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Young Father Wyszynski joined the resistance, was assigned by his bishop to underground work in Warsaw and youth work in Lublin. In 1946 he became bishop of Lublin. The Nazis had imprisoned some 40% of Poland's priests and half of the prisoners had died or had been killed, but the church quickly recovered strength. By 1948, the Communists decided to move in and take over. They were just beginning to bring pressure on the nation's youth when Bishop Wyszynski was appointed archbishop of Gniezno and Warsaw, and hence Primate of Poland to succeed the late Cardinal Hlond. In his first sermon in Warsaw's baroque Church of the Carmelite, Wyszynski declared: "I am neither a politician nor a diplomat. I am your spiritual father, your shepherd, bishop of your souls."
He was soon to learn that when bandits control the grazing lands, good shepherds have to become diplomats.
Modus Moriendi? The heat went on early in 1950. The Communists took over the Catholic charitable organization Caritas. charging that it was a spy center. Bishop Wyszynski and the aged Adam Cardinal Sapieha, archbishop of Cracow, wrote to Communist President Boleslaw Bierut complaining of "abnormal moral pressure . . . organized hunts after priests." who were sometimes arrested and dragged off in their vestments. The Communists replied by confiscating all lands held by religious orders. The following month, while Cardinal Sapieha was in Rome, Primate Wyszynski shocked the Vatican by negotiating an agreement with the Red regime.
The church in Poland pledged itself to support the government in such crucial national matters as the possession of the western territories taken from Germany after World War II, socialization of Poland and expansion of industry, while the state guaranteed continued freedom of worship, religious education and the church press. Cardinal Sapieha, behind whose back Wyszynski had negotiated the armistice, muttered: "This is not a modus vivendi but a modus moriendi." And a way of dying it certainly appeared to be.
Almost immediately, the government began to violate its side of the agreement, firing 500 priests from their posts as religious teachers, demanding that the Polish clergy sign the Stockholm peace declaration (Wyszynski refused at first, later capitulated), rounding up members of religious orders in mass arrests. Wyszynski's stock in the free world was low when in January 1953 he was made cardinal.
Wyszynski's resistance to the Communists stiffened. When a Polish bishop was tried on phony espionage charges, Wyszynski delivered an angry sermon in which he said: "Today they speak of criminals, perhaps tomorrow one will speak of holy criminals." On Sept. 25, 1953, the secret police came to take him away. Cardinal Wyszynski had still one more touch of consideration for the enemy: when one of the arresting officers was bitten by a watchdog, the cardinal insisted on personally bandaging his hand.
Pax & Pals. Two of the Reds' most ambitious attempts at undermining the church were the Patriot Priests and Pax, both of them originated by Ivan Serov, head of the NKVD in Poland during the Stalin period. Serov set up two Trojan horses to take over the church, one loaded with docile ("patriot") priests, one with laymen.