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Dear Bishop

A New York State R.C. Bishop has decided to release all Polish priests from service in his diocese.

Many of those priests will have to return to Poland where there is a veritable glut of priests. A few have found postings in other R.C. Diocese in the United States.

I could go on and on with all the arguments normally posited about such matters: If there are priests available why close churches? You are always complaining about a lack of priests, why send some away? What’s wrong with Polish priests? Are Polish priests too beholden to tradition, such that they cannot fit in with the ethos in an American diocese? What’s up?

Rather than do so, I will play a little game. Let’s just say that the Holy Spirit were to send a letter to said Bishop. What might it sound like?

Dear Bishop,

Some years ago your brother bishops imposed hands on you and imbued you with My power. As you may recall, I provided you with the fullness of the Apostolic priesthood, my sevenfold gifts, and the authority to teach, shepherd, and govern in the local Church.

In addition to My gifts, I have touched the hearts of many men, and have attempted to fill them with zeal for souls. I have called many, but as you know, few have responded. Nevertheless, the Son has promised that I will remain with the Church, and that the gates of Hell shall not prevail against Her (cf. Matt. 16.18-19). That being the case, I have sent you sons who, while few in number, are filled with zeal for souls, and who have hearts filled with love for Our people.

I am edified by the fullness of trust you have exhibited in Our commitment to remain with the Church. You certainly have shown that you believe that We can do everything. That is faith!

Unfortunately, Our gifts can only be made present through your hands and your administration. We need you to proactively build up the Church with the gifts and the men you have been given.

It may seem wise, property values being what they are, to send off the sons I have given you, close churches, sell buildings, and do what is expedient for the present. You may even deem this a difficult but courageous choice. I urge you to reconsider, taking the long-term, eternal view into consideration.

Often times what is foolish in the eyes of men is wise in Our eyes (cf. Cor. 1:18-25). Please take your tremendous faith, and the gifts We have given you, and stand firm knowing that whatever may come, the Church will stand. That means that you, My son, are a rock. Grow the faith, build up Our Church, and have courage.

With all graces,

The Holy Spirit

P.S.: Please remain loyal to My son and your brother Bishop Benedict who is your lawful Patriarch.

In my personal opinion the R.C. Church needs as many hands as are available, especially if they are good and loyal to the Church. While some church closings are inevitable, retrenchment should not be an option. Find new and different ways to use the buildings. Most importantly put all hands on deck to minister and build up the Church.

Perspective, PNCC, Poland - Polish - Polonia

Then they formed the PNCC…

From the Telegraph.

First the Cardinal Archbishop said:

“I would hope those responsible for the Polish church here, and the Poles themselves, will be aware that they should become a part of local parishes as soon as possible when they learn enough of the language.”

Then the Polish immigrant said:

“How can he demand that we stop praying in Polish? Is it a sin? I feel my inner conscience has been violated, leaving me spiritually raped.”

Then the immigrant Polish priest said:

“If we lose our national identity, we lose everything.”

Now was this Cardinal O’Hara, a Polish émigré, and Father Hodur, in Scranton, circa 1897?

Nope, this is England today.

Cardinal O’Hara played by Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, the Polish émigré played by a Polish émigré, and Fr. Hodur played by Fr Tadeusz Kukla.

Now some thought that nativism was only endemic in the United States. But, the Roman Catholic Church’s chief representative in England (as the Young Fogey would point out, he is no lover of Catholic tradition – something the Poles go in for) proves nativism is alive and well, at least in “his” church.

When I saw this I nearly choked on my coffee.

Christian Witness, Poland - Polish - Polonia

What My Father Believed

Garrison Keillor’s reading of John Guzlowski’s poem “What My Father Believed,” from his book Lightning and Ashes, is now available at the Writers Almanac website:

The poem talks about John’s father’s faith, how he learned about God in Poland as a child, and how his faith sustained him while a prisoner in a Nazi German concentration camp.

The poem can also be heard on most NPR stations and stations that carry American Public Media programming on December 28, 2007.

PNCC, Poland - Polish - Polonia, ,

My gift to you

In my ethic tradition, we shared our gifts after the Wigilia (Vigil) supper and before attending the Pasterka (Shepherd’s) Holy Mass at midnight.

If would like to offer you, my readers, several gifts this Christmas.

I will provide eight (8) annual subscriptions to God’s Field, the official newspaper of the Polish National Catholic Church and ten (10) copies of the Polish National Catholic Church’s wall calendar for 2008.

The first eighteen people that make a request will get one or the other.

Please send me an E-mail using my contact form and provide your name, mailing address, and the gift you would prefer.

Of course I wish all of you every blessing on this Vigil of the Nativity of our Lord. The Christ is our true gift. Amen.

Poland - Polish - Polonia,

Scholarship applications due

Another scholarship application season is upon us.

Kosciuszko Foundation scholarship applications are currently being accepted for academic year 2008-2009. The majority of Foundation scholarships support Master and Ph. D. studies. There are also a limited number of scholarships for undergraduate students covering a junior or senior year abroad in Poland. The Foundation also support research projects in Poland.

Scholarship details may be found at the Kosciuszko Foundation website.

The deadline for filing scholarship applications is January 15, 2008. All applicants will be notified of the results in May 2008.

Perspective, Poland - Polish - Polonia

(not) sticking together

From the Albany Times-Union: Lake George workers exploited, state says

Summer employees from overseas were cheated out of rightful wages, investigators determine

LAKE GEORGE — The operators of several restaurants and hotels in this upstate tourist region exploited foreign workers and cheated them of proper wages this past summer, the state Department of Labor said Monday.

Five businesses in Lake George and two hotels in Queensbury stand accused of infractions which include breaking child labor laws, refusing to pay required overtime and deducting rent from wages, said Leo Rosales, the department’s communications director.

The agency has issued more than $120,000 in fines to the establishments for back wages and penalties.

Cited were SJ Garcia’s for $47,766; the Quality Inn and adjoining Econo Lodge in Queensbury for $46,505; Ramada Express for $14,209; and Depe Dene for $3,200.

Taste of Poland has agreed to pay $4,207 and Choice Inn & Suites (formerly Mohawk Motel) has settled for $4,442, Rosales said.

The cases involve dozens of young student workers from Poland, Ukraine, Russia and other countries, who arrived in the U.S. on J1 visas, a cultural exchange program that allows them to work here for a limited time, Rosales said.

Irena Lyahkanova from Russia said she worked like a “slave” at Taste of Poland restaurant for “nothing.” The owners did not pay any of its tipped employees, the 10 to 12 waitresses and bussers through the summer, Lyahkanova said. Many went back to Russia and Poland with no money.

“We were all afraid that we would be deported,” she said. “I am only 19 and (had) no money to go home with.”

Village Mayor Robert Blais reported the alleged violations to the Labor Department recently after several young workers visited the Foreign Student Connection Office in Lake George to complain that employers were withholding wages.

The connection locates employment and housing for hundreds of seasonal workers from overseas each year. The village set up the operation in 2004 due to complaints by visiting workers of pay issues, discrimination and abuse.

…

After Blais contacted the state, labor standards investigators visited the businesses to examine payroll records and interviewed employees about working conditions, Rosales said.

…

The businesses can dispute the citations or pay them, Rosales said. The workers who said they were defrauded will receive the settlement payments, which combine back wages or illegal deductions plus interest.

To help prevent future violations, the department will conduct education programs in Lake George and other resort areas next year and follow up with targeted enforcement sweeps during summer months.

“The department will aggressively enforce the state’s labor laws to protect all workers, particularly the most vulnerable workers,” state Labor Commissioner M. Patricia Smith said. “It is disappointing to learn that these employers took advantage of several young foreign workers who are far from home and family. They should be treated with dignity and respect and not cheated out of their hard earned money.”

I am continually amazed when I run across people who, in rather quiet discussion, carp on, complaining about this that or another group who all stick together. I’ve run across a large number of Poles who love to go on about one or another group, thinking that that group sticks together so well, so much so that they achieve unprecedented levels of control.

Of course, the reality is quite different. No one is all that loyal anymore, especially to their ethnic or even religious heritage.

Still in all, I find this news quite disturbing. If you are a successful Pole, and you can’t treat other immigrants and guest workers with common decency, well your business will suffer.

I suppose that’s why those who have eaten at Taste of Poland have found the food expensive and less than adequate. The practice of the owner pervades the business.

Hopefully this will be a wake-up call for this and the other businesses. If not, hopefully it will be their death knell. Then others who are smarter about their business practice can step in and do a much better job.

Christian Witness, Homilies, Poland - Polish - Polonia,

What My Father Believed

All Souls Day - Poland

I received a very kind E-mail from John Guzlowski of the Lightning and Ashes blog. This blog has linked to John for awhile now.

John has three published editions of poetry: Lightning and Ashes, Third Winter of War: Buchenwald, and Language of Mules.

John’s poetry is primarily focused on his parents who had been slave laborers in Nazi Germany. His website notes the his poems try to remember them and their voices.

John was extremely generous and sent along a poem which he asked me to include on these pages. He said:

I want to give you a poem about my father and his beliefs. He was a “faith-filled” man, and always took Jesus and the things the priests said seriously.

This poem is particularly appropriate as we remember the faithfully departed this All Souls Day. I will certainly remember John’s parents Jan and Tekla in my prayers at Requiem Holy Mass tomorrow. Eternal rest grant onto them O Lord!

What My Father Believed

He didn’t know about the Rock of Ages
or bringing in the sheaves or Jacob’s ladder
or gathering at the beautiful river
that flows beneath the throne of God.
He’d never heard of the Baltimore Catechism
either, and didn’t know the purpose of life
was to love and honor and serve God.

He’d been to the village church as a boy
in Poland, and knew he was Catholic
because his mother and father were buried
in a cemetery under wooden crosses.
His sister Catherine was buried there too.

The day their mother died Catherine took
to the kitchen corner where the stove sat,
and cried. She wouldn’t eat or drink, just cried
until she died there, died of a broken heart.
She was three or four years old, he was five.

What he knew about the nature of God
and religion came from the sermons
the priests told at mass, and this got mixed up
with his own life. He knew living was hard,
and that even children are meant to suffer.
Sometimes, when he was drinking he’d ask,
—Didn’t God send his own son here to suffer?—

My father believed we are here to lift logs
that can’t be lifted, to hammer steel nails
so bent they crack when we hit them.
In the slave labor camps in Germany,
He’d seen men try the impossible and fail.

He believed life is hard, and we should
help each other. If you see someone
on a cross, his weight pulling him down
and breaking his muscles, you should try
to lift him, even if only for a minute,
even though you know lifting won’t save him.

Perspective, Poland - Polish - Polonia, Political

Polish election news

From the NY Times: Opposition Heading to Victory in Poland

Polish Mountaineers (Górale) vote

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — A pro-business opposition party that wants to bring Poland’s troops home from Iraq was headed to an overwhelming victory in Sunday’s parliamentary elections, exit polls showed, setting it up to oust the prime minister’s staunchly pro-U.S. government.

It would be a stinging defeat for Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski, whose conservative Law and Justice party was elected two years ago and has since been criticized for its combative approach to the European Union and efforts to purge former communists from positions of influence.

Appearing before supporters late Sunday, Kaczynski said ”we didn’t manage in the face of this unprecedented broad front of attacks,” referring to the opposition’s campaign.

Donald Tusk, the leader of the opposition Civic Platform party, said the election showed that Poles want to focus on the economic opportunities presented by the country’s membership in the EU, which Poland joined in 2004.

”It is Civic Platform’s intention to make Poles feel much better in their own country than they have felt so far,” Tusk told cheering supporters. ”We are going to do huge work and we will do it well. You have the right to rejoice today.”

State TV projections showed the Civic Platform party and its preferred coalition partner, the small Polish Peasants Party, winning a majority of seats in the lower house, which would allow them to form a government together and knock Kaczynski from power.

An exit poll for TVP state television showed 43.7 percent of people voting for Civic Platform and 30.4 percent choosing Kaczynski’s Law and Justice party.

A TVN24 private television exit poll showed a 44.2 percent to 31.3 percent edge for Civic Platform, and also showed Civic Platform’s preferred coalition partner, the Polish Peasants Party, with 7.9 percent — enough to give the two parties a majority of the popular vote.

Exactly correct on bringing the troops home, exactly correct on good relations with neighboring countries, exactly correct on telling President Bush and company: ‘Thanks for nothing.’

An interesting aside, the Leader of the Civic Platform (PO – Platforma Obywatelska) is Donald Tusk – ethnically a Kashubian.

Media, Poland - Polish - Polonia

Lectors – not just for church anymore

From The Wall Street Journal: On Polish TV, Desperate Wives Sound Like Guys

Voice-Over Artists Strive To Keep Dialogue Flat;

WARSAW — When Walt Disney Co. brought the hit ABC TV series “Desperate Housewives” to Poland, producers found just the right local actor to do the voices of the show’s sexy, tempestuous female stars: Andrzej Matul, a 59-year-old guy with a deep voice and a flat delivery.

Mr. Matul is a lektor. In Poland, American shows aren’t dubbed by actors mimicking the original, English-speaking actors. A lektor, the Polish term for voice-over artist, simply reads all the dialogue in Polish. While the lektor drones on, viewers hear the original English soundtrack faintly in the background.

On Polish TV they can be heard every day: lektors, men who read the voices of every part in foreign TV shows, including women and children. See some examples and a report by WSJ’s Aaron Patrick. The approach is popular in Poland, where viewers still feel comfortable with a style deeply rooted in the country’s communist past. Lektors, traditionally men with husky voices, pride themselves on their utterly emotionless delivery, a craft honed through thousands of hours in recording studios. Fans appreciate the timbre of their voices, often tempered by years of cigarette smoking.

Jan Wilkans, 49, who got his first lektoring job narrating a pirated version of the movie “Dead Poets Society,” says he has his own rule: “Interpretation, yes; expression, no.”

Lektoring is also popular among American TV distributors. It offers them a low-budget way to get their programming into a market with a young population and strong economy.

As a result, lektoring is booming, just when it should be dying out as viewers all over the world are coming to expect higher production values.

About 45 foreign channels started up in Poland in the past five years, including the Discovery Channel, ESPN and HBO Polska. Last week, the British Broadcasting Corp. said it is starting three channels with lektored programming in Poland. The Disney Channel began broadcasting in December. On the main networks there are often more than eight hours a day of lektors reading in Polish what is being said in English and other languages.

“It doesn’t seem right to Westerners,” says Costa Kotsianis, managing director of Hippeis Media Ltd., which translates shows throughout Europe from its headquarters in London. “But the very good lektors can record a whole show in one take. It saves a lot of money.”

One little problem is that Polish words are generally longer than English words, and they’re rich in consonants. A lektor can’t fall behind the action and he needs to read in a steady, slow, low voice. So, the dialogue is simplified.

In “Desperate Housewives,” for example, a seven-word apology from prim Bree Van De Kamp to her husband at his hospital bedside becomes three, with Mr. Matul saying, “Mam wyrzuty sumienia.” (“I have pangs of remorse.”)…

The same applies to films. No reading subtitles, just the lektor.

On my visits to Poland I found it off putting at first, but grew to like it. I listened to the characters for the drama and inflection, and listened to the lektor for the words. No different than the little voice in my head reading the subtitles, among other things 😉 .

Poland - Polish - Polonia, ,

14th Ann Arbor Polish Film Festival

14th Ann Arbor Polish Film Festival, 2007 at the Michigan Theater, 603 Liberty Street, Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Saturday, November 10, 2007

  • 4:00 p.m. Grand Opening
  • 4:15 p.m. The Lilpop Sisters and Their Passions (Siostry Lilpop i ich miłości) directed by Bożena Garus-Hockuba, 2005 (87 min., documentary): The story of the four Lilpop sisters from a well-known family in pre-war Warsaw. It is the portrayal of their more or less happy relationships. The movie, in focusing around a series of private histories, also reveals significant aspects of Polish history from pre-war times to the realities of the post-war immigrant community.
  • 6:00 p.m. Saviour Square (Plac Zbawiciela) directed by Joanna Kos and Krzysztof Krauze, 2006 (105 min., drama): [12] A true story showing the crisis of the contemporary family life. The loss of a chance for a new flat, the lack of understanding between husband and wife, and the enormous efforts made to fulfill their desires lead to the breakdown of the family. The film tells about the necessity of empathy, the need for discerning and respecting the needs of other people as well as love, which is capable of overcoming even the most difficult, seemingly hopeless situations.
  • Intermission
  • 8:15 p.m. Breaking the Wall (Głową mur przebijesz) directed by Grażyna Ogrodowska and Leszek Furman , 2006 (45 min., documentary): A film about the Fighting Solidarity Organization: “It wasn’t a political party or any sort of secret resistance, we were just banging our heads against the wall of ideology, of Communism, of lies, and we managed to smash it”.
  • 9:15 p.m. Testosterone (Testosteron) directed by Tomasz Konecki and Andrzej Saramonowicz, 2007 (125 min., comedy): A quiet town prepares to welcome a famous wedding into its suburbs, only to discover that not everything is going to go as planned …

Sunday, November 11, 2007

  • 2:00 p.m. The 52 Percent (52 procent) directed by Rafał Skalski, 2007 (19 min., documentary): 52% is the perfect leg length to height ratio. This is one of the most important criteria for admitting children to the Russian Ballet Academy in Saint Petersburg. Ałła has two months to amend her proportions.
  • 2:30 p.m. What the Sun Has Seen (Co słonko widziało) directed by Micha ³ Rosa, 2006 (107 min., drama): The lives of three people in Polish Silesia, each of whom needs a large sum of money, become intertwined. They all want the same things: to change their lives, stand up for themselves and live their dreams.
  • Intermission
  • 5:00 p.m. Immensity of Justice (Bezmiar sprawiedliwości) directed by Wiesław Saniewski, 2006 (128 min., drama): Based on a crime committed in the 1990s: a television director was convicted to 25 years in prison despite the lack of evidence against him. This film attempts to describe the human nature: the of state of mind of people who, judging others, often determine their fate.
  • Discussion with Wiesław Saniewski, film director.

Biography of Wiesław Saniewski

Wiesław Saniewski, born 1948 in Wrocław, Poland, Saniewski graduated in mathematics at the Wroclaw University and went on to study screenwriting at the Lodz Film School, where he wrote several screenplays. He worked as an assistant to Andrzej Wajda. In 1971, he graduated with the short film `Big World’ (Wielki Świat) based on Alberto Moravia’s “Smells and a Bone”. His first feature film was completed in 1981,’ Free Lancer’ (Wolny Strzelec). It was his next film `Custody’ (Nadzór), made in 1983, that brought him international renown. The film received several awards at numerous film festivals: FIPRESCI Prize at the Mannheim Festival and a Gdansk Lion for the best debut, the best actress and the best cinematography. Saniewski’s films brought him into conflict with the authorities, and his films were banned until the fall of the socialist regime.

Tickets sold for blocks of films and events: $10 for adults, $6 for students and senior citizens.

All films with English subtitles.

Program subject to changes without prior notice.

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