National Catholic Register portal reports that on May 12, 2026, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk announced that Poland would begin recognizing same-sex “marriages” performed in other European Union countries involving Polish citizens. The decision, prompted by rulings from the Court of Justice of the European Union (November 2025) and Poland’s Supreme Administrative Court (March 2026), would see such unions transcribed into Poland’s civil registry. Warsaw mayor Rafał Trzaskowski moved ahead of national legislation, issuing the first transcription on May 14. The digital affairs ministry proposed replacing “husband” and “wife” with gender-neutral terms in the civil registry system. Legal experts from Ordo Iuris, including communications director Olivier Bault, challenged the government’s approach as exceeding its authority under Article 18 of the Polish Constitution, which defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman. Despite internal coalition divisions and the veto power of the staunchly Catholic President Karol Nawrocki, the government pressed forward with what it framed as a mere administrative compliance with EU court rulings. This decision represents not merely a legal controversy but a profound moral and constitutional betrayal of the natural law and Catholic social teaching that Poland, as a historically Catholic nation, is bound to uphold.
The Sanctity of Marriage: An Immutable Doctrine of the Catholic Church
To comprehend the gravity of the Polish government’s decision, one must first understand the Catholic Church’s unchanging teaching on marriage — a teaching rooted not in human convention but in divine law. Marriage, as instituted by God, is a sacred covenant between one man and one woman, ordered toward the procreation and education of children and the mutual support of the spouses. This is not a mere disciplinary norm subject to revision; it is a truth revealed by God Himself and solemnly defined by the Church’s Magisterium.
Pope Pius XI, in his encyclical Casti Connubii (1930), declared with unmistakable clarity: “The matrimonial contract is of divine origin and has been raised by Christ Our Lord to the dignity of a sacrament.” The Pope condemned in the strongest terms any attempt to degrade marriage to a purely civil or contractual arrangement, warning that such degradation would lead to the dissolution of the family and, consequently, of civil society itself. He wrote that marriage “is not a mere human invention” but “was established by the authority of God,” and that its essential properties — unity and indissolubility — “derive from the natural law and from the divine law.”
Furthermore, the Syllabus of Errors of Pope Pius IX (1864) explicitly condemned the proposition that “The Church has not the power of establishing diriment impediments of marriage, but such a power belongs to the civil authority by which existing impediments are to be removed” (Proposition 68), as well as the claim that “By the law of nature, the marriage tie is not indissoluble, and in many cases divorce properly so called may be decreed by the civil authority” (Proposition 67). These condemnations are not relics of a bygone era; they are perennial truths of the Catholic faith, binding on all Catholics and, by extension, on all civil societies that claim to order themselves according to justice.
The Catechism of the Council of Trent further elaborates that marriage was elevated to a sacrament by Christ, conferring upon it a sanctity that no human power can diminish or redefine. The sacramental bond of marriage is a visible sign of Christ’s union with His Church — a union that is, by its very nature, exclusive, permanent, and ordered toward fruitfulness. To redefine marriage to include same-sex unions is not merely a legal innovation; it is a direct assault on the sacramental order established by God and a blasphemous distortion of the mystical union between Christ and His Church.
Article 18 of the Polish Constitution: A Shield Against Moral Anarchy
Article 18 of the Polish Constitution explicitly states: “Marriage, being a union of a man and a woman, as well as the family, motherhood and parenthood, shall be placed under the protection and care of the Republic of Poland.” This provision is not an arbitrary political compromise; it is a constitutional recognition of the natural law — the eternal law of God inscribed in the hearts of men and discernible by reason. The Polish Constitution, in this article, acknowledges what the Catholic Church has always taught: that marriage, as a union between a man and a woman, is the foundational cell of society and deserves the special protection of the state.
Olivier Bault of Ordo Iuris correctly identified the constitutional obstacle: “No ministerial decree can lawfully override this hierarchically layered framework.” The government’s attempt to circumvent Article 18 through administrative regulation — by merely changing document templates and introducing gender-neutral terminology — is not a technical update but a deliberate subversion of the constitutional order. It is an act of executive overreach that treats the Constitution as an inconvenient obstacle rather than the supreme law of the land.
St. Robert Bellarmine, in his treatise De Laicis, argued that civil law must conform to the natural law and, ultimately, to the divine law. When civil law contradicts the natural law, it loses its binding force in conscience, for “lex iniusta non est lex” — an unjust law is no law at all. The Polish government’s administrative maneuver to recognize same-sex “marriages” is precisely such an unjust law: it purports to legitimize a union that is, by its very nature, incapable of constituting marriage, and in doing so, it places itself in direct opposition to both the natural law and the Constitution it is sworn to uphold.
The European Union as an Instrument of Moral Subversion
The role of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in this affair cannot be overlooked. The CJEU’s November 2025 ruling, which compelled EU member states to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other member countries for administrative purposes, is yet another manifestation of the European Union’s systematic campaign to impose a secularist, relativist ideology on nations that retain vestiges of Christian civilization.
Pope Leo XIII, in his encyclical Immortale Dei (1885), warned that the separation of Church and State — a principle enshrined in the EU’s foundational treaties — leads inevitably to the exclusion of Christian truth from public life and the enthronement of human reason as the sole arbiter of morality. He wrote: “The Almighty, therefore, has given the charge of the human race to two powers, the ecclesiastical and the civil, the one being set over divine, and the other over human, each the highest in its kind, and each fixed within limits which are defined and determined by its own nature and special object.” When the civil power arrogates to itself the authority to redefine institutions established by God — such as marriage — it transgresses its legitimate bounds and sets itself against the divine order.
The CJEU’s ruling is not a neutral act of legal harmonization; it is an ideological imposition that seeks to erase the moral and cultural distinctiveness of Catholic nations like Poland. By compelling Poland to recognize same-sex “marriages,” the EU is effectively demanding that Poland betray its constitutional identity and its Catholic heritage. This is not cooperation; it is coercion — a form of soft totalitarianism that uses the machinery of supranational governance to enforce a radical secularist agenda.
Pius XI, in Quas Primas (1925), proclaimed the social reign of Christ the King over all nations and all aspects of public life. He declared: “His reign, namely, extends not only to Catholic nations or to those who, by receiving baptism according to law, belong to the Church, even though their erroneous opinions have led them astray or discord has separated them from love, but His reign encompasses also all non-Christians, so that most truly the entire human race is subject to the authority of Jesus Christ.” The EU’s attempt to impose same-sex “marriage” on Poland is a direct repudiation of Christ’s kingship — a declaration that the laws of the European Union supersede the laws of God.
The Apology to Same-Sex Couples: A Mockery of Justice
Perhaps the most revealing moment in this affair was Prime Minister Tusk’s public apology to same-sex couples in Poland, in which he said many had experienced “years of rejection and humiliation” from the state. This apology is not an act of compassion; it is a political weapon designed to delegitimize the constitutional and moral order that has protected marriage in Poland for centuries.
The language of “rejection and humiliation” is deliberately chosen to evoke the rhetoric of victimhood that characterizes the modern LGBT movement. It frames the defense of natural marriage — a defense rooted in divine law, natural law, and constitutional principle — as an act of bigotry and cruelty. This is a classic tactic of the revolution: to invert the moral order, presenting the defenders of truth as oppressors and the promoters of sin as victims.
The Catholic Church teaches that charity toward sinners does not require the legitimization of sin. Our Lord Jesus Christ, who said “Go and sin no more” to the woman caught in adultery, did not condone her actions but called her to conversion. True charity demands that we speak the truth in love, even when that truth is unwelcome. The Polish government’s apology is not charity; it is complicity in sin — a public endorsement of a lifestyle that the Church, following Scripture, has always condemned as gravely disordered.
St. Thomas Aquinas, in the Summa Theologiae, teaches that human law must be an ordinance of reason for the common good, promulgated by the authority of the community. Laws that contradict the natural law are not truly laws but “corruptions of law” (Summa Theologiae, I-II, q. 95, a. 2). The Polish government’s decision to recognize same-sex “marriages” is precisely such a corruption: it uses the machinery of the state to promote a falsehood and to undermine the common good by attacking the institution of marriage, which is the very foundation of the family and of civil society.
The Silence on the Supernatural: The Gravest Omission
What is most striking about the National Catholic Register article — and, indeed, about the entire public discourse surrounding this issue — is the complete absence of any reference to the supernatural dimension of marriage. The article frames the controversy entirely in terms of constitutional law, administrative procedure, and political coalition dynamics. There is no mention of the sacramental nature of marriage, no reference to the teaching of the Church, no acknowledgment that marriage is a divine institution that no human power can redefine.
This silence is not accidental; it is symptomatic of the naturalistic and secularist mentality that pervades modern discourse, even within Catholic media. When the supernatural is excluded from public life, all that remains is the material — the bureaucratic, the political, the legal. And in that impoverished framework, the defense of marriage is reduced to a constitutional technicality rather than a matter of eternal salvation.
Pius X, in Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907), identified this naturalism as one of the defining characteristics of Modernism — the “synthesis of all errors.” He condemned those who, “under the guise of more serious criticism and in the name of historical method, aim at such a development of dogmas as appears to be their corruption.” The reduction of marriage to a civil contract, subject to the whims of legislative and administrative bodies, is precisely the kind of doctrinal corruption that Pius X warned against.
The Lamentabili sane exitu decree of 1907 condemned the proposition that “The Church has not the power of establishing diriment impediments of marriage, but such a power belongs to the civil authority” — a proposition that is now being effectively enacted by the Polish government under pressure from the EU. The modernist error, condemned over a century ago, has become the operative principle of European governance.
The Complicity of the Post-Conciliar Structures
It is impossible to address this crisis without acknowledging the role of the post-conciliar structures in creating the conditions for such moral capitulation. Since the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), the conciliar sect has systematically undermined the Church’s teaching on marriage, sexuality, and the social reign of Christ the King. The “spirit of Vatican II” — that nebulous and destructive hermeneutic — has been used to justify a wholesale accommodation of the Church to the values of the secular world.
The post-conciliar “popes” have consistently failed to defend the indissolubility and sacramental nature of marriage with the clarity and firmness that the crisis demands. Instead, they have promoted a language of “accompaniment” and “mercy” that, in practice, amounts to the normalization of sin. The result is a Catholic laity and clergy who are confused, demoralized, and unable to articulate the Church’s teaching on marriage with conviction.
Poland, despite its deep Catholic heritage, has not been immune to this contagion. The fact that a Polish prime minister can publicly apologize for the state’s defense of natural marriage — and face no meaningful opposition from the country’s “bishops” — is a testament to the depth of the crisis. The post-conciliar hierarchy in Poland, like its counterparts across the world, has failed in its primary duty: to teach, govern, and sanctify the faithful. Instead of proclaiming the truth of Christ the King, they have retreated into bureaucratic silence, leaving the faithful exposed to the full force of the secularist onslaught.
Pius XI, in Quas Primas, warned: “If rulers and legitimate superiors will have the conviction that they exercise authority not so much by their own right as by the command and in the place of the Divine King, everyone will notice how religiously and wisely they will use their authority.” The Polish government’s decision is the antithesis of this principle: it exercises authority not in the name of Christ the King but in the name of the European Union and its secularist ideology.
The Duty of Resistance: Lex Iniusta Non Est Lex
The Catholic Church has always taught that there is no obligation to obey laws that contradict the natural law or the divine law. St. Peter himself declared: “We must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29). St. Thomas Aquinas affirmed that unjust laws do not bind in conscience and that resistance to such laws is not only permissible but may be obligatory (Summa Theologiae, I-II, q. 96, a. 4).
The Polish government’s decision to recognize same-sex “marriages” is an unjust law. It contradicts the natural law, the divine law, the teaching of the Catholic Church, and the Constitution of Poland. It is, therefore, null and void in conscience, and Catholics are not only free but duty-bound to resist it.
This resistance must take many forms: prayer, fasting, public protest, civil disobedience, and the formation of Catholic political movements committed to the restoration of the social reign of Christ the King. It must also include a frank and unflinching critique of the post-conciliar structures that have failed to provide the leadership necessary in this hour of crisis.
The situation in Poland is not unique; it is a microcosm of the global crisis facing Catholic nations. From Ireland to Argentina, from France to the Philippines, the same pattern repeats: secularist governments, emboldened by supranational institutions like the EU, impose anti-Christian policies, while the post-conciliar hierarchy offers little more than tepid protests and calls for “dialogue.” The time for dialogue is past. The time for resistance has come.
Conclusion: The Triumph of Christ the King Is Certain
The Polish government’s decision to recognize same-sex “marriages” is a grave moral and constitutional error. It contradicts the natural law, the divine law, the teaching of the Catholic Church, and the Constitution of Poland. It is an act of submission to the secularist ideology of the European Union and a betrayal of Poland’s Catholic heritage.
Yet, in the midst of this darkness, the Catholic must remember the promise of Our Lord: “The gates of hell shall not prevail against the Church” (Matthew 16:18). The conciar sect may falter, the nations may apostasize, but the truth of Christ endures forever. As Pius XI proclaimed in Quas Primas: “In the end, My Immaculate Heart will triumph.” — not the false promises of Fatima, manipulated by forces hostile to the Church, but the certain triumph of Christ the King over all the powers of darkness.
The Polish government, like all governments, is subject to the authority of Jesus Christ. Its laws, if they contradict His law, are null and void. Catholics in Poland and throughout the world must resist these unjust laws with courage and conviction, trusting not in human power but in the promise of Christ: “Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).
Source:
Poland to Register Same-Sex 'Marriages' From EU Countries (ncregister.com)
Date: 15.05.2026