National-European Theology

An influential contingent of Catholic clergy in Poland reacted to Poland’s entry into the European Union by developing a narrative positing the Catholic foundation and ownership of Europe and all its constituent “nations.” This narrative, which I call national-European theology, identifies the Catholic Church as the progenitor of both European and Polish existence and guarantor of their continuity of identity. In this way, it remedies some Catholics’ anxieties about both the integrity of Poland’s national sovereignty and the allegedly secularizing and liberalizing cultural influence of other EU member countries. I argue that national-European theology can be fruitfully conceived as a hereditary ownership narrative, framed by moments of spiritual foundation and subsequent inheritance from spiritual founders, and that this narrative structure characterizes both nationalism writ large and Europeanization as an analogous modern identitarian project. I suggest that taking heredity as a lens through which to understand nationalism and its attendant notions of legitimation allows us to move past debates about the “content” of nationalist claims (ethnic, religious, linguistic, etc.) and toward the mechanism by which group reproduction is culturally defined and sanctioned. To do this, I first sketch a theory of nationalism as a hereditary ownership narrative, drawing upon the Polish case, and liken it to the “Europe-building” project of the EU. Second, I present a brief historical outline of Poland’s accession to the EU and the anxieties generated thereby. Finally, I turn to the rhetoric of the Polish clergy who best represent the national-European current in contemporary Catholic political theology.