The teachings of former Polish pope John Paul II should be used to instruct children in Polish schools in business and sexuality, says education minister Przemysław Czarnek.
“When we teach the foundations of entrepreneurship, we could introduce passages from papal encyclicals on what is work, the free market, social justice, and so on,” said Czarnek, who was appointed in November and has drawn controversy over his ultraconservative views.
“[John Paul II’s] social encyclicals…should become elements of textbooks,” continued Czarnek in an interview with Catholic week Gość Niedzielny. “It is not so much about the religious aspect as about an ethical view of entrepreneurship.”
“I am also not opposed to demands to introduce elements of John Paul II’s teachings on human sexuality for the oldest year groups in secondary schools,” added Czarnek. As an example of a text that could be used, the minister pointed to the late pope’s book Love and Responsibility, published in 1960.
Czarnek – who is a professor of law at the Catholic University of Lublin (KUL), where John Paul II also once taught – has previously expressed support for traditional Catholic family models.
Speaking at the university in 2019, he warned of the dangers of telling women that they can have “a career first, and maybe a child later”. “Saying to a woman that she does not have to do what she was called on by God to do” has “dire consequences”, said Czarnek.
Since his appointment, the education minister has pledged to fight the “dictatorship of left-liberal views” that he claims “dominates” in universities and has begun to infiltrate schools. He argues that conservative and Christian views have long been unjustly disdained in academic environments.
Czarnek reaffirmed that position in his latest interview, telling Gość Niedzielny that “there is a real threat of leftist totalitarianism consisting of excluding people with different views from debate, slandering them, manipulating their statements, ostracising them”.
“As a result, people with conservative views are afraid to express them and do not engage in discussions…in public life and also at universities, which should be a space for freedom,” continued the minister. Poland in fact has a number of prominent conservative voices in academia and public life.
During the interview Czarnek was also asked about his views on the teaching of gender studies at Polish universities, something he and others in the government have expressed opposition to. One fellow minister recently called for the subject to be banned.
“Gender is an ideology that is easily refuted by rational and scientific arguments,” Czarnek told Gość Niedzielny. “It is madness that has nothing to do with the truth or the search for it, which is what the purpose of academic research should be.”
“Gender is an anthropological error, a false vision of man, and such errors unfortunately always lead to misfortunes, as we have seen in the 20th century,” the minister continued. “Within the framework of academic freedom, we are able to oppose gender studies and ridicule it without any administrative measures.”
Czarnek’s views on sexual and gender minorities have caused much controversy. He has claimed that “LGBT ideology comes from the same roots as Nazism” and that its adherents “are not equal to normal people” so we should “stop listening to this idiocy about human rights or equality”.
Hundreds of Polish academics have expressed opposition to his appointment, while there have also been protests among some university students and school pupils.
Last month, a group of over 170 academics from around the world – including scholars from Harvard, Oxford and the Sorbonne – jointly called for an international boycott of Czarnek due to his “homophobic, xenophobic and misogynistic views”.
John Paul II, born Karol Wojtyla and who served as pope from 1978 to 2005, remains a widely revered figure in Poland. He is remembered not only for his religious leadership, but also for the role he played in challenging the communist regime that ruled Poland until 1989.
However, in recent years that legacy has been challenged by revelations of child sex abuse and cover-ups of it within the church. In November, Poland’s leading private broadcaster aired a documentary alleging that John Paul II’s private secretary had ignored claims of abuse and accepted bribes from those responsible.
After the programme was broadcast, an IBRiS poll for Rzeczpospolita found that 51% of Poles believed John Paul II did not do enough to combat sexual abuse by the clergy. However, 83% said that they regarded his pontificate positively and only 6% negatively.
Main image credit: Paweł Malecki/Agencja Gazeta
Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.
