464 POLSKA LUDOWA
group of Catholic laymen based in Cracow. Through their journals Znak (The
Sign) and Tygodnik Powszechny (Universal Weekly), they had advanced the
proposition that a distinction was to be made between the State and the Party,
and that faithful Catholics could establish a working relationship with the one
without admitting the atheistic ideology of the other. On this basis, their
representatives were sponsored by the Front of National Unity and were elected
to the Sejm. For twenty years they pursued their delicate task, denigrated by mil-
itant Catholics and Communists alike, but speaking out in the name of moder-
ation and pragmatism. In 1976, however, their one remaining deputy, Stanislaw
Stomma, recorded a solitary abstention from the constitutional amendments,
and by so doing brought the experiment to an end. In the aftermath, the Party
attacked the Znak Group in classic fashion, discrediting its leaders and forming
a new pressure group of the same name.
A score of other religious denominations functioned legally in Poland. The
Polish Autocephalous Orthodox Church, which had been forced in 1948 to
transfer its allegiance from the Patriarch of Constantinople to the Patriarch of
Moscow, claimed a membership of close to half a million. The Polish
Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession had over 100,000 members,
mainly in Cieszyn. More surprisingly, perhaps, a number of fringe sects such as
the Seventh Day Adventists, the Christian Scientists, and the Mariavites, con-
tinued to attract adherents. Various attempts were made to unite these non-
Catholic Christian bodies under the aegis of a state-controlled (Ecumenical
Council. Pre-war Jewish, Karaite, and Muslim Leagues still existed, but had vir-
tually no membership. In this light, the only denomination which might fairly
have claimed to suffer from discrimination, if not from active persecution, was
that of the Uniates, whose congregations were dispersed throughout the
Western Territories by the resettlement of Ukrainians in 1945-7. Neglected by
the Roman Catholic hierarchy and criticized by the Soviet Embassy, the one
remaining Uniate See in Poland, at Przemysl, had been left vacant since 1946. All
religious bodies were subject to the Office for Denominational Affairs (UdsW),
whose Director has ministerial rank.
The Party's losing battle with the Church was attended by the gradual dilu-
tion of its own prestige, ideology, and morale. On the surface, of course, all is
sunshine and progress. Each political crisis was followed by colossal Party ral-
lies where tens of thousands of cheer-leaders roared their approval whilst the
Party bosses denounced the 'wreckers' and the 'hooligans' who had dared to dis-
turb the peace. They deceived no one. In reality, the Party had been gradually
losing such public confidence as it possessed. Repeated economic catastrophes
fuelled deep-seated public mistrust. The rising membership of the PZPR, which
passed the 2 million mark (or 6.5 per cent of the population) in 1970, could not
hide the fact that the Party was the resort of the most self-seeking elements of
society, who saw it as their passport to a successful career, to a high salary, to
promotion, to privileged social benefits, and in some cases to licentious conduct,
but only rarely as an opportunity for dedicated service to the community. The