January (Web-only) 2007

ARTICLE TOOLS

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1. Poland's Communist security service said 12 bishops "cooperating" in 1978
"Any hope that the departure of Archbishop Stanislaw Wielgus would lay to rest controversies over the alleged collaboration of Polish clergy with the Communist-era security forces quickly dissolved on Monday, as another senior Polish cleric stepped down under the weight of similar allegations, and a major newspaper disclosed a memo from senior officials of the security service, dated 1978, which asserted that twelve Polish bishops were cooperating at that time in plans to influence the Catholic church," John Allen notes in his daily National Catholic Reporter column. "In yet another shocking disclosure, the Polish weekly Wrpost unearthed documents claiming that a Polish auxiliary bishop had reported on meetings of the Polish bishops to the secret police from 1963 to 1970, including discussions of the Polish contingent at the Second Vatican Council."

It's not just a historical matter, nor is it one isolated to Poland, Robert T. Miller writes on the First Things website:

[E]ither the Vatican knew about Wielgus' past when it appointed him, as Wielgus says and as the Vatican's statement in December strongly suggests, or else it did not, as [Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, the Prefect of the Vatican's Congregation for Bishops] now maintains. If the [latter], then the Vatican's investigation of Wielgus prior to the appointment was grossly negligent, failing to discover information that was readily available in Poland. If the [former], as seems much more likely, then the Holy See exercised very poor judgment in making the appointment in the first place and even worse judgment in attempting to ram it through even after the truth about Wielgus became public. ...