The funny slogan “Let’s save Sweden for Swedes” popularised by Polish migrants in Sweden, who were encouraging other Poles to vote for
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Because here, the Catholic church rules everything. If you hadn’t had enough from last week piece, then I got some more news for you:
– in a village of
– schools in Silesian parish of Miedźna will not run any out of curriculum activities on Thursday afternoon. Why? “Due to the ordinance of the church authorities banning out-of-curriculum activities on Thursdays” – informed local sports club. The thing is, the local church organized a Holy Mass for pupils that will take place every Thursday at 18:00, and “politely asked” – according to the local priest – schools to adjust their plans.
– the Ministry of Higher Education changed the classification of the scientific disciplines. From now on, Astronomy is no longer a scientific discipline on
– last but not least, Gazeta Wyborcza looked closer into the register of sex offenders, that had been published by the Ministry of Justice. They have found, that Catholic priests are not included in this register. Of course the Ministry denies accusations of covering the paedophile priests and claim, that priests simply don’t commit the most violent crimes like rapes (which has been debunked by the recent Wyborcza’s reportage about a serial child rapist who had been protected by the church for years) and calls it a “scandalous, unfounded and deceitful attack on deputy justice minister [and PiS’s candidate for mayor of Warsaw] Patryk Jaki by the opposition”.
I think it is worth to mention here, that Stanisław Piotrowicz, formerly a communist prosecutor and today PiS’ leading legal expert, had been known in the past for defending a paedophile priest in a famous Tylawa case. He tried to tell the public, that when the priest was touching little girls, he was actually curing them using his
But if you have been molested by a priest, don’t worry. The church is doing all in its power to satisfy you for your suffering. Friday the 14th of September will be “a day of penance”. The churchgoers are asked to fast, pray on the rosary or take Holy Communion with the intention of paying indemnity for the sins of consecrated persons.
Perhaps such a way of repairing the wrongs could be introduced outside of the church as well? I can imagine a “day of penance” in Amazon when in order to help those abused warehouse workers we mentioned last week, Amazon customers will be asked to order their stuff without discounts for example or subscribe to Amazon Prime. I am sure that would solve everything…
But perhaps I am too sarcastic and priests are actually already saving money to pay compensation to the victim of paedophilia in the church? If yes, then everyone should be glad to hear, that it has emerged that state-controlled oil company Lotos had issued over 2000 discount cards to priests, so they can pay less for their fuel.
The last information shows yet again the contrast between the treatment of the priest and people employed by the state. While priests, who are excluded from most taxes and national insurance contributions, are further spoiled by discounts in state-owned companies, the police officers have to fork out from their own pockets to be able to do their jobs. We learned about this when the Police trade union decided to go on Italian strike – and by that they mean, that the officers will be doing everything by the book, and so they will no longer use their private phones, computers or printing paper to conduct their duties. To everyone’s shock it emerged, that without policemen’s private phones, the communication within the force will be, in many places, nearly impossible…
With police officers willing to work strictly by the rules, the government needs to fight other places for improvement. And so one day at 21:00 hours, the prosecutors received an official text message ordering them to make the list of judges “most likely” and “least likely” to accept detention requests. The prosecutors were ordered to deliver such lists by 9 am next morning. The spokesperson claims, that this was just a statistical exercise (as we all know, statistics is so important, that ordering people out of the blue to drop everything and work all night to deliver the data requested is perfectly normal), but one could be not so keen to believe that explanation if we remember, that due to recent changes in law it allows for PiS politicians to influence what judge will be assured to look into the case of someone who just been arrested – for example, a political opponent…
But probably this is just an intermediate step. It’s just the government making sure that the judges, who still are supposed to protect the justice and constitution, can still be worked to PiS’s advantage. The insight into the matters to come was given with the new law regarding the Parliamentary Guard. Apart from other changes (like arming them in swords), there was a new content of the oath. From now on, they no longer swear to be faithful to the constitution, but to the “constitutional authority” – in that case, to Speaker of the parliament, that is, to the guy from PiS… Behold, here comes the future…
They think about things to come, but the past is not being forgotten as well. The new monument is to be unveiled – this time not about Lech Kaczyński, but commemorating Bronisław Geremek, one of the opposition leaders who was a key person in making Round Table negotiations possible, and later as the Minister of Foreign Affairs signed a membership treaty with NATO and was one of the crucial persons in negotiating Polish accession to the EU. The Institute of National Remembrance put the proposal under scrutiny and decided that the contents of the inscription have to be censored. And so first of all, the monument cannot be “in homage” to him, as homage can be paid only to those, who fought or fallen for the motherland, and he died in a car crash. Next, he cannot be called “European” – as apparently if one feels European, then he cannot be Polish. Last but not least, he cannot be called “co-creator of independent Poland” – term “active participant of democratic changes” should suffice. This is not the first time the right wing tries to smear Geremek’s memory – the range of attacks spread from pointing out his Jewish heritage to reminding, that he used to be a member of the Communist party. Funnily enough, many today’s PiS politicians were active in the party right to its end, and Geremek quit it in protest against the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, but if you want to smear someone’s memory, everything goes.
But at least his monument won’t be build of stolen materials, as it happened with the monument to
But if one can be arrested for stealing a dumpling, I wonder if one can be arrested for trying to steal someone’s else success? PiS candidates to local councils in Warsaw gathered at the construction site of the Warsaw bypass. They were talking a lot about how this project would not be possible without PiS government and how the previous government neglected road construction in Poland. They had some difficulties to rightly describe their location (although this time they at least did not
One thing is sure: criminals should not only be punished for their crimes, the state should also help with their
But why to be so harsh? I guess we could force criminals to read this book. They will have to learn about “quantum physics making possible to draw hypothetical lines responding to faith and hope in space” and that “Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle makes it impossible to know how deep one’s faith is”. That’s our punishment sorted. Now we only have to find someone who knows something about
This piece was published in Britske Listy
Collage: Alice Popkorn via Flickr (CC 2.0)
