The name of Poniatowski, Stanisław August, the last “King of
Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania, Ruthenia, Prussia, Mazowsze, Zmudz, Kiev,
Wolyn, Podole, Podlasie, Livonia, Smolensk, Sever and Czernihov,” figures
prominently in the Preamble of the Constitution of Trzeci Maj, the Third of May, 1791. I breathe in his soul when I
light up, the ashes of the most enlightened, well-intended, and stillborn of
Polish Constitutions.
In 1791, only four years after the ratification of our own
quite secular Constitution—which makes almost no reference to God, until the
end, when it affirms that “no religious test shall ever be required as a
qualification to any office or public trust under the United States” and dates
the document “in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty
seven”—the most famous Polish constitution begins quite differently, “In the
name of God, One in the Holy Trinity.” Yes, that God, the real God, not
Nature’s God, the very Christian God, the Catholic God, “One in the Holy
Trinity,” Who receives first mention in the ideal Polish republic. Those
Americans who think that Christianity is inscribed in our founding documents
should take a lesson in how such inscription would have been handled were it
true—if they can be expected to read foreign and historical constitutions who
have so little familiarity with their own. The First Article of Trzeci Maj reads
as follows, unequivocally:
I.
The Dominant Religion
The dominant national religion is and
shall be the sacred Roman Catholic faith with all its laws. Passage from the dominant
religion to any other confession is forbidden under penalties of apostasy.
Inasmuch as the same holy faith bids us love our neighbors, we owe to all
persons, of whatever persuasion, peace in their faith and the protection of the
government, and therefore we guarantee freedom to all rites and religions in
the Polish lands, in accordance with the laws of the land.
(Note, Tea-Partisans,
how to establish religion in a constitution: Eight o’clock, Day 1, Article 1,
Sec. 1.) And yet, religious tolerance is universal—except for lapsed Catholics,
like, uh, me. But, interestingly, having established the Church, the framers
later back away from theocracy (Article 5) when they concede that “All
authority in human society takes its origin in the will of the people.” Poland’s
is not the charter for the City of God. Most of the rest of the document is
secular, an articulated arrangement of offices, powers, and processes, though
bishops and the Polish Primate have responsibilities within these arrangements,
most interestingly as “president of the educational commission” (Article 7) and
as regent in the case of a king still in his minority (Article 9). Disappearing shortly thereafter as a
country, Poland had little call for constitution-making for a hundred and thirty
years.
By 1921, when the Polish republic was restored after World
War I and assorted regional wars, it began on an even more emphatic religious note,
“In the name of Almighty God,” [my
italics] and “thankful to Providence,” but Christianity and the Roman Catholic
Church don’t appear until Article 114; and while recognized as “the religion of
the preponderant majority of the nation, [which] occupies in the state the
chief position among enfranchised religions,” Catholicism retains no higher
status than first among equals: “Freedom of conscience and of religion is
guaranteed to all citizens. No citizen may suffer a limitation of the rights
enjoyed by other citizens by reason of his religion and religious convictions.”
(Article 111) Thankfully, apostates were not, by definition, traitorous. It
would seem that atheism, however, was not constitutionally protected, not being
“a legally recognized religion.” All were expected to believe in something, but
no constitutional penalties attached to infidelity.
The Communist constitution of 1947, not surprisingly, makes
no mention of God and religion over the course of ninety-two articles.
Declaring atheism the national unreligion,
however consistent with Marxist-Leninism—and ironic given the previous
constitution and the recalcitrant Catholicism of the Poles under Soviet
domination—the Communists were probably wiser to say nothing at all. At the
end, under the Declaration of Rights and Liberties, they did pretend to
recognize “Equality before the law, regardless of nationality, race, creed,
sex, origin, social status and education.” If by “equality,” they meant equal
in the regime’s fundamental disregard
to any claims at all arising under these headings, then perhaps, a certain
theoretical equality existed—a common nullification, equal but various
oppressions, general official repression.
Fifty years later, the Preamble to the current constitution
(1997) opens ambivalently with the subject of religion, recognizing within the
citizenry, “Both those who believe in God as the source of truth, justice,
good[ness] and beauty, as well as those not sharing such faith but respecting
those universal values as arising from other sources.” Poles’ political
legitimacy finds support in either and both “our culture rooted in the Christian
heritage of the Nation and in universal human values.” One can take one’s pick,
“recognizing our responsibility before God or our own consciences.” The new fundamental
law acknowledges both God and the individual, two concepts not carefully regarded
under Communism.
Article 25 deals impartially with churches and religious
organizations in five brief sections. Article 53 deals again, impartially and
conventionally, with freedom of conscience for individuals and families. I am
particularly charmed by Section 7: “No one may be compelled by organs of public
authority to disclose his philosophy of life, religious convictions or belief.”
You can be compelled by your daimonion, like Miłosz in The Land of Ulro, but not by the authorities. Good thing. That’s
hard work, and for most of us, better kept secret. Office holders may take
their oath “with the additional sentence ‘So help me, God’”, but Poles are
largely otherwise on their own.
Yesterday, General Wojciech Jaruzelski, Poland’s last
Communist and briefly first post-Communist President, died at the age of 90.
He’s famous, and infamous, for declaring martial law in 1981, suspending the
Communist constitution of 1947, which was never much more than a dead letter
anyway, ruled as the Poles were from the Kremlin. He’ll be a controversial
figure until his memory disperses like smoke, though I doubt any pipe tobaccos
will be named for him.
