Continuing Quarrel

Poland's millennium in 1966, the anniversary of the country's conversion to Christianity, was as much a quarrel as it was a celebration. The country's Communist leaders were indefatigable in their search for ways to foul up the festivities. And now, even after the millennium has come to a quiet end, the squabble between church and state is as noisy as ever. Last week adamant Arch bishop Stefan Cardinal Wyszynski was once again at loggerheads with the tough secular party boss, Wladyslaw Gomulka. This time the issue was state regulation of seminaries.

For years, laws giving the state power over all public instruction have brought state inspectors into Catholic seminaries.

Recently Cardinal Wyszynski learned that the inspectors were starting to interfere with the teaching of theology; he secured a promise from Gomulka that they would be limited to "supervising" nonreligious subjects. Soon after, how ever, the government decreed that its authority extended not only to super vision but to appointment of teachers and the regulation of enrollments as well. Because such powers would enable the state to limit the number of new priests, besides exercising control over the curriculum, Wyszynski ordered some seminaries to close their doors to the inspectors.

Priests & Bureaucrats. Early this month, Gomulka warned that four seminaries would be shut down unless the church dismissed six recalcitrant rectors. "Priests should be educated by priests, not by clerks of the Ministry of Education," replied Wyszynski. "On some issues," said the angry prelate, "we will have to say that one must obey God rather than men. We have to lie down like watchdogs at the gates of the seminary to guard the freedom of conscience of the young clerics."

The Communist Party newspaper Trybuna Ludu countered with the charge that Wyszynski was guilty of "an irresponsible attempt" to create a crisis. In a statement that obviously had Gomulka's backing, the paper said last week that "views harmful to the interests of the community were often expressed during lectures on secular subjects" at the seminaries. "The authorities cannot be indifferent to how the civic attitude of future priests is shaped," said an editorial that spoke of state plans "to exact observance of the laws."

Knowledge & Rumor. Only Rome appeared to be considering compromise. Publicly, to be sure, it was trying to stay aloof from the quarrel. "We know nothing about the dispute except what we read in the papers," said Monsignor Fausto Vallaine, speaking for the Vatican. At week's end, though, there were rumors that a papal emissary was already in Warsaw to talk about the seminaries. But remembering Gomulka's rude veto of a papal visit during the millennium, few observers thought that the state was about to modify its stand. And no one expected that the rugged old cardinal would change his mind.

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