The removal of religious education from schools

This essay by Aleksandra Mrozowska offers a legal analysis of the demand to remove religious education from public schools, advanced by left-liberal politicians and activists under the banner of "worldview neutrality." The author argues that this demand has no basis in either the Polish Constitution or international law. Polish law guarantees the right to religious instruction in schools at multiple levels: Article 53(4) of the Constitution permits catechesis as a school subject, Articles 48(1) and 53(3) protect the right of parents to raise their children in accordance with their own convictions, and Article 12(1) of the 1993 Concordat with the Holy See imposes on the state an obligation to organize religious education classes in public schools. The right to catechesis is further confirmed by the Education System Act, the School Education Law, and the Regulation of the Minister of National Education of 1992.

The author examines specific political and activist initiatives aimed at removing religion from schools — including the 2019 bill on the secular state, the "Secular School" bill, and the "Farewell, Religion!" campaign — arguing that what unites them is open hostility toward the Catholic Church rather than sound legal analysis. Supporters of the "secular state" sometimes invoke Article 25(2) of the Constitution, which speaks of the ideological impartiality of public authorities. The author notes, however, that this provision does not exclude religious expression from the public sphere — on the contrary, as the Constitutional Tribunal has emphasized, impartiality means ensuring that everyone is able to exercise the rights flowing from religious freedom.

In her conclusion, the author finds that any attempt to strip students of the right to catechesis in school constitutes a violation of Articles 25, 48, and 53 of the Polish Constitution, as well as of the Concordat and a number of statutes. The idea of a "secular state" as understood by its proponents is incompatible with the Polish constitutional order and is reminiscent of the absolute separation of church and state introduced by the Constitution of the Polish People's Republic of 1952. Calls for the removal of religious education from schools are therefore an attempt to curtail the rights of Catholics, with no grounding in sound legal interpretation.