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| Back to Archive 2003
The Bishop's Column
Poles in the Catholic Church and the Catholic Church in Poles The close relationship between the Catholic Church and the people of Poland has been most obvious since the election of Cardinal Karol Wojtya as Pope John Paul II in 1978. His election as Supreme Pontiff has had a tremendous impact on the life of the Catholic Church for 25 years now. As George Weigel wrote in his voluminous biography of Pope John Paul II, “Witness to Hope”, “The pontificate of Pope John Paul II has been one of the most important in centuries, for the Church and for the world. Some would argue that John Paul II has been the most consequential pope since the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation in the 16th century. As that period defined the Catholic Church’s relationship to an emerging modern world, so the Second Vatican Council and the pontificate of Pope John Paul II have laid down a set of markers that will likely determine the course of world Catholicism well beyond ‘modernity’ and into the third millennium of Christian history.” But it was the Holy Father’s visit to Poland in 1979 that planted the seeds of a revolution that that would change the complexion of the world, beginning with the shipyard strikes in Gdansk. As Weigel reports, “Icons of faith were now the symbols by which Poles could best demonstrate the truths John Paul II had preached in June 1979, demonstrate their reignited sense of human dignity, and make clear their yearning for freedom. The Madonna on the shipyard gates, the daily strike Mass, and those rows of strikers queued up to visit open-air confessionals also symbolized the different kind of political struggle in which they were engaged. This was going to be a nonviolent and self-regulating revolution—one that proved Robespierre, Lenin and the other violent men in the modern revolutionary pantheon wrong.” The significance of these events was editorialized in the Chicago Tribune recently after Poles again made history by voting to join the European Union (“Poland Seizes its Destiny,” June 10, 2003): “If you wanted to find the origin of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the demise of communism and the wave of democratization that has washed over the planet, you might start in Gdansk in 1980. There, workers at the Lenin Shipyard defied the government by forming Poland’s first independent labor union. The union, known as Solidarity, gained such a wide following among Poles that it brought down the communist party leader, won changes that no Soviet-bloc country had ever tolerated, and eventually caused the government such consternation that it eventually declared martial law. … In 1989, [Solidarity] forced the government to allow free elections—which it proceeded to win. A few months later, the Berlin Wall came down, and the world has never been the same.” In terms of Polish immigration to Chicago, Professor Dominic Pacyga of Columbia College wrote in his book, “Polish Immigrants and Industrial Chicago”, “Anthony Smarzewski-Shermann is considered by most to be the founder of Chicago’s Polonia. He was not the first Pole to settle in Chicago, but his family did establish the core around which the West Town settlement developed. He came to the Northwest Side from Prussian-occupied Poland in 1851. Thirteen years later some 500 of his countrymen also lived in the city, the great majority from the German partition. In 1864 they organized the St. Stanlislaus Kostka Benevolent Society as the first Polish organization in Chicago. The new group hoped eventually to establish a Polish parish. In 1867 the society agreed on definite plans to form a Polish congregation. Three years later, [Resurrection Father] Rev. Adolph Bakanowski, came to Chicago to serve as pastor to the Poles.” The number of Poles emigrating from Poland grew rapidly in the last half of the 19th and early 20th centuries. According to Pacyga, an estimated 3 million Poles left between 1850 and 1914. Polish immigration to the United States reached its peak in 1912, when approximately 175,000 people entered the country. In 1920 there were approximately 3 million inhabitants of Polish heritage in the United States. By 1930 the U.S. Census counted 4,227,734 Poles. Despite their growing numbers, Poles were not represented in the Catholic hierarchy in the United States for many years. For example, as reported by Anthony J. Kuzniewski in “Faith and Fatherland: The Polish Church War in Wisconsin, 1896-1918,” by 1900 there were about 100,000 Poles in Wisconsin, yet every bishop appointed in Wisconsin was of German descent. This became an increasing source of tension in the Polish-American community, resulting in the founding of schismatic churches in the Polish community. In 1895 in Chicago, Resurrection Father Anthony Kozlowski, assistant pastor of St. Hedwig Parish, led 1,000 of the parish’s 1,300 families in founding the “Independent Catholic Church in America.” Within three years, the Independent Polish Catholic Church in America claimed 17,000 members. In 1897 in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Father Francis Hodur founded the Polish National Catholic Church. Both had themselves consecrated bishops by the Union of Old Catholic Churches in Holland. The response to this situation is described by Charles Shanabruch in “Chicago’s Catholics: The Evolution of an American Identity”: “After thorough investigation of the needs of the Polish-Americans and the dangers presented by the schismatic Polish churches (Bishop Kozlowski’s churches joined Bishop Hodur’s Polish National Catholic Church in 1907), Rome concluded that Polish Americans needed a bishop. The Archbishop of Chicago [James Edward Quigley] was ‘chiefly instrumental’ in realization of the Polish dreams. … On Aug. 16, 1907, all the Polish priests in the Archdiocese were called to Holy Name Cathedral to vote for an auxiliary bishop. Although Quigley cautioned them that their selection would not head an all-Polish diocese, but would be a bishop to all nationalities in Chicago, they must have been elated.” In June 1908, Father Paul Rhode, who was born in Prussian Poland in 1870 and had overseen the building of St. Michael the Archangel Roman Catholic Church at 83rd Street and South Shore Drive in South Chicago, became the first Polish Roman Catholic bishop in the United States. The June 27, 1908, issue of The New World praised Rome’s selection and assured Chicagoans that Rhode’s elevation “inevitably will do much to heal ancient wounds.” Over the succeeding decades, the descendants of the original Polish migrants to Chicago became more Americanized. While the collapse of communism in 1989 was beneficial for Poland politically, the transition to a free market economy left many people looking for work. This resulted in a new migration from Poland to Chicago. The “Metro Chicago Information Fact Book” reports that the number of Polish-born people living in the Chicago metropolitan area increased by 70 percent during the decade between 1990 and 2000. According to the 2000 U.S. Census, there are 932,996 people of Polish ancestry in Illinois, representing 7.5 percent of the state’s total. Chicago has long been known as the city with the second largest Polish population in the world, surpassed only by Warsaw. Despite these large numbers, Poles in Chicago have not been as influential in civic affairs as they should be, due to internal divisions within the Polish-American community. In an attempt to bridge these divisions and foster unity among Polish-Americans in Chicago, the Archdiocese of Chicago and the Chicago Community Trust in 1999 co-sponsored the founding of the Polish American Leadership Initiative (PALI). The mission of PALI is to enhance the participation of the Polish American community in the affairs of the greater community and to maximize its representation and influence at every level. PALI seeks to be a resource to existing organizations and a catalyst for the empowerment of the Polish American community through initiatives promoting leadership, representation, community service and cultural heritage. The Polish community remains strong in the Catholic Church. The 2003 Directory for the Archdiocese of Chicago lists 46 parishes with Masses celebrated in Polish. To help meet the pastoral needs of Polish-American Catholics, at the initiative of Cardinal George in 1997 the Archdiocese of Chicago began to actively invite seminarians and priests to come from Poland to Chicago. In 1999-2000, the Bishop Alfred Abramowicz Seminary was founded, named in memory of Bishop Abramowicz, who died in 1999. He had served the needs of the Polish community in Chicago for many years through a number of worthy endeavors, such as the Catholic League for Religious Assistance to Poland and the Polish Welfare Association, now known as the Polish American Association, which provides social services for Polish-speaking immigrants in the Chicago area. Bishop Abramowicz Seminary serves as a first stop for newly arriving recruits from Poland. After one year of intensive study of the English language, American culture and spiritual formation, they transfer to the Archdiocesan Major Seminary in Mundelein. After ordination, they are assigned to serve a variety of peoples in the parishes of the Archdiocese, not just Polish-Americans. When Pope John Paul II celebrated Mass in Chicago’s Grant Park on October 5, 1979, for an estimated 1.2 million people, he said, “Let love for each other and love for the truth be the answer to polarization, when factions are formed because of differing views in matters that relate to faith or to the priorities for action. No one in the ecclesial community should ever feel alienated or unloved.” These words were an important message for us then, and remain an important message for us today. |