One of Poland’s biggest pop stars, Dawid Podsiadło, has announced that he will formally quit the Catholic church. The news has stirred great interest in a country where over around 90% of the population are Catholic but which has seen a growing number of apostasies in recent years.
“I have a problem with the institution [of the church], not with the faith,” said Podsiadło – whose three albums have all topped the Polish music charts and received diamond certification – in an interview with news outlet Onet.
“We can all see more and more cases of paedophilia, meddling in political and ideological matters,” he continued. “I am not stigmatising faith, only hypocrisy.”
The singer, 29, revealed that he has obtained a copy of his baptism certificate and will apply for apostasy next time he is in his home parish. He added that he does not want to be part of the “statistics” that give “privileges to an organisation with which I have little connection”.
Dawid Podsiadło w podcaście "WojewódzkiKędzierski" powiedział, że planuje odejść z Kościoła katolickiego. Muzyk jest w trakcie apostazji.
Odważna decyzja. Pewnie zaraz będzie bojkot koncertu na Narodowym 🙄 https://t.co/P70WLm92sV
— Beata_Ka (@Beata__Ka) October 25, 2022
Podsiadło also explained that the song “Post” (meaning “Fast” in Polish) from his new album “was a reaction to deeply moralising attitudes – in the context of values and faith – presented by people who themselves have considerable moral deficiencies on a daily basis”.
In the chorus of the song, Podsiadło sings “I’m fasting because it’s Friday, so I’ll have fish for lunch” – a reference to the Catholic tradition of not eating meat on Fridays.
The verses, meanwhile, appear to contain a number of references to ideas pushed by conservatives in Poland, including criticism of LGBT, support for the coal industry, and the idea that women should “give birth and wash clothes” and “not talk back”.
The Catholic church no longer publishes data on apostasies, having stopped the practice in 2010. However, it admitted in late 2020, that the “number is increasing”. Figures from the archdiocese of Kraków revealed that the number quitting the church there in 2020 was over three times higher than a year earlier.
The turn against the church has been particularly strong among young people, with one 2020 poll showing that only 9% of those aged under 30 view the church positively (compared to 35% among the general population).
Data from local authorities show that growing numbers of children are opting out of Catholic catechism classes, which are hosted and paid for by public schools but with curriculums and teachers chosen by the church. The lessons are optional but most pupils still attend them.
Earlier this year, the Primate of Poland, Archbishop Wojciech Polak, admitted that there has been a “devastating” decline in religious practice among young people, after a poll showed that less than a quarter of them now regularly practise religion. In the early 1990s, the figure was almost 70%.
While Poland has, like other countries, seen a trend towards secularisation, its Catholic church has also been damaged by more specific problems in recent years.
A growing number of cases of child sex abuse by priests, and of negligence in dealing with the issue by the Catholic hierarchy, have come to light.
The recently introduced near-total ban on abortion – which prompted the largest protests in Poland’s post-communist history and is opposed by a large majority of the public, according to polls – was blamed by many on the church, which had long called for tougher laws.
More broadly, many have criticised the church for its involvement in political affairs. The episcopate enjoys close relations with the current ruling national-conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party, whose leader, Jarosław Kaczyński, calls the church a “repository of the only moral system commonly known in Poland”.
Last month, another Polish pop star, Dorota Rabczewska (who goes under the stage name Doda), won a long-running case in which she had been convicted under Poland’s blasphemy law, which criminalises the offence of “offending religious feelings”.
The European Court of Human Rights ruled that her conviction – for remarks in which she said that it was “difficult to believe in” the Bible as it was “written by someone wasted from drinking wine and smoking weed” – had violated her right to freedom of expression.
Though Rabczewska’s case dates back to 2009, the blasphemy law has been increasingly used under the current government. This month, a junior partner in the ruling coalition submitted a proposed law to toughen the rules by allowing anyone who “publicly insults or ridicules the church” to be jailed for up to two years.
Main image credit: press materials
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.
