"Polonia Christiana": Belarusian Authorities Violate Main Christian Commandments

Participation of bishops in events organized by the Belarusian authorities harms reputation of the Church.

After his coming to power and absence of opportunity to practice "classical USSR scheme" with the Catholic Church, Aliaksandr Lukashenka addressed to the carrot and the stick approach. Zbigniew Canarski writes on Polonia Christiana (translated by krynica.info).

According to him, the stick focuses on ordinary believers and priests, and the carrot on bishops.

Accorging to Zbigniew Canarski, in the times of Kazimierz Cardinal Świątek the Catholic Church of Belarus avoided involvement in politician events organized by the Belarusian authorities. But then the situation changed. And now the authorities are happy to welcome church leaders on their events, although it is not completely clear "whether the Catholic Church gets an adequate range of freedoms and opportunities in return." At that, Zbigniew Canarski notes that participation in such events harms reputation of the Church; the Belarusian authorities fail not only to comply with the rights of Catholics, but the main Christian Commandments touching upon the life, family and property.

The Catholic Church regularly faces accusations that priests are out of their element. Foreign Catholic priests constantly face chance of non-extension of service permit in Belarus, there is a number of bureaucratic procedures for church buildings. Catholic priests in contrast to Orthodox ones have limited access to public sites, including hospitals, prisons, schools, or military units.

There are few Catholic churches in the country, their opening face great challenges and extremely high price for use of buildings. There are no Catholic high schools, to say nothing of universities. "In this regard, it is hard to speak about the formation of the intellectual or spiritual Belarusian secular Catholic elites. The best ones travel to Poland and never come back," Zbigniew Canarski writes.

"The mentioned phenomenon does not promote the Catholic Church in Belarus. In addition to "soft pressure" on the part of the state, it faces negative cultural flows of post-Soviet Russia and Western Europe, which are characteristic of the modern world and destroy the family through divorce and killing the unborn or sow liberalism and agnosticism. In this situation the faithful still form the "enslaved Church", which craves to respond to challenges of the world, but is still bound by regulations of post-totalitarian state", the author of Polonia Christiana writes.