According to the publicists of Gazeta Wyborcza for example, the Catholic Church is a source of unimaginable and incessant oppression. Priests are portrayed in a context of crime and frustration, the traditional family, based on the Church’s teachings leads to violence and misfortune, mothers – at best – destroy their children’s personalities, because abortion is the best solution anyway, fathers aren’t fit for anything, besides they pose a threat to almost everything, because the institution of marriage is a catastrophe. If we were to content ourselves with the image of the Church put forward by this newspaper, we would have no choice but to bury ourselves. Or at least go to a shrink for advice and to find out who has actually lost their mind.

If it is so bad and terrible, why am I surrounded by friends and relatives who have children and respect their seniors? If they are Catholics they go to church and to confession every Sunday, they attend parish retreats, they belong to congregations and associations, both Catholic and other Christian ones, as well as Jewish in the case of people of that denomination. Does it mean that they don’t have problems in their families? That there are no problems in the Church? Of course there are, always have been and always will be but they don’t determine the nature of the Church and the family.

SIGN UP TO OUR PAGE After all, we are still a country where the dominant model of social life is the family, made up of a mother, father and children, most often in close relationship with the grandparents, who usually help the next generation to look after the youngest. Such a family takes part in the social life, often it gets engaged in helping others, not necessarily openly: they don’t talk about it on TV, don’t show off, but they are active, and how! This is reflected in the huge, long-term aid to war refugees from Ukraine, but also in systematic charity work in Polish parishes, extra meals for children from socially disadvantaged families, in-kind support before major holidays, free private tuition, weekend and summer holiday trips, to name but a few. Countless Polish families are constantly there – no one tells them to do so, no one forces them.

Right now, before Corpus Christi, a beautiful and interesting action of the Polish Catholic Information Agency (Katolicka Agencja Informacyjna – KAI) is being finalised – the ACTIVE PARISH competition. This is the third edition of this competition, whose media patron is TVP, so we can expect interesting reports – and hopefully not only in the so-called Catholic waveband. The final will take place on June 3 in the hospitable home and sports fields of the Warsaw school at Smoleńskiego Street – and will have the formula of a great family festival, during which the parishes selected for the final will present themselves: of All Saints in Słupia pod Kępnem, St Hubert in Zalesie Górne, St Apostles Peter and Paul in Łódź, Divine Providence in Rzeszów, Blessed Virgin Mary Mother of the Church and St Barbara in Bełchatów, St Vincent de Paul in Bydgoszcz, St Stanisław Kostka in Zielona Góra and St Hubert in Rzeszów (according to KAI).

Participants will present local customs, costumes, songs and imported culinary specialties, and representatives of the parish will compete in fitness competitions. And above all, they will learn from each other, look for ideas, look for inspiration…

Take, for example, the parish of St Vincent de Paul in Bydgoszcz, where 21 communities work: every day, from Monday to Friday, volunteers serve at least 200 meals and bring hot lunches to several homes, because the sick cannot come on their own. Every Saturday, the Missionary Youth prepares and distributes sandwiches to the poor. There is a washing machine in front of the Basilica – people in need receive free vouchers, thanks to which they can wash their clothes, while others can use the machine (washing machine and dryer) for a small fee. The “Warming Centre at Miecio’s” operates, where over 30 homeless men find a roof over their heads from October to April. The Society of Saint Vincent de Paul runs an Intervention House, where several or even a dozen women with their children regularly find temporary shelter. The parish has been building a milk bar since 2022, which will be opened in a few weeks and the poor will be able to buy a meal for any amount so that they do not have to ask for help. A collection of items for the needy in Ukraine was carried out: candles, cans, clothes, dressings – two buses with gifts went to Bakhmut. The Marian Apostolate regularly visits sick seniors in their homes and hospitals. A permanent collection of clothes and furniture is carried out, which, after appropriate segregation, go to people in need. There are numerous proposals for spiritual development and rich opportunities for prayer meetings, not to mention pilgrimages and other trips.

From the parish of Divine Providence in Rzeszów, I took as an example sports activities for children and school youth in three sections: football, volleyball and chess. Football training for four age groups takes place every day from Monday to Friday during the school year. Each group attends classes twice a week. Goalkeeper training was also introduced in April. Volleyball and chess classes are held once a week. Similarly, in the parish of Blessed Karolina Kózkówna in Tychy: there is a complex of three sports fields, besides a volleyball, basketball and beach volleyball field. In the parish house “Imagination of Mercy” there is a sports floor – table football tables, ping-pong tables, billiards, an aerobics room and rehabilitation gym are available for everyone. There are organized football matches and trips to the swimming pool and bowling. During trips to the retreat house in Wisła, there are also many trips to the mountains. Men who play chess or skat [popular Silesian card game] also meet in the parish. The latter also organize competitions. On Sundays, you can use the salt cave available here. Carnival games, lectures for seniors with the participation of psychologists, doctors and nutritionists by profession are organized.

In this Rzeszów parish – like in many others, maybe in the majority of them – there are A.A. Clubs, which is a great support for people looking for a way out of alcoholism, as everyone who wrote about it, read or encountered it knows. The fact that the A.A. CLUB meets in the parish is often not even known to the parishioners, because it is not a club seeking publicity – and all members of the A.A. Clubs know that the structures of the Church give anonymous alcoholics incredible support, it is simply hard to imagine their life without it. Similarly, Al-Anon Clubs in many parishes are quietly but effectively working with families affected by this problem. So before anyone joins in the clamour directed against the Church, let them find out about this matter.

And then there is the parish of St Hubert in Zalesie Górne, near Warsaw, famous for the fact that well over a hundred children always come to a Rorate Coeli Mass – a morning Mass “with lanterns” during Advent - well over a hundred children who, after all, are not forced to get up early. In this parish, young people who are preparing for confirmation help as volunteers in a canteen for the homeless, run by Capuchin fathers on Miodowa Street in Warsaw; other parish youth help the elderly from the Nursing Home run in the parish by the Servants of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The parish in Zalesie is also known for helping married couples: there is a Marriage Formation Group with 30 couples in it, and a team of six married couples conducts open meetings. The Community of the Holy Family conducts courses on dialogue, raising children, happiness in the family, and prayer. It is customary for parishioners to write in a notebook in the sacristy, declaring their willingness to actively participate in the liturgy of the Word and to read the prayers of the faithful, at masses every day of the week, in the morning and in the evening (all examples are given after KAI).

I shall not continue this list, because everyone in their parish can see how much good is produced there every day – if, of course, in times of fashionable “churching” they go to their parish, if they are willing to discern it, if they open their eyes and maybe even participate. I would also like to remind you of a similar competition for Pastor of the Year, also organised by the Catholic News Agency, but in the last decade. I had the pleasure of being a member of the competition’s chapter - and it was with satisfaction that I described the wonderful people who would want. The first winner of that competition, Father Piotr Sadkiewicz from Leśna near Żywiec, made the campaign of honorary blood donation in the parish famous – and he is still a parish priest there. Another parish priest, Mieczysław Stefaniuk from Zielonka near Warsaw, who was not young at the time, and is now elderly, emanated with gospel goodness and kindness, with which he drew entire families to work for others, to pray together, to build and expand numerous aid initiatives. And in those days I read about his beautiful 60th anniversary of priesthood, which he experienced surrounded by a large group of smiling parishioners.

And we will meet such people in the Corpus Christi processions in a few days’ time – people attached to their faith, to the Lord Jesus and to the Church. This is the Church of living people, ordinary and the same as all of us around, smiling and bitter, sometimes happy and sad, hardworking and lazy – and sinful to a man. There are no others. That is why we are in the Church.

Corpus Christi is traditionally a great holiday. “Make room for him, the Lord is coming from Heaven” – say the oldest songs, some with the lyrics by Jan Kochanowski himself, which the faithful often do not even know about. But they sing! Corpus Christi is such a great holiday that even the communist authorities did not hesitate to use it. At the same time, with all their cynicism, they vilified priests and nuns. Back then, Poles did not fall for it, and how is it now?

Two worlds – there is no other way to describe what is really going on in our lives. And in what you can read in malicious comments and other nasty articles designed to disgust us with the Church, the faith and perhaps our very identity.

Meet you at the procession!

– Barbara Sułek-Kowalska
– Translated by Dominik Szczęsny-Kostanecki

TVP WEEKLY. Editorial team and jornalists