This book explores how a universalistic religion like Roman Catholicism could become so closely intertwined with a particularistic worldview like nationalism. It is usually taken for granted that Poland is a Catholic nation, but in fact the country’s apparent religious homogeneity is a relatively recent development, supported as much by ideology as demography. The emergence and development of that ideological framework from the late 19th century to the present is the topic of this book. Each chapter takes a keyword from Polish Catholic rhetoric and explores its shifting meanings over this tumu ... More

This book explores how a universalistic religion like Roman Catholicism could become so closely intertwined with a particularistic worldview like nationalism. It is usually taken for granted that Poland is a Catholic nation, but in fact the country’s apparent religious homogeneity is a relatively recent development, supported as much by ideology as demography. The emergence and development of that ideological framework from the late 19th century to the present is the topic of this book. Each chapter takes a keyword from Polish Catholic rhetoric and explores its shifting meanings over this tumultuous era. The concepts examined include: Church, sin, modernity, person, society, politics, nation, enemy, Jew, Pole, and Mary. These terms are linked in ways that support the broader edifice of Polish Catholicism, understood not as an institution (the Catholic Church), nor as a social group or ethnic community, but as a theological and ideological framework that sets the discursive boundaries between that which can be affirmed and defended as a Catholic, and that which invites charges of heterodoxy or heresy. By thus exploring the frontier between the accepted and the unaccepted, this volume builds towards a nuanced depiction of how nationalism was steadily brought inside the Catholic worldview, so that ultimately xenophobia and antisemitism co-existed with a faith that preaches love of one’s neighbor and one’s enemy.