A church’s clumsy political overreach handed Polish social democrats a winning issue

Evidence

The party took up a call for the declericalization of public life, full separation of church and state, a completely secular educational, system the removal of any privileges accrued to the Church, and abortion rights. … For its part, the Polish Roman Catholic Church hierarchy attempted to influence public policy after 1989, both through its clumsy insistence on “instructions” to the voters during church services and through pressure on post-Solidarity political parties to heed Church teachings. In the series of controversies that followed in 1990–1, the parliament curtailed access to abortion rights and passed new laws instituting religious education in schools. Combined with the Church hierarchy’s constant admonitions and offensive declarations, the Church’s actions were seen by a majority of the electorate as “interference” in normal politics. As a result, the SdRP’s indirect claims that the party would curb the power of the Church and not let it influence policy were appealing. They were also convincing, given the fact that the SdRP’s predecessor had battled with the Church prior to 1989, and the SdRP had consistently remained opposed to a political role for the Church after 1989. — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past, 903

Categorization

• XREF: Institutional-overreach producing a backlash opportunity parallels the theory of moral panics and self-defeating out-group pressure the reader is investigating. — connects to: Anti-church and pro-abortion stances, not economics, best predicted support for Poland’s ex-communists — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past: The…, 860
• ADDENDUM: The church-state struggle echoes the reader’s essays on moral panics over dress and sacrifice — institutional overreach breeding secular backlash.