Support Team of Radio Maryja in the service of God, the Church, Homeland and the Polish Nation

On 17 June 2011 the court in Torun rejected the motion, presented by Fr Tadeusz Rydzyk’s defenders, to send to the Constitutional Tribunal the legal question whether the regulations concerning public collections were in congruence with the Constitution. Referring to these matters the Support Team of Radio Maryja in the service of God, the Church, Homeland and the Polish Nation issued a special communiqué on 20 June:
On Friday, 17 June 2011, the District Court in Torun issued a verdict to sustain the fine, imposed on the Director of Radio Maryja Fr Tadeusz Rydzyk, concerning his alleged conducting a public collection. The verdicts of the Courts in Torun evoke anxiety and serious reflections. If one looks at these verdicts taking into account many earlier decisions of the state institutions concerning this and similar matters, it is justifiable to suppose that these activities aimed at both restricting the creative innovative initiatives and at discriminating the environment of Catholics participating in civil and evangelisation actions conducted by Radio Maryja.
As our communiqué concerns only the theme of geothermal energy, appearing in the above-mentioned court verdicts, we stress the characteristic sequence of events preceding the release of the verdicts. At the beginning of the endeavour in question Radio Maryja opened its microphones to spread information about the geothermal resources in Poland and possibilities of their exploitation. The authors of the idea of using geothermal energy knew that it would be best to show the purposefulness of the idea by its practical realisation. The Lux Veritas Foundation decided to realise this pioneering idea whereas Radio Maryja supported this initiative as its media patron. Consequently, there were programmes about the state of the preparations; there were communiqués about initiatives leading to the realisation and research initiatives. Listeners expressed their interests in the development of the project in their phone calls to the radio and by sending letters. The project was pioneering. The Foundation applied to the National Fund for Environment Protection and Water Management for subsidies. After many detailed analyses the application was accepted and appropriate agreements were signed. Drillings started. The media patron reported about the realisation of the project, which mobilised other centres to prepare similar projects. After the parliamentary elections one of the first movements of the PO-PSL government was to begin controlling the project and then terminating the agreement with the Foundation, and under the new authority the National Fund for Environment Protection and Water Management withdrew its support for the project. Radio Maryja informed about it since its listeners demanded that. They also wanted to recompense the effects of withdrawal of the subsidies granted. They spontaneously created a committee, in accordance to the provisions of the donations law, that sent a request including the content-related justification, to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Administration asking for permission to organise a public collection. But the Ministry did not give its permission. The appeal was also unsuccessful. Instead the police reacting to the motion of the person who was monitoring the programmes of Radio Maryja (‘from civil motives’) moved for punishing Father Director for his alleged ‘organisation of public collection.’ The fact that the court did not consider the arguments of the defence in its verdicts during its consecutive sittings evokes anxiety. For example, the court did not want to notice that the communiqués about the development of works concerning the geothermal resources did not include the bank account of the Foundation. The court did not also decide to ask the Constitutional Tribunal about the interpretation of rather imprecise recordings in the law and documents of the lower administration. Since the sentence concerned the offence described in the regulation of the Ministry of Internal Affairs regarding the donations law but according to the Polish law only an act (and not a regulation) can be forced on a citizen under the rigour of penalisation. Therefore, we treat the verdict of guilty as another limitation of civil liberties. All these things lead to the diagnosis that Blessed John Paul II uttered rightly, speaking about our times in his homily delivered in Skoczow, ‘Using the slogans of tolerance in public life and mass media, sometimes big intolerance, and perhaps increasingly bigger, is being spread. Believers are experiencing it painfully. One can see tendencies to push them to the margin of social life…’ The most important thing is not to desert, knowing the diagnosis. We should still take on important tasks and we cannot give up our creative activities.
Soon we are going to make our traditional, annual pilgrimage to Our Lady of Jasna Gora. Among the matters that we want to pray for will be the one presented in this communiqué. We strengthen Father Director with our common prayers and with God’s help; and let our attitudes and involvement support his indeed heroic service to the truth of Lord God, the Church, Homeland and the Polish Nation.

On behalf of the Support Team of Radio Maryja the text was signed by Prof. Dr. engineer Janusz Kawecki, President.
Warsaw – Krakow, 20 June 2011

"Niedziela" 27/2011

Editor: Tygodnik Katolicki "Niedziela", ul. 3 Maja 12, 42-200 Czestochowa, Polska
Editor-in-chief: Fr Jaroslaw Grabowski • E-mail: redakcja@niedziela.pl