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"We are known for our capacity to make sacrifices and to die a brave death," he told his flock last November in his first public sermon after being released by the Communists. "Poles know how to die magnificently. But, my dear ones, Poles must learn to work magnificently. When one dies one may get glory quickly; but to live in toil, suffering pain and sacrifice for years is greater heroism, and this greater heroism is needed today."
Interrex. When Wyszynski talked, Poland listened—for reasons that are historical, political and personal.
Historically, the Roman Catholic Church is identified with nationalism in Poland as it is in few other countries; Poland became Catholic to avoid being gobbled up. When the pagan Polish ruler Mieszko I was attacked A.D. 963 by Saxon Warlord Count Wichman, Mieszko cannily guessed that this early German Drang nach Osten would disguise itself as a Christian missionary enterprise. To undercut this excuse, he married a Bohemian Catholic princess, took himself and country to the Church of Rome in 966. The office of primate, which in many countries degenerated into a mere courtesy title, remained in Poland (as in Hungary) a potent center of temporal power and political leverage. When the throne was vacant, the primate was "interrex"(interim King), and when in 1772 Poland suffered the first of many partitions at the hands of Russia, Austria and Prussia, the Poles looked to the primate as their temporal and spiritual head. As Primate of Poland, Wyszynski speaks with a prestige and importance fashioned by Poland's past.
The cardinal's words had extra political weight because under Russian persecution, even more than under foreign partition, the church was a symbol of freedom. The story is told of a man in church during the bitter pre-Gomulka days who remained standing during Mass. His neighbors tugged at his sleeve, but he stubbornly refused to kneel. "I'm an atheist," he explained. "Then why do you come to Mass?" they asked. "Because," he said, "I'm against the government."
Up From the Underground. Wyszynski's influence also depends upon his personal history. In a country whose clergy were ofter accused of being allied with the aristocracy, Wyszynski always identified himself with the working man. He was born poor, son of a church organist and schoolteacher in the village of Zuzela near Bialystok. He earned a doctorate in Canon Law and Social Sciences at the University of Lublin, and became known as a "labor priest." He wrote several books on such subjects as unemployment and the rights of labor, was even beginning to act as counsel in labor disputes when, in 1939, the Nazis blitzed Poland.