Radio Maryja and Fr. Rydzyk as a Creator of the National-Catholic Ideology

Abstract

Father Rydzyk created the Catholic radio station called Radio Maryja, whose role in Polish public and religious life is much, much bigger than can be assumed by analysing the statistical data of the number of listeners of the station. There are at least two important factors which may explain this phenomenon. First, Radio Maryja plays an important role as an organizer of Catholic life and as the creator of a social movement of churchgoers, not only in Poland, but in other countries as well. Indeed, there is presently even a specific social identity: “the listener of Radio Maryja”. The second reason for the importance of Fr. Rydzyk’s broadcasting is the political aspect of his activity. Fr. Rydzyk’s radio station is now strongly supported by the Polish Episcopate. Radio Maryja and Fr. Rydzyk support the conservative political national parties, mainly PiS (Law and Justice), which openly declare support of the Polish Catholic Church and its line in regulating public life in the country through the use of the law. This will be the main topic of my chapter. I intend—after a short presentation of the history of Radio Maryja—to present the main content of this special, religious-based national ideology created by Fr. Rydzyk and his Radio (and, of course, by other media controlled by Fr. Rydzyk, such as Television TRWAM and the newspaper Nasz Dziennik). I would like to discuss the importance of the pre-war model of the church and its role in the state for the creator of Radio Maryja.

I assume—and it is my first hypothesis—that this model of the Church’s role in public life and the kinds of activities in which it engages is based on past experiences. The second hypothesis is that Fr. Rydzyk created a new, more general version of the national-Catholic ideology on the basis of the pre-war, National Democracy ideology (the “endecja”). In short, I would like to describe the evolution of the Radio Maryja national ideology, which was represented in the pre-war period by the political movement of Roman Dmowski and his National Democracy ideology. Lastly, I would like to show the attractiveness of this pre-war strategy of the Church for Polish bishops today. The concept of the “civil religion” and the special role of the Polish Church in the resistance against communist rule will be used as a theoretical frame.