A POLISH cardinal has urged moderation in language when discussing refugees and migrants, after his country’s government urged the Vatican to “take measures” against two Roman Catholic bishops for criticising its policies.
“Hate speech, fear of the ‘other’, stereotypes, and hatred are becoming more important than human and evangelical reasoning,” Cardinal Grzegorz Rys said in a pastoral letter on Sunday to parishes in his Lodz archdiocese.
“If you decide to participate in discussions, especially publicly, on the proper attitude to refugees and migrants, please do so in union with the true teachings of Christ and the Church. If not, then please have the courage to stay silent and not add fuel to this fiery reality.”
Cardinal Rys issued the appeal after a retired bishop, the Rt Revd Wieslaw Mering, told pilgrims at the Jasna Gora national sanctuary that Poland was being “ruled by political gangsters” and “people who call themselves Germans”, while another, the Rt Revd Antoni Dlugosz, said that Europe was being “Islamicised” and voiced support for a vigilante group turning back migrants on the western border with Germany.
The remarks prompted an official protest to the Vatican by the Polish Foreign Ministry, which accused the two bishops of infringing the Polish government’s “sovereignty” and democratic legitimacy, while also violating Roman Catholic teaching and “key Christian themes”.
“Such statements by bishops, acting as representatives of the Polish Episcopal Conference and Catholic Church, undermine good Polish-German relations, slander the government and indicate clear support for nationalist circles,” the Ministry said.
“We kindly suggest appropriate measures be taken against Bishops Mering and Dlugosz, so that similarly unfortunate, false and unjustified statements do not appear in the future public discourse, tarnishing the Catholic Church’s good name”.
In a commentary for the Catholic Information Agency in Poland, a professor in the Faculty of Theology of the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, Fr Dariusz Kowalczyk SJ, said that the Ministry’s two-page démarche was “full of errors and inaccuracies”, and appeared to have been “written in a hurry, driven by emotion and ideological zeal”, by what he described as an incompetent official.
He said that bishops were entitled to criticise governments and “address current socio-political issues at their own risk”, and said that it was unwise of Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s administration, which sought to liberalise abortion and eliminate school religion, to “engage in biblical exegesis” or pose as an “authority on matters of church teaching”.
In his pastoral letter, however, Cardinal Rys commented that Catholic social teaching gave everyone “the right to choose a place to live” and be “respected in their beliefs, culture, language and faith”. The turbulent “prevailing discourse” in Poland undermined those seeking to help incoming migrants, said the Cardinal, who appealed for a “conversion of language” and a return to “Jesus’s way of speaking”.