Catholics on the Barricades: Poland, France, and "Revolution," 1891–1956

420 Pages·2018·2.268 MB·English

by  Piotr H. Kosicki

The Yale-Hoover Series on Authoritarian Regimes
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CATHOLICS
ON THE
BARRICADES
POLAND, FRANCE, AND “REVOLUTION,”
1891–1956
PIOTR H. KOSICKI
Hoover Institution
Stanford University
Stanford, California
New Haven and London
Copyright © 2018 by Yale University and the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Jr.
University.
All rights reserved.
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ISBN 978-0-300-22551-8 (hardcover : alk. paper)
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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
to Lidia and Henryk Kosk—
the grandparents who taught me
to ask questions
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Contents
Acknowledgments ix
List of Abbreviations xvii
Cast of Characters xxi
Introduction 1
1. The Roots of Catholic “Revolution”: Thomism, the “Human
Person,” and Emmanuel Mounier 21
2. Personalism at War: Clandestine Intellectual Life and Anti-Nazi
Resistance in World War II 62
3. Catholicism in a Newly Communist World: Between Christian
Democracy and Catholic Socialism 93
4. The Twilight of Social Catholicism? Emmanuel Mounier and
Poland’s Catholic Press, 1945–1948 114
5. World Peace on Nationalist Terms: Progressive Catholicism and
the Stalinist Turn of 1948 152
6. Pastors and Catechumens: Catholic Renewal at the Margins of
Marxist Revolution 189
vii
viii Contents
7. Stalinist Catholics of Europe, Unite! The Stockholm Appeal
and the Polish Project of a Catholic-Socialist International,
1949–1953 218
8. The Limits of Catholic “Revolution”: The Vatican and
Stalinism’s Turn against the Church, 1953–1956 257
Epilogue 303
Notes 315
Index 377
Acknowledgments
Pensiamo in secoli—so repeat the cardinals who walk the halls of the
Vatican, brushing aside the fact that a given matter has not yet been
resolved: “We think in centuries.”
This book has been a long time in the making, and it has often felt
like secoli. I did my first research on the Catholic Church in the sum-
mer of 2002, in Italy and Poland, following my freshman year at Stan-
ford. I lucked into a small papal audience at Castelgandolfo with John
Paul II—visibly suffering from Parkinson’s—and was caught up in the
electric atmosphere: scores of twenty-to-thirty-year-olds chanting, call
and response, first in Italian, then in Spanish. “GIOVANNI PAOLO!”
“JUAN PABLO SEGUNDO!” I wanted to understand the ardor of
those around me—why that pontiff commanded such devotion. I trav-
eled on to Poland, where I read archival documents and interviewed
bishops, philosophers, and statesmen, beginning to investigate how Po-
land has shaped the global Catholic Church.
Over the next fourteen years, many wonderful people and generous
institutions made possible my journey from that papal audience to the
completion of this book. It is deeply gratifying that the man who super-
vised that first project, Stanford history professor Norman Naimark,
later solicited this book for the Yale-Hoover Series on Authoritarian
Regimes. When I was an undergraduate, Norman nurtured my interest
in the historical profession, and he helped me find my voice as a writer.
Ever since, Norman has been there as a source of counsel and friend-
ship, in times good and bad.
ix