Church, Nation and State - Roman Dmowski

Translator's Preface

Church, Nation and State is the first, and to date only, translation of any book by Roman Dmowski. It is sad that such an influential man, to whom Poland owes her independence after 123 years, and who had significant contact with the English-speaking world, should be so unknown by it. "Why is this?" I asked myself, and thus sought to undertake the task of sharing Roman Dmowski's work with English speakers.

Where would Poland be, or would Poland be, without this outstanding statesman? May Poland give birth to many more such men! The Polish modernist painter Niewiadomski describes Dmowski as follows: "Had any spiritually healthy nation have him, it would count him among the best sons of the fatherland, would entrust him with responsible tasks, cherish in his lifetime, honor after his death."[1].

Roman Dmowski was highly idealistic, one may say that he had his head in the clouds, and yet, this brilliant theoretician's relentless deductive pragmatism, which could be compared to a hammer tirelessly grinding away at a rock, reveals a man with both feet firmly planted on the ground. This idealism makes him very appealing to the romantic spirit, deeply-rooted in the Polish temperament. All the while, his pragmatism tempered Romanticism's self-destructive tendency: the desire to be set alight through a noble deed. Indeed, Dmowski was an alternative to both the ill-prepared Polish uprisings, which had been doomed to fail, and to the defeatist pacifism, which Dmowski witnessed and condemned in this book.

Dmowski was concerned with providing properly articulated, concretized concepts with real representation in the physical world. His aptitude for properly articulating these ideas, as well as his fluency in six languages, helped him secure Poland's independence, and many would argue, as would I, that without Dmowski's work-intensive efforts, Poland would not have regained her independence. Dmowski was able to draw large segments of the middle-class to his ideas, as well as a significant portion of the Polish intellectual class, such as the world-renowned pianist Paderewski, writers such as Sienkiewicz, Makuszyński and many others, as well as international figures such as G.K. Chesterton.

Dmowski's views on certain subjects evolved over the years, but by the time he had written this book, they were already well-established. Thus, one reason I have translated this book is that it is a solid (though incomplete) look into Dmowski's matured outlook, meticulously crafted and thoroughly thought-through.

Worthy of note is that Dmowski was not religious for most of his life. He was Catholic, yes, but he did not practice religion. This changed by the time he began to write this book, when he began to consider Catholicism a serious part of his life. Because of this initial distance for most of Dmowski's life, his arguments involving the Church are very utilitarian, such as those of Charles Maurras, whose purely utilitarian treatment of the Church led to the papal condemnation of his Action Française, at the same placing its newspaper among the Church's List of Prohibited Books.[2] Church, Nation and State was written soon after Maurras's condemnation, in which Dmowski wished to make clear Poland's inseparability from Catholicism, ending the book with the declaration that religion is the greatest good, which cannot be sacrificed for any end.

Still, in making the case for a Catholic nation, Dmowski retains that very same utilitarian and biologically deterministic argumentation; the Spencerian worldview which had shaped his thinking remains apparent. This is very unorthodox for a Catholic author, and makes Church, Nation and State so unique to read.

Church, Nation and State is credited to have brought generations of Poles back to the Catholic faith and in so doing, loosened Poles from the grip of the agnostic positivism which had taken hold in the culture[3]. In Dmowski's obituary, the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano acknowledges Dmowski's role in this religious rebirth[4].

I wish this book to be seen, not as a mere historical document giving insight into the thoughts and beliefs of a bygone era, but rather as something which remains relevant, a strong impetus for my work on this translation. I wish to lay to rest an oft-alluded accusation by Dmowski's detractors who say that the ideas he postulated are anachronistic.

The aforementioned religious rebirth brings to mind Spengler's second religiousness, which Dmowski describes in this book, and which we see happening again today. We are witnessing growing anti-secularization trends brought about by reproductive forces, stemming from the positive correlation between religiousness and fertility. The counter-secularization hypothesis defends that secularism is expected to decline throughout the remainder of the 21st century in Europe and in industrial societies[5]. Indeed, this contemporary second religiousness and the resurgence of traditional values find their expression in whatever form is available; the resurgence of existing national movements being one such expression. In the case of Poland, it is expressed in the foundation laid by Dmowski and those who, whilst retaining the essence of his ideas and to whom they owe their ideological backbone, had broken away from him.-

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