134 PIOTR H. KOSICKI
pursued with considerably less vigor than in other countries.26
True, the State Office of Confessional Affairs, established in
1950, worked together with secret police to create a movement
of “patriot priests” who put loyalty to party and state before God
and pope.27 In 1954, the Ministry of Education replaced the theol-
ogy faculty of Jagiellonian University and the Catholic theology
faculty of Warsaw University with a state-run Academy of Catho-
lic Theology in the north of Warsaw. By that time, the emerging
party-state had seized over 144,000 hectares of Church land.28
Yet the Communist establishment seemed unable to commit
to a consistent strategy of ecclesiastical cooptation and nation-
alization. Competition from the independent Catholic Univer-
sity of Lublin undercut the Warsaw academy from the start, and
the “patriot priests” met with antagonism not only from Polish
clergy, but also from another philo-Stalinist Catholic group, the
PAX Association. Founded by one-time interwar fascist leader
Bolesław Piasecki, PAX in the postwar decade became the clarion
voice on behalf of Polish Catholic collaboration with Marxism.
Though tainted by its associations with the secret police and by
its leadership’s profits from the state seizure of other Catholic as-
sets, PAX nonetheless became an incubation site for some of the
future leaders of the Polish laity.29
PAX also developed extensive contacts across the Iron Cur-
tain with Western Europe’s self-styled “Catholic socialists” and
“progressive Catholics.” In Belgium, in France, and in Italy, PAX
had a devoted following that it used to spread the word, even
- Peter C. Kent, The Lonely Cold War of Pope Pius XII: The Roman Catholic
Church and the Division of Europe, 1943–1950 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University
Press, 2002), 232–34. - Jacek Żurek, Ruch “Księży Patriotów” w województwie katowickim w latach
1949–1956 (Warsaw-Katowice: IPN-KŚZpNP, 2009). - Dariusz Walencik, Nieruchomości Kościoła katolickiego w Polsce w latach 1918–
2012: Regulacje prawne—nacjonalizacja—rewindykacja (Katowice: Drukarnia Archidi-
ecezjalna, 2013), 376. - On PAX, see Kunicki, Between the Brown and the Red, 77–180.