Medio biotico - INVENTARIO AMBIENTAL - ESTUDIO DE IMPACTO AMBIENTAL DEL PROYECTO DEL CENTRO CUL

3. INVENTARIO AMBIENTAL

3.3 Medio biotico

This thesis presents and analyses a sample of diverse concepts, arguments and theories which provide the reader with a better sociological understanding of the religious and social experiences of Polish migrants in Ireland and how the church operates as a transnational organisation of pastoral care. The study presents the experiences of Polish migrants and

how, if at all, spirituality or the church figure in terms of spiritual and social support. This thesis responds to recent calls among scholars for studies of transnational migration to incorporate religion into the analysis (Coakley and Mac Éinrí 2007). This is significant research as it explores how and why the church develops institutions to respond to the needs of migrants in a context in which they share the majority religion of the local society.

Chapter One provides an introduction to the thesis and sets out the research question. It points out the significance and contribution that this thesis makes to sociology and the transnationalism, immigration and religion literature. Chapter One outlines the research topic. It details the three theoretical frameworks which structure this research – transnationalism, concepts derived from Alba et al’s (2009) research on religion and Grace Davie’s (2006) theory of religion as ‘choice’. This chapter briefly addresses the thesis structure and outlines the data and methods employed to do this research. Two literature review chapters set out the context for this study. The theories mentioned above are discussed in these theoretical chapters and are analysed in corresponding analysis chapters. Chapter Two and Three reviews literatures relating to this study and analyse the appropriateness of the aforementioned theories in framing this research. These two chapters correspond with the four empirical chapters, Chapter Five, Six, Seven and Eight.

Chapter Four addresses the research methods I employed, the analysis process and the limitations of this research. The challenges of researching in multiple, and often unfamiliar sites, as well as my position as a ‘non-migrant’

observer are identified and reflected upon. This qualitative study was designed to explore critical themes and identify features of modern migrants’

transnational and religious experiences.

Four empirical chapters set out the contribution of this research.

Chapter Five introduces the first empirical chapter and analyses whether religion had a role in the migrants’ decision to choose Ireland as a country of destination. This chapter outlines the factors which motivated this migration pattern and considers if the ‘Catholic compatibility’ hypothesis (Ebaugh and Chafetz 2000) is relevant – this hypothesis suggests that possessing the same religion as the majority population eases immigrants’ adaptation experiences.

Henceforth, this chapter sheds light on whether religion was a motivating factor in the migrants’ decision to move to Ireland. Chapter Six analyses the religious behaviour of Polish migrants in Ireland. Drawing on Dunlop and Ward’s categorisation (2012), Polish migrants can be categorised by three responses to religion and beliefs within the experience of migrating from Poland to Ireland: 1) no longer believing or practicing a religion, 2) believing but practicing occasionally/not practicing religion in Ireland, 3) believing and choosing to continue to practice religion within the Catholic Church. This relates to Davie’s theory (2006) of ‘religion as a choice’ – Davie argues that immigration from a context of ‘religion as an obligation’ to a context of

‘religion as a choice’ results in a decline in migrants’ religious behaviour.

Chapter Seven identifies if migrants’ beliefs and/or practices correspond with the ways in which they employ their faith to support their migration experiences. The ways in which Polish migrants refer or employ their faith can be divided into four categories – religion as system of meaning (Alba et. al 2009), religion as institution (ibid), religion as ethnic identifier (Ebaugh and Chafetz 2000) and religion as social capital (Portes and Rumbaut 2006). This chapter reveals the multiple ways in which Polish migrants employ the social and sacred properties of the church.

Chapter Eight continues the analysis of the Polish migrants’

relationship with religion, their faith and the migrant church. To situate this research into the wider context I adopt a transnationalism lens. First, this chapter considers the multiple ways in which religious institutions operate within the transnational space. This sheds light on the different ways in which the clergy renegotiate and reshape their practices in response to the needs of migrants in the host society. Second, this analysis identifies how Polish migrants embody religious practices and beliefs within the transnational space and this compounds the argument set out in Chapter Seven (religion matters more as a marker of ethnic identification and social resources than spirituality). Finally, to fully address the experiences of Polish migrants in Ireland this chapter shifts focus to consider the non-religious variables of transnationalism and how these shape migrants’ experiences in Ireland.

Chapter Nine focuses on the theoretical and empirical contributions of this study. This chapter integrates all the elements of the analysis to detail the

conclusion of this study. This study draws attention to the ways in which religion operates transnationally at the macro and micro level to support migrants’ needs. I argue that transnationalism has a much greater role for contemporary EU citizens migrating within Europe. The political and legal status of Polish migrants in Ireland has transformed their migration trajectories and the ways in which they live their lives transnationally. I argue that transnationalism has a much greater role for contemporary EU citizens migrating within Europe. Similarly Krings, Moriarty, Wickham, Bobek and Salomonska’s (2013) qualitative panel study, ‘New Mobilities in Europe: Polish Migration to Ireland post-2004’, details the primarily economy-driven Polish migration and experiences in Dublin. In this study, which complements my own research, they point out that the motivations to migrate post-2004 are complex and highly situated and include diverse non-materialistic as well as non-work related reasons. However, East-West migration does not represent the classical patterns of labour migration; rather the ‘mobility turn’ supported through

‘mobile technologies’ both physical (i.e. low-cost air travel) and virtual (i.e.

social networking services, instant messaging agents) enable Polish migrants to develop ‘boundaryless careers’ and move countries as well as within national labour markets. The political and legal status of Polish migrants in Ireland has transformed their migration trajectories and the ways in which they live their lives transnationally. Their transnational social networks become support mechanisms; these provide Polish migrants “with an extra ‘lift’ in terms of material and moral resources” (Portes 2001:189) which supports their sojourn in Ireland. Therefore, it can be concluded that non-religious mediating factors such as transnational networks support migrants’ ‘self- selection’ in terms of religious beliefs and practices. This support enables migrants to ‘opt in or out’

(Gosia) of religion which explains the migrants varied and nuanced ways of engaging with the church and employing its resources. These factors, in addition to religiosity, are important in explaining the migrants’ reliance on the church’s resources. This chapter also proposes an outline of the main findings of the study and how these can be taken forward for future research.

24 1.3 Catholicism in Poland and Ireland

To contextualise this study I provide a discussion outlining Catholicism in Poland and Ireland. Poland and Ireland are cited as anomalies to the secularisation process in Western societies (Gorski and Altinordu 2008). The Roman Catholic Church is the majority religion in both countries. Based on this, it could be proposed that a ‘religious compatibility’ (Ebaugh and Chafetz 2000) could support Polish migrants’ adaptation experiences in Irish society. This discussion analyses the similarities and differences that exist between Catholicism in Poland and Ireland. Exploring the historical development of the Catholic Church, in addition to analysing the contemporary position and role of the church (church-state relationship and the influence of the Catholic Church on people’s everyday lives and values) in both countries identifies if such a ‘religious compatibility’

exists. I argue that the Catholic habitus (i.e. how individuals believe, practice and posses religio-national identity) of the Irish and Polish people is quite different, even though they are situated within the universal Catholic Church. This section also analyses the religious behaviour of Polish and Irish people. This overview provides an insight into the contemporary Catholic Church in terms of global Catholicism and how religion travels across borders.

Poland

Without Christ it is impossible to understand the history of Poland...It is impossible, without Christ, to understand and appraise the contribution of the Polish nation to the development of man and his humanity in the past, and its contribution today (Pope John Paul II, Return to Poland, 1978)

John Paul II’s statement evokes an image that Poland was a nation dependent upon the church and the church dependent upon the nation. However, this version of Poland’s history is contradicted by Brian Porter (2001, 2011). He acknowledges that religious and national identity is inextricably intertwined.

Catholicism, for the majority of Polish people, was a means of describing who they are (‘European’ or ‘Western’) and who they are not (Protestant/German, Jewish, or ‘Eastern’). Thus, any discussion or research of identity in Poland

must include Catholicism - “The church is deeply rooted in Poland, but the linkage between Catholicism and an articulated ethnic identity – not to mention a politicized understanding of national belonging – is more tenuous than is usually assumed” (Porter 2001:289). Therefore, it is necessary to present a discussion on Poland’s national history and how the church emerged as a powerful institution. Lipski (1994:52-53) remarks that “the formation of our culture was produced by a synthesis with Christianity, adopted from the West in the tenth century, and the percolation of the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and romanticism”. There has been a strong institutional bond between the majority of Poles and the church that developed over the years. Tracing the roots of religion’s role in Polish society or the power of the Catholic Church in Poland throughout the centuries is tenuous and for many it entails a “highly exclusionary telling of national history” (Porter 2001:289).

The Catholic narrative of Polish history purports that, generally speaking, Polish Catholicism has always been the national religion and the bond between church and nation was one of Poland’s inherent features. The narrative retells the strength of Polish Catholicism under the system of the Noble’s Democracy (15^th and 16^th centuries) even when Poland was a refuge for religious dissidents. The bond, some argue, was further strengthened with the partitions of the country in 1772, 1793 and 1795 when the church was the only depositary of the national culture, tradition, and collective memory of the nation (Komorowski in Miasto i Kultura 27; Cywinski47-48, in Porter 2001:292). Casanova noted that as a result, in “the 19^th century, Catholicism romantic nationalism and Slavic messianism contributed to the development of the new Polish civil religion” (2005:160). Brian Porter (2001, 2011) contradicts this one sided account of Polish history and reveals a more disjointed relationship between the Catholic Church and state throughout the centuries.

The first challenge to Catholicism was during the Reformation in the sixteenth century. During this period Poland had a heterogeneous blend of Catholics, Jews, Eastern Orthodox, Armenian Catholics and Muslims. Calvinism spread rapidly in Poland and by the mid sixteenth century Protestantism was the majority religion in the Polish senate. Such diversity led the assembled nobles of the Polish republic in 1572 to issue a declaration “that we who are divided by faith will keep peace among ourselves, and not shed blood on account of different faith or church”. This era of pluralism and tolerance earned Poland the

reputation in sixteenth century Europe as a land where religious indifference made Catholicism vulnerable, but where official tolerance made it impossible for Protestantism to institutionalise its success (Tazbir 1966:35-60).

The next period, the counterreformation, marked an era where the church worked to construct a new Catholic narrative of Poland’s past and present – to both eliminate religious diversity in the present and to write Protestantism out of the Polish history (Porter 2001). In the latter half of the sixteenth century, non-Catholics were expelled from the Polish Republic and a decade later it became a crime for Catholics to convert to other faiths – “in 1973 the sejm made it impossible for non-Catholics to be ennobled, in 1716 a decree banned the construction of non-Catholic houses of worship, and three decrees from 1718, 1736, and 1764 established religious tests for all deputies to the sejm and all employed of the state administration” (Porter 2001:292-293). The Catholic narrative of this period purports a religious identity that is natural not constructed or politically enforced. Jerzy Kloczowski states “the cause of the collapse of Protestantism was not force; rather, today we are inclined to see this as a result of the attraction of a vital and renewed Catholicism”

(Chrzescijanstwo w Polsce 88, in Porter 2001:293). Over this period the church established itself in Polish society. However, the Enlightenment introduced new challenges for the church. This period modernised the Polish state and the Polish population. The clerical monopoly over education was weakened, anticlerical satires emerged, the lifestyle of the elites grew even more secular, and the church had to defend itself against attacks from Enlightenment political theorists. However, Catholicism was preserved but Porter (2001) remarks that it did so at the cost of welcoming some extraordinarily heterodox intellectuals back into the fold.

In the nineteenth century, the era of partitions, Bernhard (1993:136) noted that Polish national consciousness came to be strongly tied to a Catholic religious identity. Religion was the natural locus of identity given the fact that it was partitioned and occupied primarily by Orthodox Russia and Protestant Prussia and remained free of russification or germanization. Again, Porter points out that the church distanced itself from the patriotic cause, eventually becoming one of the few indigenous bastions of loyalism in partitioned Poland. The Vatican made its stance clear in 1832 – Pope Gregory XVI’s encyclical, Cum Primum, stated “we are taught most clearly that the obedience which men are

obliged to render to the authorities established by God is an absolute precept which no one can violate”. The Tsar of Russia, the Pope continued, was a

“legitimate prince” and that Poles owed him their submission (Gregory XVI in Papal Encyclicals 233-234, in Porter 2001). In 1863 when the Polish nationalists revolted again the Catholic Church as an institution urged the rebels to lay down their arms and accept Russian rule (Jablonska-Deptula and Skarbek in Chrzescijanstwo w Polsce 441, 445). Thus Porter (2001, 2011) argues that religion was far less important to national survival in the nineteenth century than is usually assumed. The church was never the only space within which Poles could express and cultivate myths, customs, or practices of their ethnicity. In the early twentieth century the term ‘Polak-Katolik’ became many Catholics rhetoric. There were heated debates between those who defined the nation as essentially and necessarily Catholic and those who refused to do so. The

‘Jewish-Question’ was at the centre of this conflict. Polish-Catholicism became a vehicle for anti-Semitism. However, after World War II the post-war boundaries were drawn so as to exclude almost all Lithuanians, Belorussians, and Ukranians, the Germans were forcibly expelled, and most of the Jews perished in the Holocaust. Porter (2001:297) concludes that “for many Poles today...the Polish nation had always been religiously and ethnically homogenous, even though a great number of ‘aliens’ or ‘minorities’ had lived within the boundaries of the Polish state...After World War II those aliens were gone, and it became easier than ever to promote the Catholic narrative....”.

After 1989, clergy involvement in politics increased and with the victory of democracy in Poland parliamentary elections the church started to play a new political role – that of an ally for post-Solidarity political parties and individual politicians. The church succeeded in influencing legislation in such spheres as education and family life, for example in 1991, a law was passed providing for Christian values to be respected in education, and religion instruction returned to primary and secondary schools (Doppke 1998). Like any other social institution, the church has a structure, roles to play and powers to exercise. Structurally, it is hierarchical and complex and made up of parishes which include staff of 133 bishops, 22.2 thousand priests, 6.3 thousand monks and 23.3 thousand nuns (Statistical Yearbook 2010:215-244). The economic component of the church included property, sources of revenue, means of funding and privileges and exemptions not granted to most other social institutions. Apart from land, in

relation to sacral and non-sacral buildings, most of which were recovered after 1989, the church took advantage of state subsidies which included the cost of religious instruction, funding of Catholic higher schools and financing the theological departments at state universities. The Catholic Church has a well defined mainstream position in Poland and its influence on societal discourse and policies is evident in modern Poland. The rise of the Catholic Church and the development of the church-state relationship have been tenuous with different authors citing different perspectives on major events throughout the centuries. This discussion on religion and the Catholic Church in Poland presents a brief insight into significant periods in Polish history that has led to the development of religion and religious identity in Poland today.

The twenty-first century has marked a new era for ‘Polak-Kataliks’.

Changes to the church-state relationship have been accompanied by a marked decline in Polish people’s religiosity and public trust in the Catholic Church. The influence of the Catholic Church on Polish people’s everyday lives and values has lessened. First, I present an analysis of the decrease in Polish people’s religious beliefs and practices. Table 1.1 shows that affiliation with minority religions remained steadfast, whereas the number of individuals affiliated to the Roman Catholic Church declined. The number of individuals declaring that they are Catholic decreased from 94.2% in 1990 to 88.4% in 2007. Significantly, individuals stating that they have no religion increased from 2.6% in 1990 to 9% in 2007.

Table 1.1: Profile of religious affiliation in Poland (1990, 1995, 2000, 2005, 2007)

Year Total population Roman Catholic Church

Other religions No religion

[1] [2] [1] [2] [1] [2] [1] [2]

1990 38,119,000 100.0 35,894,538 94.2 1,227,893 3.2 996,569 2.6 1995 38,609,399 100.0 34,908,739 90.4 1,005,507 2.6 2,695,153 7.0 2000 38,646,000 100.0 34,608,967 89.5 995,450 2.6 3,041,583 7.9

2005 38,157,010 100.0 34,197,400 89.6 901,559 2.4 3,058,051 8.0 2007 38,116,600 100.0 33,699,264 88.4 986,059 2.6 3,431,277 9.0

Notes: [1] Number of persons; [2] Percent of total population - Source: compilation of data based on:Rocznik Statystyczny Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej 1991, 1991:57-58; Rocznik Statystyczny Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej 1996, 1996:72-74; Rocznik Statystyczny Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej 2001, 2001:120-121; Rocznik Statystyczny Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej 2006:220-221; Rocznik Statystyczny Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej 2008, 2008:212-213.

Table 1.2 indicates that there has been a decrease in the number of individuals attending Sunday mass. There was just under a ten percent decrease in the number of individuals attending Sunday mass between 1980 and 1990.

Interestingly, after major political events in Poland, religious participation (attending Sunday mass) increased. This idea of increased contact with religious organisations subsequent to major political or tragic events is relevant for understanding the different roles of religion in society. This is an important point to mention as it applies to the Polish migrants religious experiences in my research. The Polish President was killed in a plane crash in 2010 and the Polish chaplaincy in Ireland held a memorial service so that the Polish migrants could come together to share in the loss and grief of this tragedy. Large crowds of Polish migrants came to the church after the president’s death and hundreds attended the memorial service. This public gathering and expression of loss enabled this migrant

In document ESTUDIO DE IMPACTO AMBIENTAL DEL PROYECTO DEL CENTRO CULTURAL, RELIGIOSO Y DE OBRA SOCIAL EN EL TÉRMINO MUNICIPAL DE BURGOHONDO (ÁVILA). (página 60-75)