Piety and pierogi.

The Chicago parish I grew up in was considered an "Irish" parish, even though its membership was about 40 percent Polish American. I often heard my parents and other Polish American members of the parish speak about the difficulty they had in getting the Irish pastor to introduce Polish religious customs. Finally, a concession was made to have a Polish-speaking confessor available once a month, and the blessing of Easter food baskets, a cherished Polish Catholic ritual, was begun.

This personal experience is quite typical. Polish American Catholics have always had the feeling that they were somehow second-class members of a church to which they had intense loyalty. Polish popular piety and rituals were confined to parishes where Polish Americans were an overwhelming majority and found no place in parishes such as mine where Poles were a very substantial minority.

Sacred meals

I vividly remember looking forward with great expectation to Christmas Eve and to Holy Saturday. Both days--while solemn and subdued in some ways--were marked by a celebration of family unity focused around a meal. On Christmas Eve, we observed the traditional wigilia (vigil), which included a festive family meal that was meatless. There was always an air of anticipation. Going "meatless" was a reminder that Christ was still on the way and that the full celebration of his arrival would take place only on Christmas itself. On Holy Saturday, a day of abstinence as well, my Polish Catholic home was abuzz with cooking and preparations for the great festive meal of Easter. A most important ritual act was to go to church to have the basics of the Easter meal blessed by the pastor. That is why the absence of such a ritual opportunity in my parish for so many years caused such dismay for the large Polish American Catholic community that was a cornerstone of the church.

Both the wigilia and the blessing of the Easter baskets show the profound connection Poles have made between religion and the ordinary activities of human life. Despite a deep streak of sadness in Polish Catholicism that is to be seen in Polish religious folk art, joy and a zest for life override this sadness. The piety of Poles focuses on Christ crucified, but ultimately they affirm the resurrected Christ as the center of their faith life. Polish Catholicism is not dour but, on the whole, exuberant--that is certainly one of its gifts to the larger U.S. Catholic Church.

Studies done on Catholic textbooks in the early 1960s show how marginal Polish American Catholicism was in the American Church. This is a pity because it deprived U.S. Catholicism generally of the contributions of a faith-filled community with a strong sense of participation in eucharistic celebration well before that became a popular term after the Second Vatican Council.

Participatory piety

Two concrete examples of participatory piety in Polish Catholicism are the processions associated with Benediction and the feast of Corpus Christi. At the historic St. Mary's Church in Krakow, the Blessed Sacrament is taken around the entire church in a colorful procession that can last for more than 30 minutes. Most celebrations of Benedictions keep the monstrance on the altar, but in Polish churches the eucharistic presence is usually brought out from the sanctuary to be among the people in the congregation. Corpus Christi is a major festival in Polish Catholicism. Processions often go outside the church with great liturgical fanfare. Again there is a strong emphasis that Christ must be brought into the very center of the whole community.

Both the food rituals and the processions remind us that for Polish American Catholics, piety is not to be divorced from family life and community celebration. There is time for prayer and reflection. But equally piety calls us to celebrate all dimensions of our humanity.

Continuing challenges

The reforms of the Second Vatican Council challenged Polish American Catholics in new ways. Much like the Hispanic and Vietnamese communities, Polish Americans witnessed a growing negativity in church circles toward their expressions of popular piety. This was coupled with the decline of old majority Polish American parishes in cities such as Detroit, Chicago, Hartford, and Philadelphia. In the 1980s and '90s, when dioceses attempted to cut their financial losses in the inner city, a disproportionate and extraordinarily high number of Polish American parishes were shuttered. Surviving parishes were faced with declining numbers as many Polish Americans left for the suburbs. Few, if any, new distinctly Polish American parishes were created in Catholic suburbia.

The liturgical reforms of Vatican II posed a genuine challenge for Polish American popular Catholicism that has not yet been fully resolved. On the one hand, Vatican II emphasized active participation in the Eucharist, something that had already been a hallmark among Polish American Catholics. On the other hand, Vatican II seemed to discourage the forms of popular participation in the Mass that had been the centerpiece of their spirituality.

In recent years Catholic liturgical leaders have taken a second look at popular piety in Catholicism. Many of its features are now more highly valued than was the case right after the council. But the basic challenge remains: How are popular expressions of piety to be incorporated within a firm commitment to the fundamental framework for Catholic liturgy envisioned by Vatican II? While popular piety in the past encouraged a sense of participation in the liturgy, it often took the congregation's attention away from the central features of the eucharistic celebration.

There are other problems related to the preservation of Polish American Catholicism. In the younger generation, most people have integrated themselves into "regular" parishes, while only a small percentage commute to distinctly Polish parishes. Increasingly Polish Americans in non-Polish parishes are losing contact with their culture's popular religious tradition. Some have retained a political and cultural interest in Polish matters, but many have not. To counter this trend, some Catholic parishes with a Polish American heritage offer Saturday schools where children learn Polish religious and cultural customs that have generally disappeared in their home and school milieu. This effort has shown some success in preserving a cultural identity, but it is too early as yet to tell its long-term impact.

Within the distinctly Polish American parishes that remain in the inner cities, very different pastoral approaches have been tried. Some parishes have made genuine efforts to integrate traditional popular piety within a clear commitment to Vatican II liturgical reforms, while others have been working to create a decidedly religionationalistic ethos within their worshiping communities. Both types of parishes have done fairly well in reaching out to newer immigrants who have often experienced severe social dislocation in America, leading to alcohol and drug dependency as well as prostitution. But the excessive nationalism--sometimes with racist undertones--in the second approach is genuinely disturbing. Some other parishes, in their efforts to preserve Polish Catholicism, have rejected Vatican II liturgical reform and have become centers for the celebration of the old-style Latin Mass.

The situation of Polish American Catholicism remains quite complex. Whether its emphasis on liturgical participation and the sacredness of life in all its aspects--as seen in food rituals and other religious customs pertaining to everyday life--can be preserved in the setting of the Vatican II liturgical framework and a commitment to social inclusiveness remains an open question.