A reader informed us about the matter. She sent us an announcement from the Parish of Cyril and Methodius on Krótka Street in Bolesławiec, along with the comment: “I wonder when there will be a novena for the church’s blasphemies and the pedophiles harming children.”
We checked. Indeed, on the parish’s website there is an announcement. It turns out that the parish decided to “make reparation to God and Mary for the blasphemies and attacks on churches in Poland committed by participants in the demonstrations.” This concerns protests over Polish women’s right to decide about their bodies and pregnancies.
The reader’s comment suggests that she perceived the parish’s actions as arrogant.
Dariusz Sas, a regular participant in demonstrations defending women’s rights, also commented on the parish’s idea for us:
I am very pleased that the church will apologize for blasphemies committed against God. I myself believe that every Catholic, if they believe in God, should apologize for blasphemies. I just don’t understand why they are beginning to apologize to God on behalf of the demonstration participants. Perhaps they should begin by apologizing to their God for the thousands of children raped in the church; perhaps they should apologize to their God for pedophile priests; perhaps they should apologize to their God for the institutional cover-up of pedophiles in the church; perhaps they should apologize to their God for the highly lavish lives of their hierarchs, inconsistent with the moral model they preach; perhaps they should apologize to their God for the church’s alignment with the PiS party. If they apologize to their God for all these terrible acts and crimes, I will gladly apologize to the people who felt offended by the verbal expression at the protests.
One of the demonstrators, Kinga Gęsicka-Biały, also spoke to us:
Do the participants’ blasphemies hurt God more than the harm inflicted on children behind the walls of the “church,” who not only lost their purity, childhood and entire lives there, but also their faith that God even exists…? After all, God rewards the good and punishes the bad. What did these children of God do wrong? When a child is misunderstood and ignored by a parent (like us, the “children of the Polish church”), anger is born within them, growing like yeast dough… and exploding like a volcano! That is when the child demonstrates their anger. So if God does not see children being raped in rectories, surely red lightning bolts on walls are also meaningless to Him. The Polish God does not see everything. Why, in today’s Poland, does a priest place a cross on the back of a woman and her unborn, ill child? Why should the church decide about my conscience? My church is within me. My God and my faith are within me. My body is my body, my choice is my choice and that of my own conscience!
The people from the Church of Cyril and Methodius will pray to the deceased pope, the Archangel Michael and directly to God. They will do so for another eight days.