidating peace and security in Europe. (John Paul II 1999) He urged all the MPs to contribute “permanently and in solidarity in these efforts” (ibid.).

Analysis: National Catholicism and the church The intervention of the Pope in support of European integration shows the paradoxical situation of the Polish right in the late nineties. Despite the attempt to partially recreate the unity of the right by burying the differences on religious, moral and national issues, the emergence of the European issue showed how entrenched the political conflicts had become. The Pope was


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now trying to oppose the effects of the Polish hierarchy’s intervention in the political sphere: the formation of a National Catholic block, conservative on moral issues and skeptical of sharing sovereignty. During the nineties, the church’s attempt to gain privilege and influence over morality legislation in the new democratic regime led the hierarchy to intervene in the political arena. In its struggle for increased clerical influence, the Catholic Church supported parties holding to an introverted conception of the nation. The church intervention thus contributed to the merging of religious, nationalism and moral issues into a political division with strong structuring power. As the European issue rose to prominence in the national agenda, the introverted nationalism of National Catholics translated into skepticism for European integration. For that reason, and despite John Paul II’s support for Poland’s integration into the European Union, the early alignment of the church with National Catholic parties meant that in the 1990s the national and religious cleavages overlapped and reinforced each other. The church thus indirectly contributed to the formation of a Eurosceptic camp. Although the intense and partisan support of the church in the early 1990s mellowed by the end of the decade, the political use of National Catholicism to legitimate a political stance and sharpen ideological divides had taken root. Polish Catholicism was linked to the tradition of Polish introverted nationalism and acquired a sectarian character. The political strategy of the Polish Catholic Church thus deepened the distance between those supporting an extroverted national identity and the introverted nationalism of the National Catholic tradition revived by Cardinal Wyszyn´ski during communism. In the late 1990s this division was institutionalized into a political cleavage that sustained the emergence of Eurosceptic parties based on the Christian National tradition. The AWS’s demise resulted in the partial restructuration of the rightwing block. The October 2001 elections resulted in the reconfiguration of the right wing—with the emergence of two main splinter parties representing the division between liberal and national groups. The Law and Justice party (PiS) profiled itself as national conservatives and the Civic Platform (PO) took the mantle of liberal conservatism. The division between liberal and national groups within the post-Solidarity camp also included an underlying division between introverted National Catholics and extroverted nationalists. Thus, the PiS and the PO had, from their formative time, different conceptions of neighborly relations and Poland’s integration in the EU.

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Spain 1978–1996 The development of the party system in Spain after 1982 was symptomatic of a less divided political landscape than Poland’s right-wing.11 The church’s abstention from creating a confessional party and its neutrality regarding political parties was crucial to the non-formation of a confessional party and helped to depoliticize the religious conflict. The ruling party during the transition, the UCD, with its mixture of liberals, social democrats and Christian democrats, was both a sign of and a contributor to the depoliticization of the religious and the socioeconomic lines. During the process leading up to the legalization of civil divorce in 1981 there was considerable dissent within the UCD, but the fact that this conflict was played in an intra-party rather than an inter-party context contributed considerably to the mitigation of the conflict between the religious and the secular elites. The UCD government was also responsible for the formulation of other legislation where the Catholic Church was a stakeholder, such as the law on education. During the discussions on the Law of Education, which included the framing of funding for religious schools, the terms of funding were hotly debated between pro-Catholic and anti-Catholic political forces, but the mediating role of the UCD was decisive in achieving an outcome that balanced the interests of all the parts involved, although overall benefiting the church. Charles Powell and Carlos Huneeus argued that the UCD’s centripetal strategy left a long lasting legacy consisting of the attempt to pacify the deep rifts within society that threatened the transition. “The UCD filtered these social conflicts—for example, the religious and the socio-economic—with which it gave an important contribution to the instauration and the consolidation of democracy” (Huneeus 1985: 25). For these authors, the demise of the UCD in 1981 was a symptom rather than a regression of democratic consolidation (Huneeus 1985: 8–9; Powell 2001: 199; Hopkin 2007: 193). One of the most important effects of the UCD’s government was the downgrading of the religious divide. By absorbing different attitudes towards clerical authority, the UCD prevented the deepening of these conflicts through their politicization. Equally, Linz and Montero’s study (1999) reports that during the first years of democracy religiosity became a less important predictor of voter preferences (Linz and Montero 1999: 80–82), showing that religious conflicts declined in salience both among elites and voters. One example of this was the UCD’s management of the conflicts over the law liberalizing divorce adopted in the spring of 1981. If


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played openly between competing parties, the secular/religious divide could have resulted in the deepening of the inter-party conflict leading to a polarization of positions among parties. Instead the UCD’s “Catholic family” decided to exert restraint on its opposition to the liberalization of divorce, despite the public debate and the church’s doctrinal opposition (Callahan 2000: 579). The same way, the downplaying of the issue of the autonomies by the UCD was crucial to the negotiation of the territorial arrangements in the constitution.

The left in power and the reorganization of the right While the life of the UCD was short, its centrist strategy spread to other parties: both the ex-Francoist AP and the PSOE left behind the most radical positions. After several electoral defeats and internal tensions, which the UCD’s leader, Adolfo Suarez, was unable to fend off, the party started to disintegrate in 1981. The parliamentary elections of 1982 saw the first victory for the PSOE with 48 percent of the votes, and the demise of the UCD left a void on the center right, which was only partially occupied by the AP with 25 percent of the vote. The right began a process of reconstruction that showed that, in contrast with Poland in the nineties, the cultural–political divide among liberal, nationalist and Christian democratic political forces was progressively fading. In the 1982 election the AP reaped the gains of UCD’s disaggregation, reaching 25 percent of the vote, up from 5.7 percent in the 1979 elections. The AP (in coalition with several regional parties, like the Union of Valencia, the Regionalist Party of Aragon and the Union of the Navarre People, as well as with the main Christian Democratic Party) emerged as a possible basis to reconstruct the right. Until 1989, the AP tried to unify right-wing political forces and further enlarging its basis of support in a coalition able to challenge the PSOE’s electoral prominence. In 1986 the small Liberal Party (PL) joined the Popular Coalition (with the AP and the PDP) but the coalitions failed to increase their shore of the vote (Gilmour 1999: 254). Nevertheless, with the decline of the religious cleavage led the divisions between exFrancoist and liberal and Christian Democratic forces to fade (Linz and Montero 1999: 89–94). The divisions of right-wing forces on the national issue were more persistent. The AP reservations regarding the application of the 1978 constitution, in particular on the use of the term, “nationalities,” contrasted with Christian democrats’ acceptance of regional devolution (Núñez-Seixas 2010: 71). In the 1982, 1986 and 1989 election programs the AP upheld the principles of national unity and common cultural

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identity of all Spaniards, while progressively accepting to work within the structure of the state of the autonomies (Núñez-Seixas 2010: 70). The introverted nationalism of the AP, an inheritance from Francoism, remained, until 1989, a source of division and a hindrance to the formation of a platform able to widen its appeal.

The religious cleavage under the PSOE government: church strategies and political institutions Although commentators and ecclesiastic authorities feared conflict when the anti-clerical left took office in 1982, the church and the PSOE avoided direct confrontation. The framework of relations between church and state had by then been regulated both by the 1978 constitution and by the five accords between the Spanish state and the Vatican signed in 1979. However, many details of this relation were not yet spelled out. Critical issues for the church, were expected to remain contentious. One good example of the remaining tensions between secularists and religious forces emerged less than one year after taking office, when the PSOE government started revising the legislation on the state’s financing of religious schools adopted by the UCD government in 1980, triggering a vivid debate in parliament and among public opinion. The legislation proposed by the PSOE (the LOGSE) had the objective of limiting the control of the church over the teaching and student bodies of its educational institutions, which were heavily subsidized by the state since 1970. Also, the church was to be prevented from charging extra fees on the students attending its schools, thus opening them to all social strata (Callahan 2000: 589–592). Huge street demonstrations against the law showed the mobilizing capacity of the Catholic organizations in defense of the church’s educational system. Although both the AP and the Christian Democratic MPs consistently voted against the law, the church did not try to instrumentalize parties or go beyond a pattern of conflictive accommodation (Callahan 2000: 593). After John Paul II replaced Cardinal Tarancón with Archbishop Diéz Merchán of Oviedo in 1983, and the proportion of conservative bishops increased, the policy of church neutrality towards political parties was relaxed but not abandoned.12 The church shied away from getting involved directly with any political force, and engaged with concerns it shared with the PSOE, such as socio-economic equality. During the 1980s the church was silent regarding the evolution of the state of autonomies. The Basque conflict remained the strongest reason behind the church’s behavior, as the Basque church expressed more


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openly its identification with the nationalist cause. Following a series of terrorist attacks by ETA in December 1987 the Basque bishops wrote a pastoral letter condemning the terrorist attacks, but also arguing in favor of increased autonomy for the Basque Country and claiming that the statutes of autonomy fell short of satisfying Basque aspirations for the historic nationalities (Callahan 2000: 598). The episode reminded the hierarchy of the divisive potential of the issue for the church, and tried to water down the Basque bishops’ pro-autonomy stance.

The formation of the PP By the late eighties there was a sense that a new center-right party could be formed to counter the dominance of the left. The church became part of the network of powerful social institutions eager to help in this endeavor. However, the PP was not a confessional party (Callahan 2000: 597). The AP’s founder Manuel Fraga stepped down in favor of a new generation of liberal reformists. José María Aznar, a young conservative politician, took control of the PP and consolidated the alliance of the AP with a wide number of Christian democratic and liberal forces (Callahan 2000: 594). The balance of power in the party changed, with Christian democrats and liberals becoming more prominent. The inclusion of Christian democratic political forces into the new party was crucial for the PP’s conciliation with the CiU and the PNV, whose support the party would need in the event of winning elections but not reaching absolute majority (Gilmour 2005: 420). The PP’s formula partially emulated the UCD’s reconciliation of Christian democratic, conservative and liberal political ideologies offered by the UCD in 1977, but this time it included the ex-Francoist political forces and excluded social democrats. The religious cleavage buried, the party initiated the transformation of conservative national discourse, moving away from the tradition of introverted nationalism to adopt partially an extroverted conception of Spain’s relation with its nationalities. The conservative party thus initiated an ideological revision of Franco’s National Catholic concept of a “united, large and free Spain.”

Conclusion This chapter shows that church strategies had strong implications for the shape of political cleavages and party competition in the two countries. The 1980s in Spain and the 1990s in Poland were characterized by a fluid and fragmented right wing born of divisions among political families. In both countries National Catholic parties were relevant

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political forces characterized by an introverted nationalism averse to the sharing of sovereignty with other nations. However, whereas in Poland the church supported these parties, in Spain the church’s policy of neutrality contributed both to the demise of the religious divisions and to the weakening of introverted National Catholic rhetoric. The response of the hierarchies to similar challenges to their preferences in public policies by left-wing governments (1982–96 in Spain and 1993–97 in Poland) was substantially different. In Poland the church entered into a symbiotic relationship with the National Catholic forces and engaged in confrontation with left and liberal forces over their willingness to limit the role of the church in state and society. During the negotiations on the ratification of the Concordat and the constitution 1996, the Polish hierarchy intervened directly and publicly in favor of an invocation of God and an extensive recognition of the rights of the church, whereas the Spanish church followed a discrete strategy with limited objectives. The Polish church continued to use National Catholic rhetoric both in religious and political contexts, in particular during the negotiations on the constitutional provisions on church–state relations. In his 1999 book Post-Communist Party Systems Herbert Kitschelt stated that by the mid-nineties in Poland the issues of religion, morality and nationalism had merged into one single dimension, “at least in the minds of the political elite” (Kitschelt 1999: 230) and that the greater salience of the political-cultural dimension was potentiated by the relatively greater polarization around the religious issue (1999: 234). The division among elites trickled down to the population; opinion polls showed that in 1996 the religious division was salient both among the political elites and the voters: left-wing and liberal voters were in favor of limiting the role of the church, whereas right-wing voters favored the status quo. The start of negotiations for Polish accession in 1998 showed that the political–cultural cleavage also included different visions of Polish nationalism, one introverted and Eurosceptic, the other extroverted and Europhile. During the AWS-UW government, conflicts over European integration grew between liberals and nationalists. In Spain the PSOE government led tense negotiations about state support for church schools in 1982–83. However, the restraint of the church and the PSOE allowed a climate of consensus to prevail. Throughout the 1980s the interaction between the church and the political forces was marked by respect for their separate spheres and resulted in the fading of the religious and national divisions as structuring elements of the political field. When a wider coalition of forces


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formed the PP in 1989, the reformulation of conservatives’ introverted nationalism was under way.

Notes 1 Lustration is the process of exposing and barring the participation of collaborators with the communist secret police from public life. 2 In early 1991 Pope John Paul II called for the change of the permissive abortion law, thus legitimizing the anti-abortion campaign of the National Catholic parties. 3 For a full account of the conflicts over the legislation on abortion from 1989 to 1997 see Eberts 1998: 823–826. 4 Due to excessive fragmentation, parties failed to pass the 5 percent electoral threshold, thus leading to the waste of 34 percent of votes cast and to a highly disproportionate parliament. 5 The constitutional commission reflected the left and liberal parties’ composition of the 1993–1997 parliament, dominated by the left and liberal majority. 6 The drafts in submitted to the constitutional commission were published Rzeczpospolita: the Senate’s on 16 August 1994, the Confederation of Independent Poland’s on 22 August 1994, the SLD’s on 25 August 1984 and Solidarity’s on 8 September 1994. 7 The AWS brought together about 30 political parties of the right-wing orientation, from National Catholics, Christian democrats and conservative movements. 8 On 19 October 1995 the Commission for the Media of the Polish episcopate recommended restraint of the Catholic media regarding the “stereotypes of anti-Semitism” and stating the importance of dialogue and tolerance for the consolidation of democracy (Bingen 1996: 25). 9 An opinion poll carried out by CBOS estimated that 72 percent of the SLD and 50 percent of the UW voters would like to limit the role of the church in the state and public sphere. 10 Several authors distinguish between two types of conservatism: liberal conservatism and national conservatism. While national conservatives are identified by the nation, liberal conservatives hold neo-liberal ideas as their key ideological dimension (Girven 1988: 9; Smith 1988). 11 Despite its good electoral results (34.8 percent) in the general elections of March 1979, in the municipal elections of the same year the UCD lost many of the provincial capitals, including Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia to the PSOE-PCE coalition. Equally, in the first elections to the regional parliaments held in 1980, the UCD again lost ground to other parties, this time to the Convergence and Union (CiU) in Catalonia and the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV). Facing an increasingly strong opposition from the PSOE, the UCD slowly started to disintegrate. Unable to fend off the centripetal forces, party leader Adolfo Suarez resigned from the government and party leadership in 1981 and was replaced by Calvo Sotelo. Facing a fight between the different factions of the party, the center failed to fend off disintegration.

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12 An exceptional period of interventionism occurred between 1987 and 1993, when Archbishop of Madrid Angel Suquía was voted president of the Episcopal Conference. Suquía’s authoritarian style was reinforced by nuncio Mario Tagliaferri’s inclination for interfering in the political process (Callahan 2000: 594).

5

The outcome The reformulation of the nationalist discourses in Spain and Poland

This chapter describes the reformulation of conservative nationalism by the reconfigured political forces on the right, the PP in Spain and the PO/PiS in Poland. It links the institutionalization of National Catholicism as a dimension of party competition and the formulation of introverted national discourses. By 2001 the reconfiguration of political parties in Poland reflected the leverage that National Catholicism had acquired as a driver of party competition. When liberals and national Catholics parted ways, introverted and extroverted accounts of nationalism became rival elements of differentiation between the two main parties. After taking office in 2005 the PiS reoriented Polish foreign policy away from the conciliatory and pro-European path established after 1989. The PO’s parliamentary victory in 2007 resulted in a return to cooperation with European institutions and member states. In contrast the chapter shows how the alliance of a broad-based coalition of liberals, Christian democrats and nationalists in the PP allowed the reform of Spanish conservative nationalism away from introverted nationalism. The PP’s reformulation of Spain’s relations with its historic nationalities resulted in a departure from the conservatives’ emphasis on Spanish unity. Although church interference in the political process was less relevant, the religious and national identities had been institutionalized as dimensions of party competition. The role of the Polish church in the adaptation of nationalism towards European integration remained complex, fruit of the division between universalists and National Catholics: whereas until 2004 the church was an engaged promoter of the accession of Poland to the EU (which occurred in 2004), from 2005 the National Catholic parties became more expressive in their support for the PiS government.

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Poland: the emerging divide and its consequences for the development of a national doctrine This section describes the emergence of two conservative parties in the right-wing spectrum in Poland: the PiS, which elaborated on National Catholic introverted tradition, and the PO, which inherited liberals’ favorable attitude towards neighboring nations and Europhilism. The formulation of Polish introverted and extroverted nationalism in the context of accession negotiations between Poland and the EU led to the intensification of the conflict around accession. The Kacszynski twins (Jarosław and Lech) reacted to the disintegration of the AWS by forming the PiS, a party joining national and conservative political forces, such as former ZChN politicians Artur Zawisza and Marek Jurek. The first party program started with the declaration: “Poland is in a state of crisis. For many years several sectors suffer from lack of state control; the state is dysfunctional and corrupt and the economic system suffers from a dangerous pathology” (PiS 2001). The state’s crisis contrasts with the “unusual dynamism of the Polish nation. … The speed of our march was too slow, matching neither our needs, nor our possibilities” (PiS 2001). The party adopted a nationalist discourse seeped into the tradition of introverted National Catholicism, describing Poland as a centuriesold nation surviving threats of Russian and German enemies and inextricably bound to Catholicism. In September 2003, in parallel to the drafting of the European constitution by the European Convention in Brussels, the leaders of the PiS held a National Constitutional Convention aiming to position the party as a defender of National Catholic principles and as a critic of further European integration. The party’s notion of national identity was developed in Jarosław Kaczyn´ski’s programmatic speech. The party leader criticizes the 1997 constitution preamble’s hybrid formulation on national identity, especially the concessions to a civic conception of the national community, claiming that these cut the essential link between Catholicism and the nation. In his programmatic speech at the PiS Constitutional Convention he focused on the lack of an Invocatio Dei in the current Polish constitution’s preamble as contributing to “national disintegration” by delinking the nation from Catholicism (PiS 2003: 18). Jarosław Kaczyn´ski then stated at the Constitutional Convention: “There is no constitution which is axiologically neutral. … In today’s Poland there is just one common and widespread system of values, which is based on the church teaching and the national tradition” (PiS 2003: 20).

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The adoption of nationalism as a new discursive element of political rhetoric was initially linked to a strategy of opposition to the communist successor party, the Democratic Left Alliance, the party that held office between 2001 and 2005. The party blended anti-communist and nationalist rhetoric when it accused the 1997 constitution of furthering the dissolution of the national community, first inflicted by the communist takeover in 1944. To reconstitute the Polish national community the PiS proposed to refound the regime—a project coined as Poland’s IV Republic—and undo the wrongs of communism and the 1989 round table compromises. In Jarosław Kaczyn´ski’s address to the 2003 Constitutional Convention, the dichotomy between nation and state provided the basis for combining an ethnically homogenous definition of nation with a progressive solution for the integration of minorities: the document postulates a differentiation between nationality and citizenship, thus avoiding a xenophobic and anti-immigration discourse. Although ethnic minorities are excluded from the Polish nation, those foreigners for whom “Poland is their home” can be integrated as citizens of the Polish state (PiS 2003). The party thus clearly distinguished the internal from the external dimension of nationalism. In 2005, on the eve of the autumn parliamentary elections, the party published a proposal for an alternative constitution for Poland based on National Catholic principles. Its preamble re-enacts the 1994–96 debate on the nature of the Polish state by proclaiming: In the Name of God, the Almighty! We, the Polish Nation, grateful to Divine Providence for the gift of regained independence, grateful to previous generations for their constant work, devotion, and sacrifice for Poland, throwing off the yoke of foreign oppression and communism, responsible to preserve and strengthen the independence of a Polish state, remembering our one thousand years’ history bound up with Christianity. (PiS Constitutional Project, 2005) During the campaigns for the 2005 presidential and parliamentary elections, the party intensified the use of negative portrayals of Poland’s neighbors and hostile positions towards European integration, particularly in the definition of Polish relations with its neighbors and its positions on European integration. When Anna Fotyga, a close collaborator of the Kaczyn´skis, became Foreign Minister in June 2006, the PiS’s foreign policy doctrine became dominated by an anti-Russian position, amplified by anti-communism

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and an anti-German rhetoric.1 The anti-German attitude of the Kaczyn´ski government was a clear departure from previous governments’ external policy, and diplomatic relations with Germany and Russia deteriorated. In 2009 the party election manifesto formalized a doctrine on the nation’s relations with other nations based on an introverted conception of the nation’s external relations: The Nation can function and develop among other nations only when it maintains a minimum of individuality and cohesion. Competition between nations is a fact. Recognizing national community as a natural and positive phenomenon, it is necessary to accept the obvious fact of competition between nations, which […] is a motor of material and spiritual development of each nation and of humanity as a whole. (PiS 2009: 10)

The PiS and the PO European position in the pre-accession period The PiS’s Eurosceptic and introverted national rhetoric was counteracted by the PO’s statement, held in its ideological declaration “that membership in the EU, as well as in NATO, was an essential tool for the fulfillment of national interests … opening to Poland a multitude of opportunities” (Platforma Obewatelska 2001). In January 2002, as accession negotiations started dealing with the sensitive issue of the European subsidies to Polish farmers, the announcement by the Commission that farmers in candidate states would initially be paid only 25 per cent of what farmers in member states received in direct payments further politicized the issue. The announcement was met with dismay by Polish public opinion, with surveys showing that 60 percent of Poles (including 50 percent of those who supported Polish EU membership) believed that the country would become a second-class member of the EU (CBOS 2002, 2004). In the Copenhagen Summit of December 2002, the last details of the agricultural deal were negotiated, with public opinion following attentively the concessions given by the EU to Polish farmers. Support for integration had reached its lowest point in March 2002 with only 55 per cent of the population supporting accession and opposition rising to 29 per cent (CBOS 2002). Simultaneously, the Convention on the Future of Europe attempted a major revision of the European Treaties. Enlarging participation in Treaty revision to national and European MPs, the Convention started its work in February 2002 in Brussels with the mandate to prepare a draft

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European constitution. The preamble of the draft constitution pointed to an emerging European polity and a common European identity, in an attempt to formalize the supranational elements of the EU. The draft constitution also included a new voting formula in the Council of Ministers that left Poland with less power over the legislative process, while giving Germany a significant increase. The PiS’s response to these developments was formulated in the party’s Second Congress in March 2003, ahead of the referendum on Polish accession, to be held in June of that year. The party maintained an ambiguous attitude towards integration, but during the campaign on European accession the party cautiously stood for a “Yes” vote and invoked security arguments in favor of Polish integration into the EU. However, on the issue of supranational integration the European constitution gave an opportunity for the PiS to exert its criticism of sovereignty-sharing among nations in the EU. In the program for the 2004 European Elections the party declared that: “The constitutional process is an act of egoism against solidarity. … This egoistic stance is deeply rooted in a federalist ideology which is key to understanding the (Constitutional) project” (PiS 2004: 5)

The church and the debate on Polish accession to the EU Going against the grain of right-wing Euroscepticism, the Polish church joined the debate in favor of Polish accession to European integration in 2003. The church campaigned for a Yes vote by stressing the benefits of accession, both for European Catholicism and for Poland. To this effect the church effectively created an alliance with the left and liberal forces and tried to assure a positive majority in the 2003 referendum. With low popular support for European integration (only 55 percent declared that they would vote in favor of accession), the church was seen as an important ally of liberals and the SLD government in disseminating a positive image of the EU. Despite his ailing health, Pope John Paul II spread the message that European integration was fundamentally compatible with the Polish national goals and beneficial for Europe and the Polish Catholic Church. In 2003 the Pope published the document “Church in Europe,” drafted by the Synod of European Bishops in 1999, so that it would coincide with the referendum debates. The document reminded the faithful of the Christian roots of the continent and argued that these were the basis of Europe’s spiritual community; the Pope declared that a fervently Catholic Poland could play an important role in strengthening the ailing European church. Thus, according to the

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Vatican, Polish accession to the EU was of crucial importance for both spiritual and political reasons (John Paul II 2003). Also, several Polish bishops took a very active role in the pro-accession campaign for the European referendum in June 2003. The bishops toned down the criticisms on the potential liberalizing impact of European integration on morality policies, such as the abortion law and the law on same-sex marriage. The church campaign for the referendum was led by one of Poland’s most senior clerics, Archbishop of Gniezno Henryk Muszyn´ski. In an effort to spread a pro-European attitude among Catholics, Archbishop Muszyn´ski organized the Gniezno Conferences, where the leadership of the hierarchy and the religious orders, as well as high-profile lay Catholic politicians met in order to discuss Polish integration into the EU. Also, in his capacity as Polish representative to the Confederation of European Bishops, Archbishop Muszyn´ski brought issues of concern to Poland to the attention of European bishops (Zatyka 2013: 134).

The September 2005 elections: the implementation of introverted nationalism Amid corruption scandals and internal divisions, the left wing SLD lost both its parliamentary majority in the September 2005 elections and the presidential elections, held one month later. During the campaign for the parliamentary elections the PO and the PiS avoided direct confrontation, in view of a possible post-electoral coalition. However, during the presidential election, especially after the withdrawal of the SLD candidate Włodzimierz Cimoszewicz, the dispute between the two parties sharpened over political and cultural issues. The PiS programme was effective and the party won both elections with a narrow majority, forming a minority government in September 2005, initially led by Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz and, from July 2006, by Jarosław Kaczyn´ski. His twin brother, Lech Kaczyn´ski was elected President of the Republic in November 2005. Unable to garner legislative majorities, in March 2006 the PiS formed a government coalition with two Eurosceptic parties—the Self-Defence and the League of Polish Families (LPR). After the formation of this Eurosceptic coalition, the traditionally pro-European Polish foreign policy took a sharp turn. Foreign Minister Anna Fotyga’s anti-German and anti-Russian position materialized in opposition to the German–Russian project for building a pipeline through the Baltic sea (Nordstream) (Pankowski 2010: 216). In April 2006, responding to the construction of the pipeline along the off-shore

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Baltic coast of Poland, the Polish Minister of Defense, Radosław Sikorski, compared the Nordstream project to the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact (Voice of America 2006). Polemics between Poland and Germany multiplied in the following months. Due to an article satirizing the Polish President Lech Kaczyn´ski, published in the newspaper Tageszeitung, the president cancelled his participation in a Summit of the Weimar Triangle in July 2006 (Pankowski 2010: 198). Foreign policy towards Russia was also marked by intense conflict. In November 2005 Russia responded to the Polish government’s antiRussian rhetoric with an embargo on imports of meat from Poland, quoting public health problems (EurAchiv 2007). Poland retaliated with a moratorium on the negotiation of a new EU–Russia Partnership and Cooperation agreement (Freire and Daehnhardt 2011: 182). The PiS foreign policy suspended the principles followed by Polish democratic governments since 1989. Polish policy towards Europe became characterized by strong skepticism towards the supranational features of policymaking. After voters in the French and Dutch referenda rejected the European Constitution in May 2005 and a severe crisis ensued, the PiS government abstained from participation in the efforts to solve it. In March 2006, President Lech Kaczyn´ski and Prime Minister Jarosław Kaczyn´ski gained the reputation of enfants terribles in European circles. During negotiations on the Lisbon Treaty in October 2007 the PiS government staged a high-profile crisis over the revision of the Nice voting formula. This put the negotiations for the new Treaty on hold. The attitude towards the voting formula in the Council of Ministers was a showcase for the new Polish doctrine on Europe because it involved an increase in Germany’s relative voting weight, at the expense of Poland’s. It illustrated the grievances of introverted Polish nationalists against European integration: the EU was portrayed as a union of states in which the most powerful forces threatened the interests of the weaker states, such as Poland. Underlying these stances were conceptions of Polish interests as inherently incompatible with those of other nations, in particular of Germany. After an agreement was eventually reached, President Lech Kaczyn´ski delayed the signature of the Lisbon Treaty, adding to the uncertainty of a highly fraught process.

The church and the 2005 elections After 2005 the coincidence of a victory of PiS with the fragmentation of authority at the top of the church hierarchy resulted in a split between the National Catholic and the liberal currents of the church. On one side was the pro-European clergy that, under the influence of John Paul II, had

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placed itself squarely in the pro-accession camp in the period leading to the referendum on accession. Opposing Catholic universalism was the most powerful anti-European voice, that of Father Rydzyk, who had founded in 1991 the radio station Maryja, which now counted 2 million listeners. Father Rydzyk also owned the daily newspaper Nasz Dziennik and the TV station TRWAM. Father Rydzyk pursued an anti-European campaign by presenting Polish integration as a plot of rich and powerful states, in particular Germany, to exploit Poland. Although being relevant in the political scene since 1995, Father Rydzyk entered forcefully into the political scene in the autumn 2005 election. Besides being a direct support to the extreme right League of Polish Families, several chroniclers of the Nasz Dziennik, Radio Maryja’s newspaper, supported Kaczyn´ski and defamed the leader of the PO, Donald Tusk (Bartnik 2005a, 2005b; Bajda 2005). Thus, the National Catholic media helped to create an atmosphere of animosity between the two parties, and contributed to the failure of the coalitions talks (Burdziej 2008: 210). Despite the political activism of radio Maryja, the skepticism of a large part of the parish priests2 and the internal division within the episcopate regarding the European issue (Dzierzianowski and Krzyzak 2006; Gowin 1999; Boguslaw 2002), the Polish episcopate succeeded in supporting the EU and keeping a formal neutrality towards political parties. However, from 2006 several factors contributed to the fragmentation of authority at the top of the hierarchy and a recurrence of political engagement on the part of the church. The Pope’s death in April 2005, the cessation of Cardinal Glemp’s term as Primate, and the formal dismantling and spreading of the Primate’s authority created a power vacuum in the hierarchy of the church. As clerical discipline crumbled, prelates and priests showed more openly their political sympathies, which often resulted in pronouncement in favor of PiS and in Radio Maryja’s rise in political influence (Burdziej 2008: 211). Responding to the increased political activism of the Polish clergy, Pope Benedict XVI warned the Polish bishops during a visit to the Vatican in December 2006 against the Polish prelates’ close association with National Catholic political forces. Quoting John Paul II. Benedict specified that “The church does not identify with any political party, community or system” (Benedict XVI 2005).

The 2007 elections: The PO’s victory and the change of European policy The PO won the parliamentary elections held on 21 October 2007 with a relative majority of 41.5 percent, and the PiS came second with 32.1

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percent of the votes. The SLD (now in an alliance named Left and Democrats) suffered a landslide defeat, harnessing only 13 percent of votes. Short of an absolute majority, the PO formed a coalition government with the Polish Peasant Party. The difference between the PO and the PiS attitudes towards European integration was a salient dimension of competition (Markowski 2008: 1056–7). Whereas the PO program stated the party’s willingness to change the course of Polish foreign policy and favor European and Atlantic integration as pillars of Polish national interest (Platforma Obywatelska 2007: 56–58), the PiS maintained the rhetoric of introverted nationalism that had characterized its period in power. The church was divided, with progressive and liberal prelates discreetly supporting the PO, and Father Rydzyk and conservative prelates in favour of the PiS. During the PO’s government the introverted/ extroverted division remained a relevant dimension of competition. Fulfilling the election pledges to mend relations with Poland’s neighbors, the PO government pursued the objective of fully integrating Poland in the Euro-Atlantic institutions, along the lines of the extroverted nationalism as formulated in the eighties by Solidarity. Prime Minister Donald Tusk and Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski initiated a dialogue with Germany. The PO replaced the PiS strategy of confrontation by an alignment with Germany. An entente between Tusk and German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier created an opportunity to rehabilitate relations with its eastern neighbor and to find an understanding with Poland over relations with Russia (Daehnhardt 2007: 39). The extroverted nationalism of the PO proved crucial in re-establishing friendly neighborly relations with both Germany and Russia, thus allowing the reestablishment of cordial relations with Russia. As became clear during the nationalist government of Jarosław Kaczyn´ski, Polish hostility regarding Russia was a stumbling block in the German attempts to create a privileged relationship with Russia. German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government was aware of the veto power of Poland regarding Europe’s relations with Russia, and concluded that Poland should be involved in the negotiations between Berlin and Moscow. The PO’s rise to power was thus seen as an opportunity to put into practice an inclusive and multilateral foreign policy which included Warsaw (Rotfeld 2010). The PO’s new foreign policy resulted in Russian diplomacy declaring the end to the embargo on meat exports from Poland and Poland allowing the beginning of negotiations between Russia and the EU that the previous government had blocked (Grinkevich 2007).4 However, the Russian

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intervention in Georgia in August 2008 demonstrated the limits of Polish goodwill in relation to Russia. Poland condemned Russia’s military support to the separatist regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Answering to Russia’s aggressive stance, Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs Radosław Sikorski reiterated the necessity for NATO to deploy the promised ballistic missile interceptors in Polish territory (Kulish 2008). Rather than ignoring Poland’s criticism of its intervention in Georgia, Russia showed some receptiveness to Polish opinion and Polish– Russian relations improved during those years. In the context of the revision of the placement of an anti-missile shield by the Obama administration (US Department of Defense 2010), a process of diplomatic consultation took place between Moscow and Warsaw. In September 2009 Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin attended the ceremony of the 70th anniversary of the start of World War II in Warsaw. During this visit Putin initiated a dialogue with Prime Minister Tusk, proposing the institutionalization of a dialogue between the two governments (Reuters 2011). The dialogue continued during the visit of Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski to Moscow in 2009. The implementation of this dialogue was agreed at a meeting with the coordinators of the Russia–Polish group for difficult questions—a euphemism for the historical disputes between Russia and Poland—in Smolensk on 7 April 2010 (Rotfeld 2010). This resulted in the recognition by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in November 2010 of Stalin’s guilt in the Katyn´ massacre of 1942, where 20,000 Polish officials were murdered by Soviet forces (Lipman 2010). As a sign of the rapprochement, on 6 December 2010 Russian President Dmitry Medvedev visited Warsaw (Rotfeld 2010). Summing up, the PO’s foreign policy followed the principles of extroverted nationalism, which contrasted with the PiS’s denial of an a priori commonality of interests between Poland and its neighbors. The PiS’s and the PO’s contrasting foreign policies, were by-products of the institutionalized confrontation between liberal and National Catholic worldviews.

The unification of the right and the transformation of Spanish nationalism This section describes and analyzes the transformation of Spanish conservative nationalism since the formation of the PP in 1989 until the party left office in May 2004. The transformation of the PP’s nationalism was partial, as the party kept reservations concerning the symbolic and practical implications of recognizing Catalonia and the

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Basque country ambitions for the recognition of their special status among the Spanish autonomies. The section problematizes the ambiguity of the PP’s national discourse, analyzing the rhetorical strategies used in different stages. In the early 1990s the party leader, José Maria Aznar, signalled the party’s departure from its predecessor, the AP, opposition to the 1978 constitution’s provisions for decentralization (Martinez-Herrera and Miley 2010: 8) a position that kept the AP isolated from other political forces (Gilmour 2005: 164). The PP’s creation marked a new departure for the right, in terms of a stable alliance of right wing forces led by liberal conservatives (Casanova and Andrés 2009: 357). The new leader, José María Aznar, adopted an ideological pragmatism and undertook the task of reforming Spanish conservative nationalism. His immediate motivation was to reach out to the Basque Nationalist Party and the Catalan Convergence and Union, whose support the party would need in case of winning the parliamentary elections but not reaching an absolute majority. After a decade in which political forces had shunned the use of national rhetoric for fear of awakening Franco’s ghosts, the new center right was now in a position to deal with the inheritance of introverted National Catholicism, particularly in relations between Spain and peripheral nationalities (Núñez-Seixas 2007: 45; Balfour and Quitoga 2007: 54). At the heart of this ideological reformulation was the conservatives’ reconciliation with the provisions of the 1978 constitution: first, through the reconcilliation with the term “nationalities,” which was taken as a disguise for the peripheral nationalists’ and the left’s ambitions to transform Spain into a multi-national federal state; second, by accepting the state of the autonomies, as it had developed out of Title VIII of the 1978 constitution. The PP consciously departed from the introverted National Catholic tradition, having shed the religious justifications for the supremacy of the Spanish nation that prevailed during Franco’s dictatorship. The new national discourse and adopted an extroverted logic accepted that, instead of being a threat to Spain, regional autonomy was compatible, and even beneficial, for the national development of the country (Dowling 2005; Nuñez-Seixas 2005). The party’s narrative about the relations between Spain and the regional autonomies adopted the arguments of revisionist historians, which considered the role of the emergence of regional nationalisms in Catalonia and the Basque Country in the late 19th century. Instead of seeing Catalanism and Basque nationalism as a sign of the weak nationalization of

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Spain, the revisionist authors considered it as beneficial for Spain’s development (Aizpúrua 1990; Alvares Junco 1996; Torres 2002). José María Aznar spelled the new narrative of national development: Spain was no longer a country where the emergence of peripheral nationalisms had disturbed the normal development of the nation, but a country where unity and diversity had successfully co-existed for centuries. In his book Patriotas y Demócratas (2010) Núñez-Seixas summarizes the PP’s justification for the state of autonomies: The PP adopted the venerable notion of “unity in diversity,” defended by traditional thinkers of late 19th century such as Menendez y Pelayo or Juan Vazquez de Mello, and transformed it in a new expression: las Españas, which, in spite of its varied cultures and peculiarities, formed a national community, which had reincarnated in the state of the autonomies. (Núñez-Seixas 2010: 45) The PP’s new discourse also considered that the 1978 constitution had overcome the conflicts caused by the unjustified revanchism of the historical nationalities in late Francoism, and was a proof that peripheral nationalism was compatible with Spain’s development (NúñezSeixas 2005: 213). To support the reformulation of conservative nationalism and advance the idea that regional and class particularisms should be articulated by the central state, Aznar took resource in the works of prominent Spanish writers and political personalities from the late 19th and early 20th centuries but the chosen personalities did not always illustrate the message of reconciliation with the regional autonomies. For example, in 1997 the party commemorated through several public events and publications the memory of Antonio Cánovas, the architect of the restoration period (1873–1923). Cánovas was hailed as the author of a process of renationalization of Spain on the basis of a liberal and secular project. However, Cánovas had been in favour of centralizing policies, and had opposed the formulation of peripheral nationalisms in Catalonia and the Basque country. The celebration of Cánovas as the author of Spanish liberalism sent ambiguous signs to the peripheral nationalists. More in line with the party’s attempt to reconcile Spanish and regional nationalisms, the PP adopted Ortega y Gasset’s expression of Spain as a “project nation,” as well as referring to the proposals in Gasset’s 1921 book Invertebrate Spain (Ortega y Gasset 2004). Like Gasset, Aznar and the PP’s liberal modernizers considered that Spain was a great nation born out of Castile’s hegemony; this nation could

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co-exist with the regional communities, but only if the political elites rose to the challenge of articulating Spanish and peripheral nationalisms’ common interests so that both would benefit Spain as a whole (Aznar 1994, 1995, 2000). Frequent references to Gasset and Unamuno in Aznar’s speeches served to emphasize the logic of extroverted nationalism: the compatibility of the interests of regional and national entities, as well as the search for an understanding between moderate forces. Venturing even further to the left in his use of historical precedents, Aznar eulogized Manuel Azaña, Prime Minister and President in the Second Republic, for his commitment to democracy and regional devolution (Aznar 1998: 170). The PP’s adoption of an extroverted logic followed the tradition of moderate Catalan nationalism, in particular that of Francesc Cambó (1876–1947). Cambó was hailed by Aznar as a defender of the reconciliation between regional nationalism and loyalty to Spain. Aznar frequently praised Cambó’s formula, which saw the advancement of Catalonia as a contribution to the development of Spain (Aznar 2005). The PP’s Catalan politician Alejo Vidal-Quadras, one of the main proponents of a plural Spain, also reiterated the positive aspects of the extroverted Catalan nationalism, by contrasting it with the introverted peripheral nationalisms, such as those of the separatist Basques (see Núñez-Seixas 2010: 49). The contributions of other PP regionalist leaders during the 1990s were equally important to the acceptance of regional pluralism. Trying to reconcile the transfer of powers to the regional autonomies with the objective of reinforcing Spain, the ex-minister of transport from Andaluzia, Eduardo Zaplana, proposed new institutional mechanisms that improve the articulation of central and the regional interests. Paraphrasing the title of the book Espanha Invertebrada of Ortega y Gasset Zaplana argued that autonomy was “the key to the integration and vertebration of Spain” (Zaplana, Hernández and Suarez 2000). The transformation of the PP’s discourse was, however, limited. The party rhetoric in the 1990s followed an extroverted logic, but failed to define sub-national nationalities as political entities, or Spain as a nation of nations. Despite affirming repeatedly the cultural pluralism of Spain (Aznar 1995), Aznar never accepted Catalonia, the Basque Country or Galicia’s ambitions of a fully federal state (Aznar 1996; Núñez-Seixas 2010: 51). The PP thus continued to oppose the granting of extra competences to the historic communities, favoring the equality of competences of all seventeen autonomous communities. The PP’s version of Spanish history maintained that Spain was an antique nation (Núñez-Seixas 2010: 132) but, confirming our theoretical

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proposition that internal and external dimensions of nationalism are distinct elements, the conservatives reconciled a perenialist account of Spain with the acknowledgment of peripheral nationalities. The main weakness of the PP’s ideological reformulation of Spanish nationalism was rather its half-hearted acceptance of these entities as recipients of political rights, and the maintenance of a vague definition of Spanish pluralism. The PP’s defense of the 1978 constitution as the basis of its national doctrine was only a partial concession to the legitimacy of the historical nationalities. As was pointed out in Chapter 3, the negotiations on the 1978 constitution kept open many aspects of the territorial organization of Spain. Most importantly, title VIII of the constitution did not define the geographical borders of the autonomous communities and maintained a strong ambiguity regarding the differences between regions and historical nationalities. When claiming to preserve the constitution’s model of territorial organization, the PP was in fact defending a particular interpretation of the 1978 constitutional formulation, which had resulted in the watering down of the status of the historical nationalities in favor of an equality of competences of all autonomous communities, including those with no historical or linguistic identities. The PP’s defense of the status quo, i.e., of a symmetric semi-federal model (the “café para todos”), had the objective of shunning Catalonia’s and Basque claims to further autonomy and the federalization of Spain as a nation of nations. Thus, the formula of article 2 of the constitution, in which the rights of the peripheral nationalities and those of Spain were superimposed, rather than articulated, served as an anchor for the PP’s revisionism by justifying the party’s resistance to the recognition of peripheral nationalities as political entities (see Aznar 1996). In policy terms, it led the PP to advocate similar competences for all regions as a strategy to water down the historical nations’ call for asymmetric multi-national federalism (Núñez-Seixas 2010: 53). After winning an absolute majority in the March 2000 parliamentary elections, the PP’s opposition to Catalan and Basque pledges hardened. Also, the relationship between the PP and the Catalan moderate nationalists, the CiU, changed, not least because the PP no longer needed the CiU’s support in parliament. Also, the PP downplayed the narrative of Spanish nationalism built along the extroverted logic, with Aznar’s defense of a plural but unified Spain now dressed in new clothes. At the PP’s 14th Congress in 2002, the motion “El patriotismo constitucional del Siglo XXI” added a new element to conservative discourse by stating that Spain was a modern, civic entity, in which all

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the citizens, independently of their ethnic origins, could participate (Piqué and San Gil 2002). The text considers that Spain is a nation constituted “throughout the centuries” and is not only a sum of its peoples, but also the product of a “common history, a shared feeling and also a powerful and attractive history … a sufficiently strong and homogenous reality, that all can assume comfortably, openly and without complexes” (Piqué and San Gil 2002). In this motion, Josep Piqué and María San Gil also attacked peripheral nationalists as anti-liberal: “when the obsession for determining the idea of Spain in a sole community results in enslavement … it is necessary to strengthen … the idea of Spain as an idea of freedom” (Piqué and San Gil 2002). The document also describes the “state of the autonomies” as one of the most “decentralized in the world,” where the regions enjoy “more powers than those of some federal states” (Piqué and San Gil 2002). According to this narrative, Spain was able to integrate diversity as a matter of individual rather than group rights and thus had no necessity to increase the competences of autonomous communities (NúñezSeixas 2010: 74). Constitutional patriotism was used to protect the supremacy of Spain over the peripheral nationalities and to oppose further decentralization (see Balfour and Quiroga 2007: 115–16; Núñez-Seixas 2010: 52–54). Moreover, by rehabilitating Spanish nationalism, the discourse on constitutional patriotism opened the door to a more assertive use of nationalism by conservatives, some of which asserted openly Spain’s superiority (see Uriarte 2003). The public celebration of Spanish nationalism, such as the weekly ceremonies of the army’s salutation of the Spanish flag carried out in the main square of Madrid, turned this trend into a public event (Núñez-Seixas 2010: 57; Balfour and Quiroga 2007: 144).

The 2004 elections and the conflict over the reform of the Catalan statutes of autonomy The unexpected defeat of the PP at the March 2004 parliamentary elections accelerated the revision of the Catalan statutes of autonomy. The PP, now in the opposition and facing the PSOE’s support for the revision of the Catalan statutes of autonomy, hardened its opposition to the use of nation (Parlament de Catalunya 2005) and, after long negotiations the reference to the Catalan nation was placed in the preamble, rather than in the body of the statute where it was initially positioned, and as a result acquired a more symbolic meaning (Generalitat de Catalunya 2005). The PP maintained a restrictive interpretation of Article 2 of the constitution and demanded an inquiry in

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November 2004 on the constitutionality of the preamble. The Declaration of San Millán de la Cogolla, formulated and adopted by the PP’s regional leaders, attempted to stall Catalan demands for differentiation from other regions by demanding the equality of rights and of texts of these statutes (Núñez-Seixas 2010: 128). In the declaration the party stated that any further concession of sovereignty to the autonomies would only serve to feed further tendencies for secession. Equally, the party’s 2005 communiqué regarding the use of the term nation in the Catalan Statute warned against the danger that the document posed to the Spanish nation, “an historical reality with more than 500 years.” The PP also declared that it opposed any constitutional revision that put into doubt that the only and indivisible subject of sovereignty is the Spanish people and “whose indissoluble unity is manifested in the Spanish nation” (Partido Popular 2005). Summarizing, the formation of the PP in 1989 helped bury the religious and national cleavages among right-wing political forces in Spain. Free from the influence of the church and the conservative nationalist faction, the new leaders initiated an ideological conversion that reconciled the party with the semi-federal system and allowed it to claim to be the guardian of the state of the autonomies. The party partly accepted the claims for autonomy by the historical nationalities of Catalonia and the Basque Country by transforming the understanding of the Spanish nation’s relations with other nations. Rather than portraying the Catalan and Basque countries as inherently antagonistic to Spain, the PP’s new national discourse emphasized tolerance for diversity. However, the PP did not define the nature of rational diversity, whether conceived in individual or group terms. Thus, whereas in the 1990s Aznar seemed open to recognizing the nationalities as political entities, after 2000 the PP adopted the formula of civic nationalism, which emphasized individual rather than national diversity. The uncertainty of the party’s national doctrine was concomitant with the ambiguity of the semi-federal nature of the Spanish state of the autonomies. When the conflict between center and periphery intensified, the PP stressed its defense of the unity of Spain. Using the discourse of constitutional patriotism, and defending the integration of national differences through the civic model, the PP displayed an increasingly hostile attitude towards the claims of the peripheral nationalisms for an increased share of sovereign powers. Nevertheless, the partial transformation of Spain’s attitudes towards other nations, resulting in the accommodation of the PP to the 1978 constitutional pact, was a significant achievement. The end of the historical divorce between the liberal and the National Catholic political

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families, which had divided Spain for the most part of the 20th century, helped the new conservative party to moderate the conflict between Spanish nationalism and the demands for increased Catalan and Basque autonomy.

Notes 1 A notorious anti-German public figure, Mariusz Muszynsky, was named plenipotentiary for relations with Germany. 2 The Catholic Church Statistical Institute (ISKK SAC) was responsible for carrying out in 2002 the only poll performed by the Polish church on the opinion of parish priests on European Integration (see Zatyka 2013: 145). With responses from 9,059 Catholic priests, it showed that only 5.8 percent of the participants considered that Polish accession would benefit the spirituality of Polish Catholics. This result differs markedly from the other study on Polish priests run by the Institute of Public Affairs in 2003 (KolarskaBobin´ska and Kucharczyk). 3 As a result of allegations of serious corruption on the part of the leader of one of the PiS coalition partners, Andrzej Lepper of the Samoobrona, the Sejm voted for the party’s dissolution on 7 September 2007. 4 The start of negotiation between Russia and the UE was, however, delayed by the opposition of Lithuania, which refused to give the mandate to the European Commission to start negotiations due to a dispute with Moscow.

6

Conclusion

This book explores the importance of Polish and Spanish religious actors in the shaping of the party system and the definition of nationalism. It traces the varying degrees of church mobilization of nationalism and establishes a causal relation between the Polish church’s politicization of the National Catholic tradition and the establishment of introverted nationalist forces as a pole of competition. The neutrality of the Spanish Catholic Church towards political parties shows the same mechanism at work: Church withdrawal was crucial for the diminishing of the political–cultural cleavage, resulting in the conciliation of liberal, Christian democrats and nationalist forces in a single party, and in the partial reform of conservative nationalism. This study charts new territory in two ways. First, traditionally, the studies of confessional political forces focused on the core European countries: France, Germany, Belgium and Italy. Spain and Poland belong to the European periphery and while the book is by no means unique in its geographical focus (see, for example, Henning 2012; Anderson 2003b), it sheds additional light on the interactions between church and politics in countries where the prominence of the church is comparatively high. Second, Spain and Poland are prominent cases among the “Catholic wave” of transitions to democracy (Anderson 2007; Philpott 2004; Chu 2011). However, the book covers some new ground by going beyond the impact of the church on the transition, but also on the formation of parties and on the redefinition of relations with other nations. The book demonstrates how the strategies of national religious hierarchies influenced the adoption of introverted and extroverted nationalisms by the center-right parties and the conditions for this transformation to take root. The analytical narrative describes the trajectories of the church’s strategies and how they contributed to the consolidation or disappearance of a National Catholic block defending an introverted

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nationalism that opposes sharing sovereignty with other nations. The long-term character of the study allows linking the three issues. The comparison between Poland and Spain highlights the different ways in which the Vatican promoted both democracy and reconciliation between nations after Vatican Council II. In Spain Pope Paul VI’s influence was indirect, brought mainly through the appointment of reformist prelates to auxiliary bishops and bishops in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Crucially, Paul VI supported the reformist Cardinal Tarancón in his election as leader of the Episcopal Conference in 1971. In Poland John Paul II’s action was direct: the Pope was a supporter of Solidarity, the opposition movement. His forceful presence in Poland throughout the 1980s was an essential support to the underground opposition and an influential force in favor of an extroverted Polish nationalism, later translated into support for Poland’s European vocation. We would like to briefly discuss the validity of our explanation. The main proposition of the book, that church intervention in the political sphere explains the enduring politicization of an introverted National Catholic identity, is well illustrated by the Polish case. The interaction (or lack thereof) of the Spanish Catholic Church with political forces shows the same mechanism at work, but in reverse mode: here, church neutrality was crucial for the weakening of the political–cultural cleavage, resulting in the conciliation of liberal, Christian democrats and nationalist forces in a single party, the PP, and the partial reform of conservative Spanish nationalism. Other factors were at work in the processes of shaping the centerright. In particular, the fact that the main left-wing party in Poland, the SLD, all but collapsed in 2005 is an important element to account for the enduring rivalry of National Catholics and liberals, as the declining incentive for cooperation between the PO and the PiS. In contrast, in Spain the PSOE remained a crucial competitor of the PP, thus creating a direct incentive for the right-wing political families to remain united. However, the importance of church strategies and the emergence of a national/religious cleavage in Poland remains a relevant explanation, despite the collapse of the left in 2005. As pointed out in Chapter 4, the depth of the cleavage dividing liberals and nationalists in Poland was already significant in the mid-1990s, and would increase in the following decade, making a permanent merger between the national conservative and the liberal conservative parties unlikely to happen. As a result of two decades of intense interaction between the Catholic Church and nationalist political forces, by 2005 the politicized National Catholic identity became the basis of a political cleavage dividing elites and voters.

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These findings corroborate the work of several scholars suggesting an important role for Catholicism in shaping Polish and Spanish democratic developments. Juan Linz’s 1967 book The party system of Spain (Linz 1967) initiated a strand of analysis on the role of Catholicism in the democratization of Spain, and shape of the right-wing. The importance of Catholicism as a political identity and of the church as a social institution in Poland was also noted by several scholars as crucial for the mobilization of the extreme right in Poland (Minkenberg 2009: 450; Markowski 2003: 13). In the same vein, the collective work lead by Kitschelt on political cleavages in Central and Eastern Europe states the importance of the religious divide for the formation of political parties (Kitschelt 1999: 230). More broadly, the book contributes to two distinct but interlinked literatures. Through its focus on party formation and nationalism, it sheds additional light on the emergence of extreme right parties in Europe. The book’s elaboration on nationalism’s external dimension adds to the inquiry on the nature of ideological opposition to federal polities (Karolewski and Suszycki 2007), and takes it as a basis to explain the dynamics of right-wing party development in some European countries. Finally, the book sheds light in a new pattern of interaction between Christian political identities and European integration (Minkenberg 2009; Leustean and Madeley 2009). Post-war Christian democratic parties were a cornerstone of European integration, and went a long way in reconciling the European right with the emergence of supranational governance in Europe (Gehler and Kaiser 2004; Van Hecke 2004). This book shows that, beyond the attempt to form Christian Democratic parties, the Catholic Church influenced the formation of attitudes towards European integration in third-wave democracies.

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