WARSAW, Poland—A decade after the collapse of communism, Pope John Paul II wants his countrymen to redis-cover the meaning of solidarity.

That was a key message he took to his homeland this month in a fresh series of spectacular open-air Masses and liturgies.

Just how his fellow Poles will choose to heed him in this outwardly developed but inwardly fractured post-communist society is anyone's guess. But at 79, the Pope knows it will probably be his last visit, and is determined to ensure his words ring out loud and clear.

Papal visits (this is the eighth) are always a special time in Poland — a period of grace, for swapping the daily humdrum with a super-reality of images and evocations.

When John Paul flew in to Gdansk's Rebiechowo airport on June 5, church bells boomed around the country and the TV pictures were watched by half the population.

The Pope wasted no time making clear his message was in deadly earnest.

“It was in this city that ‘Solidarnosc’ was born 19 years ago,” he told an ecstatic first audience of 700,000 in the nearby hippodrome a few hours later.

“At that time I heard you say in Gdansk, ‘There's no freedom without solidarity.’ Today we need to say, ‘There's no solidarity without love.’”

As to what that love looks like, John Paul left others to drew their own conclusions. But it was the kind of love, he hinted, “which forgives yet does not forget.”

“It was the Pope who laid the foundation for Polish solidarity,” was the verdict of the union's present leader, Marian Krzaklewski, who put $5,000 in the Pope's collection plate for building churches in the former Soviet Union.

“Solidarity can't only be a technique for obtaining aims, even when these have to do with human dignity,” said Krzaklewski. “There are too many quarrels here — we're isolated and alienated. I hope we'll now be able to read our solidarity slogan in a new way.”

Some Poles said the Pope's Gdansk sound bite captured the real dilemma facing this Catholic nation, where the dust has settled on old conflicts but risen on new ones.

When John Paul last came home in 1997, Poland's government, legislature and presidency were in the hands of former communists who were locked in bitter dispute with the Catholic Church leaders over the country's new constitution, as well as over abortion and a stalled Concordat with the Vatican.

Church and State

Just two years later, ex-communists still hold the presidency and remain a powerful opposition force in parliament.

But with a majority government of former Solidarity members now 20 months old, the Church-state battles have abated. Poland is a sovereign, secure NATO member-state. And with a 1998 growth-rate of 6.1%, it is negotiating to join the European Union. Has it achieved what few once expected and become a normal Western democracy?

Not exactly: though virtually everyone agrees Poland's future lies with the West, opinions are divided over how to define that future — and the Church's place within it.

“The truth is Poland is doing well now; we've begun to score successes,” Jolanta Babiuch, a Warsaw sociologist, told the Register. “But it has all happened at a cost.

“People want the Pope to sum up what we've achieved and where we're going. But above all they want religious guidance — guidance in how to be a Christian farmer, factory worker or doctor in the chaotic, uncertain conditions that we've inherited.”

Church Membership

Yet the pilgrimage is intended, first and foremost, to strengthen the Catholic Church to which 95% of Poles belong. And it's the Church which will be the main beneficiary of this 13-day papal progress.

In September 1997, when Solidarity Election Action ousted the Democratic Left Alliance after four years in power, it did so on a pro-Church ticket which drew heavily on Catholic social teaching.

It took Solidarity parliamentarians a matter of weeks to retighten the pro-life law and ratify the Vatican Concordat. Yet for all its political clout, the Church still faces tough challenges.

With half the population still attending Mass regularly, there's no evidence of a decline in religiousness. But Poland's once-pious intellectuals have moved away to seize new chances in business and politics.

Shifting Values

So has the young generation, brought up without the grounding in Solidarity-era values which changed the lives of their parents. Though 75% of Polish schoolchildren called themselves Catholics in a recent Social Opinion Research Center survey; three-quarters saw nothing wrong with premarital sex, while two-thirds said the Church's teachings were “only its own opinion.”

Poland has a flourishing network of Catholic pro-family institutions, as well as an impressive array of Church movements and communities, filled with committed Christians of all ages.

But although the law has cut annually registered abortions to as low as 500 nationwide, this year's population growth is the lowest ever — a fact the Statistical Office attributes to a “change in value systems.”

With the ex-communist President Aleksander Kwasniewski riding high in opinion ratings, the Polish bishops know they have to compete for loyalties, and devise effective ways of influencing democratic opinion.

Yet the fault line between tradition and modernity still yawns wide in the Church. Among 15 documents presented the to Pope on June 11 at the close of a national Church synod, one urges the Church not to identify itself with political parties, while others set out recommendations for implementing Second Vatican Council reforms.

Adam Szostkiewicz, a co-editor of Poland's Tygodnik Powszechny Catholic weekly, thinks the Church shouldn't treat John Paul's visit as an “accelerated course in faith and morality.”

Poland's Catholic clergy will have their hands full again with normal duties, he cautioned, after the Pope's return to Rome.

“Just as today's independent and democratic Polish state shouldn't count on the Pope to solve its social and political conflicts,” the writer added, “the Church should learn it can't count on the Polish Pope to take over the new evangelization of its homeland.”

Stops on the Way

Yet while the Papal pilgrimage is on the road, the Church will be aiming as high as possible — to instill a newfound sense of evangelical possibilities into the hearts and minds of Polish Catholics.

Speaking June 7 in Torun (see story, Page 14), the birthplace of astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543), the Pope urged professors and college directors to remember humanity's future would be decided by the “moral conscience” of scientists and educators.

Preaching at Bydgoszcz, he reminded worshippers of Poland's richness in martyrs — from the national patron St. Wojciech, killed by pagan Prussians in 997, to Father Jerzy Popieluszko, murdered by communist agents in 1984.

Meanwhile, on June 13, in a sensational finale to a five-night stopover in Warsaw, he beatified no less than 108 World War II victims — half of whom died at the Auschwitz and Dachau concentration camps.

“Today we commemorate the victory of those who in our century have laid down their lives for Christ, all those who gave their earthly lives so they can possess life forever in his glory,” John Paul told an applauding crowd of 1 million in the capital's Pilsudski Square, against a backdrop of city-center hotels and office blocks.

“We join with the Churches of the Western and Eastern tradition, with neighboring peoples who have emerged from the catacombs and are openly carrying out their mission. Their vitality is a magnificent witness to the power of Christ's grace which enables weak men to become capable of heroism, frequently to the point of martyrdom.”

Poles eager to see the Pope took in that message with great enthusiasm. Many faced a difficult challenge of their own — how to catch a last glimpse of this real-life prophet, the one-time simple priest from small-town Wadowice, before he finally slips away into legend — a legend which will be told for a thousand years.

Jonathan Luxmoore writes from Warsaw, Poland.