Thread by @sheemawn

Law and Justice party (PiS) lost the election in Poland on Sunday. But they were not the only loser: they've dragged the Catholic church with them.

How PiS made Poland rapidly secularizing in the last 8 years?

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1. Let's start with the recently published census results.

Nearly 1 in 5 Roman Catholics stopped associating with the Church in the last 10 years so Catholics are only 71.3% of the population now - down from 87.6% ten years ago and 90%+ in the 1990s.

2. Church attendance took an even harder hit.

The Institute of Statistics of the Church does an annual census and found out that in 2021, only 28.3% attended weekly mass, compared to 36.9% in 2019.

This means that 1 in 4 Catholics stopped going to mass within 2 years.

3. To be fair, 2021 was still a pandemic year with some (lax) guidelines on social distancing in churches which might have impacted the results.

But newer data shows the drop to be persistent. Here's data from the public opinion pollster CBOS on the same topic.

4. CBOS has always been more optimistic than the Church's own data but still, a clear decrease in attendance is visible at the end of 2020, though.

What happened then? On October 22, abortion became practically banned in Poland and the country erupted.

5. You may ask: what has the Church got to do with a court order?

Here, we are touching the symbiosis of PiS and the Church hierarchy. PiS has turned public schools into Catholic indoctrination centers, increased money support to the Church and got implicit support in exchange.

6. But Polish people are usually quite rebellious. So the youth, which has been affected the most, is secularizing the fastest.

The first sign were cenzopapas. Cenzopapa is a joke in which John Paul II (a revered figure in Poland) is presented as a horrible criminal.

7. There's also the number 2137. 21:37 (9:37pm) is the time of death of John Paul II. Young people started to mock the (often ridiculous) cult of the late pope by e.g. signing his favorite religious song ironically on college campuses at 9:37pm.

8. But it's not just online jokes. In Poland, just like in Germany and other EU countries, religion is taught in public schools for those who sign up.

I graduated high school in 2009 and in my year (224 people) maybe 5 did not attend. Now, it's half of the last-year students.

9. It doesn't stop in high schools.

In 2009, only 10% of 18-24-year-olds never attended church and nearly 50% attended regularly. In 2022, these figures were 40% and 23%, respectively.

Huge increases started with PiS coming to power and accelerated after the abortion ruling.

10. And the upcoming generation is even less religious. According to the 2021 poll, only a little more than half of 17-19-year-olds believe in God and half of them never attend religious services.

11. Even a traditional church wedding is no longer attractive to a growing number of young Poles.

In Poland, you can marry in church and have the marriage recognized by the state. In 2011, 65% of newlyweds took advantage of that. In 2021, it dropped to barely over half (53.7%).

12. By the way, on that second map above you can very clearly see the phantom borders of the Second Polish Republic (1918-39).

You can read more about these borders in my other thread:

13. In light of all of that, it's should be no surprise that PiS is very unpopular among the youth. Among voters under 30, only 14.4% supported them in this election. By comparison, among those 60 and over, PiS has over 50% support.

14. This is it in this thread! Do you think Poland will go the path of Quebec, Spain and Ireland? Or will it experience a small religious revival now that PiS (and, effectively, the Catholic church) are the underdogs?