party was unclear. Partly for that reason, the Church in Poland, as in Italy, saw no reason to put its eggs in one partisan basket and gave no special blessing to the Chadeks, who were relegated to the status of junior partners of the National Democrats, already identified in the public mind as the main defenders of the Polish faith.3 By default, then, the rightist Endecja of Dmowski assumed the role of standardbearer of the Catholic cause in the early years of the Second Republic despite its heritage of dubious attachment to Christian beliefs and principle. Whatever their other differences, this assortment of conservatives, nationalists, and social Catholics agreed that the Church played an essential role in Polish life and deserved a privileged place within the state.
Just as the Center and Right backed the Church, so the Church backed the Center and Right, out of both philosophical sympathy and the realistic understanding that it would find political friends in those quarters or not at all. Simultaneously flushed by liberation and unnerved by the complexion of a provisional government dominated by Piłsudskiites and socialist anticlericals, the Polish bishops urged voters in the first parliamentary elections of 1919 to elect candidates committed to defense of Christian values, a recommendation that needed no spelling out. The results were only partly successful: the Right gained a plurality, but not sufficient to form a stable cabinet. After that episode, the episcopate reverted to a stance of official non-partisanship, but there was no mistaking the political leanings of the Church and its clergy. The unicameral Constituent Assembly included thirty-two clerics, headed by Archbishop Teodorowicz, nearly all of them dependable supporters of the Right. Outside the confines of the legislature, Bishop Sapieha and Cardinal Dalbor, among other hierarchs, were well known for their inclinations toward the National Democrats, while parish priests tended, if anything, to exceed their superiors in outspoken fealty to the Dmowski party.
The belligerently rightist posture of the interwar Polish Church in the early stages of independence stemmed from a deep sense of embattled vulnerability, in sharp contrast to the imposing national reputation for Catholicity. In part, this reflected the defensiveness in the face of an increasingly secular modern culture that was common to European political Catholicism in those days, but it was also a response to conditions specific to the newly reassembled Poland. From the vantage point of the Church, its legal standing in the country at the dawn of statehood presented a dilemma of unpalatable alternatives. If the laws left over from the partitioning empires remained in force, then they preserved a network of statutes and regulations largely inimical to Catholic teachings and interests. For example, the districts of Poland formerly ruled by Protestant Germany had permitted civil marriage and divorce, and as late as 1922 the Polish bishops felt compelled to issue a pastoral letter condemning the admission of these practices in a Catholic land. On the other hand, if the law of the ancien régime did not apply, then there was no law at all, and the Church forced to depend on the goodwill of the government of the moment. At best, this meant a lack of continuity in official policy toward the Church, as each successive short-lived coalition reinvented the wheel and improvised its own ad hoc approach, in practice leaving much authority in the hands of lackluster, capricious, or corruptible local bureaucrats. At worst, the precariousness of the political balance in Poland lent credence to the fear that the anticlerical Left might gain the upper hand and that its loose talk of a secular state and confiscation of ecclesiastical lands might become reality. The Church was naturally eager to settle the fundamental questions regarding its status on the best terms possible, and as quickly as possible, before the window of opportunity afforded by a Center-Right parliament might close. These anxieties were magnified by a prevalent mentality of persecution, a habit of mistrust of state power carried over from the days of foreign rule. As a result, the political voice of Polish Catholicism and its sympathizers in this interlude was noisy, impatient, unyielding in defense of the rights and prerogatives of the Church, and caustic toward its enemies.4
The first serious test of strength and will concerning the Catholic Church in the civic affairs of the Second Republic arose out of the contentious agrarian question, in the course of horse trading and voting that produced a modest land reform in 1920, during the tenure of a Piast ministry. The peasant deputies who sponsored the measure naturally sought access to a fraction of Church properties for parceling out by the state, but when they pleaded their case to their colleague Archbishop Teodorowicz, they went away empty-handed. Responding for the clerical delegation, Teodorowicz expressed approval of reform in principle, but reminded his petitioners that Church holdings had been diminished sharply over the past century through expropriation and war damage and now made up less than 1 percent of the total area of the country. These professions of poverty failed to impress the peasant politicians, but they reflected the genuine concerns of an institution responsible for the support of forty thousand clergy and lay employees and sensitive to its own economic straits. So far as the Church was concerned, it was entitled to recover a share of the properties and wealth lost during the era of captivity, not to have them depleted further now that the day of liberation had dawned. In the end, the parliament put off the issue to a later day: no ecclesiastical lands would be made available for reform until an international agreement had been reached with the Holy See as part of a comprehensive settlement of church-state matters, a concordat, in so many words. In effect, round one had gone to the Church, as most of the rounds would.5
In the meantime, the Constituent Assembly spent two years carrying out its primary responsibility, the drafting and approving of a republican constitution, which was passed in March 1921. By its nature, the debate over the religious clauses to be written into the document opened the parliamentary floor to expression of the most fundamental and emotional opinions, pro and con, regarding the role and legacy of Catholicism in Poland. For all the spirited give-and-take of the exchanges, the outcome was predictable. The Center-Right bloc in the chamber was sufficient to have its way and fend off the impassioned calls of the anticlerical Left for the separation of church and state. In an era when separation smacked of irreligion and war against the Church, such a prospect struck the majority as contrary to national tradition and unthinkable.6 With the option of the secular state removed from the table, the meaningful discussion focused on working out the nuances of the inevitable official recognition of the Roman confession. The Church opened the bidding with hopes for establishment or, barring that, for acknowledgment as the “predominant religion” of Poland, but ended by having to settle for a compromise formula borrowed from the Napoleonic concordat of 1801.7 In its final wording, the key Article 114 declared that the Catholic faith, “being the religion of the overwhelming majority of the nation, occupies in the state a leading position among religions endowed with equal rights.” This first-among-equals language disappointed some within the clerical camp, but the fine print of the measure secured several crucial privileges for the Church that made plain that if all religions in Poland were equal, then one was more equal than the others. In the first place, by singling out Catholicism for specific mention, the document automatically set it apart from other creeds. Second, the state conceded that the Church, and the Church alone, “govern[ed] itself by its own laws” (własnymi prawami), whereas all other churches would be subject to the dictates of civil law. This provision was meant to safeguard the autonomy of the Church and to limit the scope of governmental interference in its activity. Finally, the constitution obliged the republic to reach a concordat with the Holy See to provide the basis of the coexistence of church and state. While the concordat might well have turned out much as it did in any event, by thus committing itself in advance to conclude a treaty, Warsaw yielded a certain edge in the haggling of negotiation to the Vatican, which could afford to drive a hard bargain in the knowledge that at some point Poland would have to make a deal.8 In sum, although the Church had not gained all it sought from the “March constitution,” it still had done well for itself. While necessarily vague, the basic law of the Second Republic treated the Church with dignity and respect, did nothing to foreclose or impede any of its aspirations to prominence in the country, and encouraged it to press forward to put flesh on the constitutional bones by completing the legal and political agenda that had been successfully begun.
Since the constitution had been regarded as the necessary precondition of a concordat, its adoption temporarily revived the topic of the treaty that would represent the next, and presumably final, stage of the normalization of church-state relations. Out of different motives, both
