Senior officials and public television in Poland yesterday took part in the Catholic church’s national Bible reading day. The prime minister was one of the patrons of the event, while the education minister announced plans to make biblical studies an academic discipline.
Some opposition figures, however, claimed that it was inappropriate for state officials and broadcasters to be involved in a church event. One also argued that the government itself often fails to live up to biblical values.
The fifth annual national Bible reading day was organised by John Paul II Biblical Work, an association founded by the Polish Episcopal Conference (KEP), the central organ of the Catholic church in Poland. It marked the start of Bible Week, which has taken place every year since 2008, reports the Catholic Information Agency (KAI).
A ceremonial celebration of the event took place during a mass held by the Archbishop of Kraków at the city’s Łagiewniki sanctuary. It was followed by the same ritual reading at Jasna Góra, Poland’s holiest shrine, in the city of Częstochowa.
Both services were broadcast live on TVP1, the public broadcaster’s main television channel. TVP also aired advertisements for the event on its social media channels.
Narodowe Czytanie Pisma Świętego już w niedzielę#wieszwięcej pic.twitter.com/PVQPTrpk0y
— tvp.info 🇵🇱 (@tvp_info) April 17, 2021
Henryk Witczyk, a priest and president of the association, said that all parishes throughout Poland had been emailed information about the event, which was of even more important during the pandemic.
“Today, because of coronavirus we have problems with eucharistic communion, so we can fulfil spiritual communion…by accepting this holy presence of the resurrected Christ in the form of the words of the Gospel,” he told KAI.
Przemysław Czarnek, the minister of education and science, attended the mass in Częstochowa, before announcing plans to add biblical studies to the register of academic disciplines in Poland.
The field of biblical studies is currently on offer at various Polish universities but within the academic discipline of theology, rather than as a discipline in its own right.
“We have many wonderful biblical scholars in our country and Poland is currently becoming one of the three most important centres of this field,” he said. “Creating a new discipline…will certainly help it to develop.”
Witczyk welcomed the plan. “Thanks to the new discipline we will be able to engage in research dialogue with the best centres of studies in Jerusalem, the USA, Switzerland, London and Germany. This is a groundbreaking event for Polish biblical studies,” he said.
Although more than 90% of people in Poland declare that they are Roman Catholics, less than one in five (19.2%) read the Bible at least once a year, while 3.8% read it every day, according to a survey conducted in 2018 by IMAS International.
A number of opposition politicians criticised the involvement of government ministers and TVP in the Catholic event.
“The prime minister of the government – a secular institution, at least theoretically – should be the patron of reading the constitution, and above all ensuring that it is fully abided by,” wrote Wanda Nowicka, an MP for The Left (Lewica).
Sławomir Nitras, from the centrist Civic Platform (PO), claimed that government involvement in the event – which he likened to the former communist regime’s patronage of quasi-mandatory workers’ day celebrations – was hypocritical.
“They spend the whole year lying, accusing people, spreading hatred, and once a year they organise the National Reading of the Gospel,” he wrote.
Main image credit: TVP Info (screenshot)
Ben Koschalka is a translator and senior editor at Notes from Poland. Originally from Britain, he has lived in Kraków since 2005.
