Priest Sacking Stirs Controversy in Catholic Poland

GlobalPost
July 15, 2013

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/afp/130715/priest-sacking-stirs-controversy-catholic-poland

A parish priest's dismissal for criticising church doctrine on test tube babies, abortion, euthanasia and contraception has sparked debate in devoutly Catholic Poland.

Father Wojciech Lemanski, 53, was sacked by his superiors for speaking out against the dogma on his blog. The July 5 decree gave him until Thursday to quit his parish in the eastern village of Jasienica.

Henryk Hoser, archbishop of Warsaw-Praga, faulted Lemanski for "a lack of respect and disobedience". Hoser is also the president of the Polish episcopate's bioethics committee.

Backed by parishioners, Lemanski had refused to budge after his dismissal took effect late Sunday.

Local television showed parishioners blocking Lemanski's successor from entering the rectory on Monday morning.

But Lemanski later reconsidered.

"I will soon hand over the reins to the designated successor and move out of the parish house to await a final decision from the Holy See," he said in a statement Monday on the parish website.

The row has been widely reported and debated in Poland, where more than 90 percent of the population declares itself Roman Catholic but where a growing number of young people do not accept all of Church doctrine.

In a radio interview last week, Lemanski said he believed his firing also stemmed from his involvement in Jewish-Christian relations.

He told the private TOK FM radio station that he had a meeting with Hoser on the matter in 2010 at the archbishop's initiative.

"There were opinions on Jews in general, on the need for, or rather the lack of a need for, contact with Jews, dialogue with Jews," Lemanski said, recalling the conversation.

He said Hoser also asked him whether he "himself belonged to the Jewish community and was circumcised".

The diocese of Warsaw-Praga vigourously denied the claims Friday, saying the "statement as a whole does not correspond to the truth".

"Neither during the talk or after did (Hoser) limit or forbid Father Lemanski from working on Jewish-Christian dialogue," the diocese said.

Lemanski is active in the Polish Council of Christians and Jews, which notably organises prayers at the site of the former Nazi German death camp Treblinka in the east.

In a statement released Monday, the council backed Lemanski, calling him "a man of exceptional achievements in honouring the memory of the former Jewish presence and of the tragic wartime Holocaust".