(LifeSiteNews) – The current government of Poland seems to have in its gun sights the Catholic faith that has sustained the country for over a thousand years, consoling and sanctifying the nation despite war, partitions, and communist dictatorship.

Headed by former European Council president Donald Tusk, the government has fired at parents’ constitutional right to have their children instructed by schools in the Catholic faith. The courts have stepped in, but the Tusk government means to charge ahead despite the pause placed on its attempt to undermine catechesis.

RELATED: Incarcerated Polish priest is a political prisoner of new gov’t, lawyer says

Marek Puzio, a senior analyst at the Warsaw-based Ordo Iuris Institute for Legal Culture, sent LifeSiteNews an exclusive statement concerning the Polish government’s flouting of the Constitutional Tribunal:

In Poland, religion lessons in schools are an optional class, which is organized at the request of parents or adult students. Such a solution respects the constitutional right of parents to raise their children according to their own beliefs. In addition, the Concordat, which has regulated relations between Poland and the Holy See since 1998, imposes certain obligations on the state in the sphere of religious instruction in public school, in particular the obligation to organize religious lessons for those who express an interest in such lessons.

Therefore, the Polish Constitutional Court, in a decision dated August 29, 2024, granted the request of the First President of the Supreme Court by suspending the application of the provisions of the decree of the Minister of Education dated July 26, 2024, which changes the conditions and manner of organizing religious instruction in public kindergartens and schools.

The aforementioned regulation contains, among other things, regulations that allow students of different years to be combined in religion classes, including in situations where more than 6 students of a given age class have registered for religion. Previous regulations excluded the possibility of forming groups with pupils of different ages if a given age class would have at least 7 students attending religion.

The changes brought about by the new decree could thus lead to a reduction in the number of religious lessons in schools, and therefore to a reduction in the number of teachers, and to the spread of a situation in which students of different ages, ie. at different stages of development, will be taught in the same group.

Significantly, Poland’s Minister of Education decided to implement the proposed changes by decree, which means the changes are de facto based on a one-person decision that was made without reaching the required agreement with the authorities of churches and other religious associations. For it is impossible to consider as such an agreement merely offering the churches an opportunity to express a non-binding opinion. Meanwhile, the Polish Minister of Education is directly bound by Article 12(2) of Poland’s Law of September 7, 1991 on the Education System to reach a consensus on such matters.

As the First President of the Supreme Court pointed out, the Education Minister’s decree also violates Article 25(3) of the Polish Constitution and the principle of consensual regulation of relations between the state and churches and other religious associations that follows from it.

Our Constitutional Tribunal, which is yet to rule on the constitutionality of the provisions of the Minister of Education’s decree of July 26, 2024, therefore found merit in the First President of the Supreme Court’s request to grant a provisional order suspending the application of the challenged provisions of the decree.

By claiming that the Constitutional Tribunal’s ruling has no legal effect and should not be complied with, Poland’s Education Minister Barbara Nowacka undermines the principles of a democratic state ruled by law and separation of powers. The announcements of the Ministry of Education on this issue can only lead to chaos in the application of the law in Poland and a situation in which in some Polish schools the existing regulations on the organization of religious lessons will be applied, while other schools will take into account the changes resulting from the regulation of the Minister of Education suspended by the Constitutional Tribunal.

Earlier this month, the Church in Poland released a letter of protest entitled “With care for the homeland,” in which it listed the ways in which the Tusk regime is violating the nation’s conscience. According to English-language news site Notes from Poland, these include:

… improper treatment of those arrested, introducing the ‘right’ to kill a human being by extending the possibility of performing abortion up to the ninth month of a child’s life, departing from moral values in many areas of social life, spreading hatred, promoting antagonisms, managing conflicts in the social space, marginalizing the importance of religion, taking away the right to practise faith and eliminating religious symbols from the public sphere.

The document reminded readers that Christianity has always been the foundation of Polish life, saying, “Let’s remember that Poland is our common home, and the Christian heritage has been its foundation for centuries.”

Poland traces its “baptism” to the 966 AD christening of Mieszko I, the first leader of what would become the Polish nation.

RELATED: Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk is subverting democracy to push abortion on Poland