The Polish Peasant in Europe and America Volume 5 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1920 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER III THE SUPER-TERRITORIAL ORGANIZATION OF POLISHAMERICAN SOCIETY Attempts to unify all the Polish colonies in America into one social body began nearly 50 years ago. Thus in 1873 Priest Gieryk of. Detroit planned some kind of super-territorial institution in which the representatives of various coTonies would meet and manage the common affairs of the American Poles. But this plan, though Tater supported by one of the best Polish-American organizers, Priest W. Barzynski, failed completely. The failure was inevitable, for the organization began as a vague association of priests, who as such represented their respective parishes. It meant thus implicitly the use of the parish system as a basis of the super-territorial system. But the parish is, as we have seen, essentially a territorial institution with all its activities concentrated upon the local Polish-American group. There are hardly any practical interests common to all the Polish parishes in this country, and a super-territorial organization with the parish as the unit would have nothing to do. Priest Barzynski in spite of all his ability and influence could not even induce all of the parishes in Chicago to form one social body; their solidarity has never gone beyond cooperation in a few public manifestations of a national character. It even proved impossible to create a formal superterritorial organization of all the official leaders of parishes, 1. e., the Polish-American clergy, for the latter belonged to many different dioceses and did not constitute any one unit of the Roman Catholic hierarchy. The aim of the Order of the Resurrectionists, which from the beginning played a very important part in PolishAmerican life, seems to have been precisely to create a unified body...