The Twilight of Social Catholicism?

This chapter examines the emerging Catholic press of Communist Poland in the years 1945–1948 (prior to the onset of Stalinism). Their debates transformed Catholic “revolution” from a program of charity and corporatism to direct collaboration in Marxists’ pursuit of a dictatorship of the proletariat. As the Moscow-inspired “Polish Revolution” unfolded, the Catholic writers of Dziś i Jutro developed a distinct edge over their counterparts at two other nascent postwar weeklies: Christian Democrats’ Tygodnik Warszawski (Warsaw Weekly) and the self-styled neo-positivist Tygodnik Powszechny (Universal Weekly), led by Jerzy Turowicz. Dziś i Jutro and Tygodnik Powszechny shared an affinity for Mounier’s writings, but the French philosopher’s three-week 1946 sojourn in Poland ended with privileges for Warsaw’s Catholic socialists and disappointment for Kraków’s neo-positivists. And still, in the face of Catholic socialism’s ascendancy, integralism survived within Bolesław Piasecki’s new movement—a fateful holdover that sowed the seeds of Catholic socialism’s eventual undoing.