THE study of Catholic antisemitism in Poland is complicated by two competing but equally problematic assumptions. The first is that some fundamental characteristic of the Church in Poland (or perhaps Christianity more generally) has inevitably and necessarily generated hostility towards the Jews. Jacob Katz reports, for example, that

In reference to Poland specifically, Ezra Mendelsohn claims that ‘both Polish nationalism and Polish Catholicism were by their very nature exclusive, antipluralistic, and antisemitic’. The second, alternative approach to Catholic antisemitism is an inversion of the first: the claim that the Church as such has been entirely innocent of prejudice, and that only a small handful of non-representative clerics have propagated hatred or intolerance. The best example of this defensive stance came from Cardinal Józef Glemp, the Polish primate, in a much-publicized sermon delivered in May 2000. Pope John Paul II had earlier instructed all Catholic institutions and local churches to confess publicly their historical sins, so as to approach the new millennium in a spirit of humility, contrition, and reconciliation. Cardinal Glemp's sermon of apology was presented during an open-air mass in the centre of Warsaw. After some words of praise for the Polish clergy, the primate offered his ‘confession’: