Restrictions of religious freedom and the implementation of neo-militant democracy rule in crisis-driven Poland

Abstract

The coronavirus pandemic is another crisis in Europe that has exposed anti-democratic tendencies in the Member States of the European Union. It took place immediately after the financial crisis and the so-called refugee crisis that previously revealed such a trend. During the coronavirus pandemic, the governments have imposed a lot of different restrictions, inter alia on freedoms of peaceful assemblies, movement, or religious freedom, which may indicate the implementation of the neo-/quasi-militant democracy rule in the analyzed country. In this article, I focus only on the limitations liked to the Catholic Church. The restrictions imposed by the government mainly concerned the limited number of people who can participate in church rites and restrictions on movement for young people. In response to the introduced restrictions, there were very divided voices of clergy representing the Catholic Church. On the basis of their analysis, the positions held were classified into four groups that allow me to organize and classify the attitude of individual clergy to the introduced restrictions. The statements of the clergy were divided into those expressing approval for the introduced restrictions, denying them, expressing doubts (partial approval or negation) as well as an attitude expressing openness to the use of modern technologies in evangelization or lack of support for their use. The study revealed that religious freedom in Poland was significantly violated during the coronavirus pandemic. It was a mechanism characteristic of neo-militant democracy since the democratic freedom was restricted not to limit the sovereignty of the Polish political nation. However, the results obtained do not indicate the progressive process of neither neo- nor quasi-militant democracy rule implementation, because the restrictions appeared only during the pandemic and also covered other institutions, for example schools and universities. Earlier, before the pandemic period, one can rather talk about incidental actions limiting religious freedom. In addition, the restrictions introduced were not as restrictive for the Church as in the case of other institutions.