Catholic church defends Polish third-grade schoolbook stating “I prefer to die than sin”

Poland’s Catholic church has defended a school textbook it approved for third-grade children that includes a quote suggesting it is better to die than to sin. A spokesman for the episcopate says that the words have been misunderstood while the book’s publisher says they were taken out of context.

However, a number of NGOs that work on combating suicide among children and youths – attempts at which have risen dramatically over the last two years – have warned that exposing young children to such ideas is dangerous.

The education ministry, meanwhile, has refused to comment on the issue, noting that, although Catholic catechism classes are held in public schools and financed from the state budget, their curriculums, teachers and teaching materials are decided on solely by the church. The classes are optional but most pupils attend.

Last week – when children returned to school after the summer holidays – an image began circulating online showing part of a textbook used to teach Catholic catechism classes to third-grade pupils (who are between eight and ten years old) in public schools.

“When I was seven years old, I received Holy Communion. I then made resolutions that I followed for the rest of my life,” reads the passage. It then lists those resolutions, with the fourth being: “I prefer to die than to sin.”

The quote – which is attributed to Dominic Savio, an Italian boy who died aged 14 in 1857 and was made a saint a century later – is often translated into English simply as “Death rather than sin”.

The image drew criticism from many social media users. “I’m deeply concerned that you can try to sow such dilemmas in a child or, even worse, provoke real attitudes and actions,” wrote Ewka Blaszczyk, an activist, in a Facebook post that has been shared over 1,700 times.

A coalition of NGOs and other experts that seek to combat suicides among Polish children and youths also issued a statement condemning the book. “We are struggling with a huge wave of suicide attempts made even by children younger than those to whom the textbook is addressed,” they wrote.

“The sentence [in the book], regardless of its source, can have a very strong impact on children’s psyche, causing problems with self-acceptance, pushing them into a state of constant pressure towards themselves, ending with building a sense of guilt and a willingness to take their own life,” added the group.

Marta Sak, a psychologist specialising in crisis intervention, told broadcaster TOK FM that it would be hard to explain to young children “that they should not take this sentence literally” and “a child in severe crisis may indeed treat these words as further confirmation that life is not worth living”.

Even among children not suffering mental health problems, such language “can make a child believe that they are valuable only when they are perfect”, she added. “This promotes the development of perfectionism, self-loathing, and low self-esteem.”

The passage comes from a book titled Jesus, We Are Waiting For You that has been approved by the Polish Episcopal Conference (KEP), the central organ of the Catholic church in Poland, for use in helping third graders prepare for their first communion.

After the controversy emerged last week, Father Piotr Tomasik, the coordinator of catechism programming at the KEP’s Catholic Education Commission, which is responsible for approving teaching materials, defended the book.

“The words [in question] are attributed to Saint Dominic Savio…[and] refer to one of the conditions of the sacrament of penance and reconciliation – a strong resolution to amend,” Tomasik told the Gazeta Wyborcza daily.

“They are certainly not an encouragement to suicide, as indicated by the context of the image used, but also by the fact that suicide itself in the teaching of the church is defined as a grave offence against the love of God and neighbour,” he added.

“Hence, the accusations against the authors of the textbook are not justified and constitute an overinterpretation resulting from a lack of analysis of the material and knowledge regarding the teaching of the church on the subject in question,” concluded the church official.

Likewise, the book’s publisher – Wydawnictwo WAM, which is Poland’s largest Catholic publishing house – said that the section shared online has been “taken out of context” and is in fact “intended to underscore a personal experience of love for God, which for believers should be the highest value”.

It added, however, that the particular quote in question is “unfortunate, especially in the context of the third grade”. Therefore, “in subsequent editions, this lesson unit will be thoroughly reworked”.

Contacted by broadcaster Radio Zet for comment, the education ministry’s commissioner for core curriculums and textbooks, Artur Górecki, said only that “religious education curriculums and teaching materials are the responsibility of churches and religious communities”.

Górecki was appointed by the current ultraconservative education minister, Przemysław Czarnek, and is himself an outspoken religious conservative.

During a lecture in 2020, Górecki warned of the threats that arise when religion ceases to have an influence in schools, “because all truth comes from God”. The following year, Czarnek declared it vital for Polish children to receive a Christian education so that they can “save Latin civilisation”.

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Main image credit: Ewka Blaszczyk/Facebook

Daniel Tilles

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.