Friday, December 22, 2006

Jesus – King of Poland?

A very silly idea, of course. But nothing is too daft for some of Poland’s lawmakers.

46 members of the Polish parliament have tabled a motion to name Jesus Christ as the ‘honorary King of the Republic of Poland’.

The lawmakers are from the governing Law and Justice; alongside junior members from the coalition, League of Polish Families.

There is an historical precedent to this mad move, however. The Virgin Mary was made Honorary Queen of Poland 350 years ago by King Jan Kazimierz (who must have been a lonely soul).

Luckily, the motion has little chance of passing through parliament. But it does give me a chance to name the Beatroot’s Understatement of the Year Award to Bishop Tadeusz Pieronek, who said of the wild and wacky idea:

"This kind of action, although it may stem from good will, sounds a bit like propaganda."
A bit like propaganda?

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

The Virgin Mary was made Honorary Queen of Poland 350 years ago by King Jan Kazimierz (who must have been a lonely soul).

I take offense in that statement. Jan Kazimierz's action had to do with loosing the war with Sweden, resulting in most of the coutry being under Swedish occupation. (This king was in general a complete disaster, but that is another matter.) Anyway, the Virgin Mary Queen of Poland cult is several hundred years old, so, even by the virtue of tradition shouldn't be equated with this, uhm, idea.

Regarding the proposal in question, I think that archbishop Sławoj Leszek Głódź put it best: "The MPs should rather be spending their time fasting and praying".

Anonymous said...

Doing a statistical analysis of the Polish parliament can be difficult when looking for the precise numbers of village idiots, thief’s, sexual deviants, plain sex offenders, traitors, malcontents, retards and giftless bastards. Not to mention people in multiple categories. This current proposed legislation will fix the number of retards at 46.

beatroot said...

No offense intended Op, I promise. As regards ‘lonely’ then just a few lines from wikipedia…

He had few friends among the Polish nobility (szlachta), as he openly sympathized with Austria and showed disregard and contempt for Polish culture….

In 1636 he returned to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and fell in love with Baroness Guldentern, but his desire to marry her was thwarted by King Władysław…..

John Casimir left no surviving children…


Sad old king.

Anonymous said...

If the Polish government is composed of so many useless twits and scoundrels as novak has it, why is this so? What does it say about Poles in general???

beatroot said...

Wooooahhhh Geezer! How are ya?

Of course, you could say the same about Americans. Look at that bunch of tossers on Capital Hill!

Would you honestly say that US politicians represent the Common Man? Of course not. Thing is; the profession of politician is so lowly thought of these days that only the most freakish egoists would even think of joining their ranks.

There is another factor. There is some element of representation in most parliaments. In Poland’s case what we have with at least 46 of these guys is a certain backwardness…like a good part of Poland (especially the parts of the east).

Anonymous said...

The keyword here is “backwardness”, a significant portion of this society about a third of it meets the definition of backward. It’s simultaneously backwards in terms of education, social values and economics. This is geographically focused in eastern Poland.

The two benefactors of this are the crack pot fringe politicians and the Catholic Church, both of these groups desire to perpetuate this state of affairs as long as possible.

Although the Catholic Church was a bastion of opposition to communism, in today’s Poland it’s proving to be itself an institution hindering Poland’s advance into the modern world.

There is a considerable state of denial about this in Poland rather than meaningful debate.

The recent news indicates they’re finding more commie collaborators in the church hierarchy than in the newsroom of TVN; it wouldn’t hurt to see the church loose some influence.

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Anonymous said...

He, he, he. So there is already a queen, and now there will be a king. In due time, can we expect little ones?