Wokół idei stronnictwa katolickiego w Królestwie Polskim

Abstract

After 1905 political sympathies amongst Catholics in the Kingdom of Poland were divided between two parties: the National Democracy and the Party of the Realistic Policy (SPR), which was a group with conservative-amicable direction. Despite the fact that “realists”, how members of SPR were being named, had contacts and support from representatives of the polish episcopacy, the political dominance amongst lay and clerical Catholics belonged to the National Democracy. The ideology of the National Democracy in religious-church issues was not accepted by some members of the Catholic environment, even by priests who until than were supporting the National Democracy. The biggest critic of this party was the “group of Czestochowa” – a main part of the ultraconservative environment in the Kingdom of Poland. This group demanded from leaders of the National Democracy program changes. In case of the failure of this undertaking they have a plan of establishing a new, alternative political party for Catholics. This idea became more and more popular in the Catholic environment. Some of them believed that neither the National Democracy, nor SPR were able to represent businesses of Catholics sufficiently. It was supported by some of the priests and representatives of the episcopacy. The biggest supporter of this idea became Roger Lubieński, a historian, a writer, a community worker and an editor of the catholic newspaper – “Faith”. The matter of forming the catholic party became current especially in 1908. The idea of Lubieński was supported by environment of the catholic “Daily Newspaper Universal” and his editor priest – Hipolit Skimborowicz. In this newspaper well-known catholic journalists took part in the big discussion about forming the catholic party and also about project of the program. The conclusion of this discussions was, that „catholic camp” should be more active and should aspire to create own national-catholic party. But there was one problem – an absence of unanimity in the “catholic camp”. Some of the catholic priests who belonged to the National Democracy or sympathizing with this party opposed. Debate on the project and different positions showed that it was not the appropriate time for realizing a political plan. It also showed that Catholics in the Kingdom of Poland were too divided. The fiasco of the idea of establishing the national-catholic party suited national democrats but they had to consider the fact that in the future in more favorable circumstances catholic community might execute their own idea of political party competitive to the National Democracy.