Three priests presented in the documentary Tell No One have turned out to be communist secret police informants. There have been many commentators who asked, “Does it matter at all?” Yes, does it?
Father Eugeniusz Makulski, Father Franciszek Cybula and Father Jan A. – these three out of five priests presented in Tomasz Sekielski’s documentary Tell No One cooperated with the SB (Communist Security Service). Commentators, moved by some information revealed in the film, have frequently downplayed this fact. Of course not all of them. Father Tadeusz Isakowicz-Zaleski states that the degeneration which touched the Church at the time of communism to a certain degree has affected the time of post-communist Poland. He says that the fight for lustration in the Church was also a fight to purge the Church of the negative lobby.
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Of course it doesn’t mean that there is a rule that links cooperation with the SB and heinous acts of child sex abuse. However facts suggest that there might be some links between collaboration with the communist secret police and moral degeneration.
For those who know history it’s obvious that in 1985 the secret police carried out an organized action which aimed at widespread surveillance of some people, concerning their sexual life, to dig up some dirt on them and then convince them to collaborate. That action was named “Hyacinth.” And again one might say it doesn’t matter much but it might actually matter a lot. That move by Czesław Kiszczak makes us realize something that has been always known: secret services take advantage of human weaknesses and moral decline first of all.
Prof. Antoni Dudek emphasizes this problem – we have already written about it on our website – saying that although the secret police “didn’t make anyone a pedophile” they watched the clergy to find out any possible weaknesses or embarrassing materials.
It looks like such methods were not only typical of the SB which was proofed by Sylwester Latkowski’s investigative journalism several years ago which resulted in the film Pedophiles (Pedofile). The journalist came across pedophile networks acting with impunity in Warsaw. They involved well-known businessmen, scientists and politicians. The reporter had reasons to suppose that those networks were in some way controlled by the secret service at that time. Charges of pedophilia are ones of the highest gravity and give a secret service an excellent material to blackmail.
Of course the fact of collaboration with the SB isn’t any justification either for pedophilia or for the problem of corruption and sin among some of the clergy. Certainly it isn’t any argument for their victims. But for sure it helps us – observers and people concerned about the fate of the Church – better understand what evil and sin affect the circle of priests. And it might help us counteract them more efficiently.
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transl. Jan J. Franczak
