460 POLSKA LUDOWA
state law, nothing new was introduced into the external parameters of the
Republic's post-war predicament. But the amendments ensured that any future
attempt to release the stranglehold of the Party and the Soviet Union over Polish
political life could immediately be denounced as unconstitutional. They were
gestures of a purely political character and revealed the absence of true independ-
ence. They recalled the baleful resolutions of the Dumb Sejm of 1717 which
effectively terminated the independence of historic Poland-Lithuania.^61
The Roman Catholic Church remained the sole bastion of independent
thought and action. Following the unilateral renunciation of the pre-war
Concordat by the TRJN in September 1945, the Polish See had been cast for a
long time into legal limbo. Agreements guaranteeing freedom of worship in
return for expressions of loyalty to the state were signed with governmental rep-
resentatives in April 1950 and December 1956. But the Vatican's full co-opera-
tion with the People's Republic had to await the Polish-German Treaty of 1970
and the consequent apostolic constitution of 28 June 1972, 'Episcoporum
Poloniae', which finally confirmed the diocesan divisions of the Western
Territories. In the course of these uncertain decades, the Church was obliged to
shed many of its former privileges — in 1946, its right to register legal marriages;
in 1950, its landed property; and in 1961, its remaining schools. Since 1952 it had
admitted the right of the state to express reservations in the matter of ecclesias-
tical appointments. At the same time, thanks to the legatine powers of the
Primate, it had been able to centralize its jurisdiction overall Catholic organiza-
tions in Poland, including all the religious orders and the remnants of the Uniate
congregations. All in all, the Church had thrived on its ordeal. An establishment
which in 1972 counted 2 Cardinals, 45 seminaries, 73 bishops, 13,392 churches,
18,267 priests, 35,341 monks and nuns, and over 20 million weekly communi-
cants, could not claim to be living out a persecuted existence among the cata-
combs. The Catholic University of Lublin (KUL), with over two thousand
students, remained a unique institution in the communist world. Polish priests
travelled abroad, not only to emigre parishes in Europe and America but also to
missionary stations in Africa and Asia.^62
Yet the truce between Church and State lay uneasily on both contestants. The
Church resented the calculated obstructiveness of state officials in matters of
education, publishing, religious processions, and church-building. The Party
feared and envied the prestige and popularity of the clergy. Their rivalry, as
exemplified in the divergent celebrations of the Millennium in 1966, or in the
long dispute over reconciliation with Germany was the result of an irreconcilable
conflict of purpose. In the latter case, the Hierarchy's Open Letter to the German
bishops was taken as a direct challenge to the Party's self-instituted monopoly in
political affairs. The appeal for German support against the 'social and moral
dangers' besetting the Polish nation were denounced as treasonable and
inflammatory. Party slogans of 'NIE ZAPOMNIMY, NIE WYBACZYMY' (We
shall not forgive and we shall not forget) raised emotions to a new pitch. An
acrimonious exchange of notes between the Secretary of the Episcopate and the