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Blaring Music. All of this has hardly cowed the Poles. In Gniezno and Poznan last week, throngs of worshipers filled the churches and cathedrals to overflowing. Some 15,000 Poles defiantly raised their voices in prayer during an open-air Te Deum outside St. Mary's Cathedral in Gniezno, while government loudspeakers tried in vain to drown them out by blaring military music, low-flying helicopters churned up choking clouds of dust, and steel-helmeted troops with burp guns prowled the streets. En masse, the faithful followed Cardinal Wyszynski next day to the stations of the cross on Lech Hill, later heard him—in the presence of 63 other Polish bishops—celebrate a Mass for Poles abroad. Said Wyszynski: "We know that wherever Polish hearts beat, the millennium is celebrated."
Far from withering, the Catholic Church in Poland has actually grown in strength under the Communist policy of "pinprick" repressions. The country remains 96.5% Catholic, but more important is the fact that, after 20 years of universal state education, 60% of Poland's youth still claim to be "religious." The reasons, of course, lie deeper than the surface issues of clericalism v. atheism: Poland's history is so entwined with the Catholic Church that not even the Communists can extricate the two. The result is that Poland under Communism is undergoing something of a religious revival.