Poland is a Catholic country — in spades. Some ninety-seven percent of the population claims Roman Catholicism as their religion, though estimates of practicing Catholics is around seventy percent.

Of this seventy percent, I’m not sure how much of it is from habit and from true faith. I’ve had many a discussion about this with friends here about it. It calls to mind a college professor who’d “accepted Christ” at age five, which seems more from environment than from inner conviction. Regardless, the vast majority of Poles go through the motions, anyway. And certainly, many of them are devout and sincere.

There are quite a few who go to daily mass. It’s mainly elderly women, judging from the small stream of people I see leaving the church. This raises a question: how does one draw the line between sincerity and habit? And what if it seems only to be habit despite the individual’s protests that it’s not? Pious until proven habitual? Or maybe I’m begging the question of them being mutually exclusive.

This Catholic piety spills over into every facet of life here, something striking to someone coming from a relatively irreligious country like the States. Separation of church and state — a completely foreign concept here.

One of the many results of this piety is the proliferation of chapels —roadside chapels, yard chapels, even gable chapels.

Roadside Chapels

Roadside chapel just outside of KiczoryRoadside chapels are everywhere in Poland. They’re by highways (or the Polish approximation of “highways”) and roads you think are probably traveled once a year.

And they’re all different: from small, simple, covered crucifixes to elaborate buildings.

I’ve rarely seen people there praying, but it does happen occasionally. It seems to be most common around high holidays in the spring and summer when the weather is conducive to spending all that time outside praying. And in many ways, it’s quite admirable, that kind of religious dedication.

Some Protestants might suggest that building chapels like this is not necessary, that no building contains God.

Theological differences aside, it’s still a pleasant idea for me, even as a non-believer.