From the editor’s desk

Questions of allegiance

The relationship between Poland and Great Britain has historically been a warm one. This tone has continued following the arrival of a large number of Polish immigrants since the enlargement of the European Union in 2004. Community tensions have been minimal, and the British have put on a good display of hospitality to strangers. But to maintain that goodwill, it will be necessary to handle with great diplomatic skill what looks like the beginning of a tug-of-war over their allegiance, between the leadership of the Catholic Church in Poland and of the Catholic Church in England and Wales. Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor warned in an interview with a Polish news agency before Christmas that there was a danger that Polish immigrants, wanting to pray in their own language with their own priests and community activities, were creating a separate Church and thus were failing to integrate into the larger community. Judging by reported remarks of his opposite number in Warsaw, Cardinal Jozef Glemp, some kind of Polish "Church within a Church" was precisely what the Catholic bishops of Poland wanted.

The situation is complicated by the existence of a long-established Polish Mission, set up with the agreement of the bishops of England and Wales, with 100 priests and twice as many congregations, including some churches devoted exclusively to the Polish community. Since 1948, following a deal done with Cardinal Bernard Griffin, they have been answerable to the Polish bishops, an ecclesiological anomaly that was perhaps acceptable when the greater part of the Polish community consisted of involuntary exiles, members of the brave Polish forces who were stranded in Britain after the Second World War. Barred from their homeland by Yalta, their hearts never left Poland: they were "Poland abroad", as their compatriot Pope John Paul II told them when he visited England in 1982.

This exceptional approach is less appropriate today, and needs rethinking. Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor is right to apply some of the lessons that Britain has painfully learned regarding other immigrant groups, particularly Pakistanis and Bangladeshis. The lesson is that if such groups insist on creating ghettos, physically or mentally, sooner or later a mood of resentment and alienation sets in that feeds on injustices, real or imagined. Community relations in Britain are not Cardinal Glemp's responsibility, but he is not entitled to disregard the consequences of a policy that could be harmful to British society. Polish cultural and linguistic preferences can be accommodated in the short term, but in the long run this is not a good strategy.

Unity in diversity is a fine principle; but diversity by itself does not serve the common good. Polish Catholics have an important contribution to make to British Catholic life, and it is very welcome. Catholic parishes, and Catholic schools even more so, are often thoroughly ethnically and racially mixed, and a common faith plays a key role in building up a sense of a shared community. If Catholic hierarchies overseas had claimed jurisdiction over each ethnic minority group of Catholics in Britain - starting with the Irish in the nineteenth century, say - and insisted on following their own pastoral strategies irrespective of what others were doing and disregarding the local episcopacy, the Catholic Church in Britain would never have acquired that sense of unity which is one of its best characteristics. It would be, instead, a house divided against itself.