Just an observation. Those who can remember the 1980s might also recall that Poland seemed, very obviously, the poster child for the courage, vigour, relevance and positive qualities of the Roman Catholic Church.
This was the era when there was a popular Polish Pope, active against communism; and involved spiritually with Lech Walesa and the explicitly Christian (and very trendy!) "Solidarity" movement within Poland.
Then came the collapse of the Soviet Bloc from 1989; and I think most people assumed that Poland would go on to exemplify a tremendous and lasting resurgence of Roman Catholic Christianity.
It didn't happen - and instead Poland became thoroughly Western-orientated, secularized, leftist, and a mass exporter of its most active young people as economic migrants.
Indeed, most recently, the Polish Establishment has become actively determined to engineer national annihilation as the disposable tool of an evil cause; apparently determined to model the fate of Poland on that of its depopulated and nearly-destroyed southern neighbour.
What a turn-around in the space of just three decades? From a distinctive and life-embracing Catholicism; all around to mainstream Western self-loathing, suicidal atheist-leftism.
By contrast, the Eastern Bloc communist nations that had been historically Eastern Orthodox, experienced a massive (and still lasting, at least in the case of the Fire Nation) emergence and growth of their national churches, and of Christian influence. Secularism and leftism was significantly held-back, and indeed rolled-back to some extent.
What are the lessons of such contrasting trajectories? Well, there are too many interacting aspects to pick on any particular one. But for Western Roman Catholics in particular - such a reversal is something deserving of honest, serious consideration.
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