Security Service Archives as Sources of Ambivalent Affects as Exemplified by Communist Interference in the Culture and Tradition of Funeral Rituals at the Catholic Burial of Archbishop Michał Godlewski in Kraków in 1956

The text attempts to present the mechanisms of generating ambivalent affections on the part of the ‘people’s’ authorities towards the Catholic Church represented by the hierarchy and the clergy as well as the faithful. For this purpose, methods of limiting religious freedoms were used in the form of a presented description of the behaviour of the communist secular authorities of that time and the opposing attitude of the clergy to the culture and tradition of funerary rituals in the form of the Catholic burial of Archbishop Michał Godlewski in Kraków in May 1956. For this purpose, the actions of both opposing sides were reviewed, analysed and outlined, with particular emphasis on the use of mental violence by the communist apparatus of power. Actions to the detriment of the Catholic Church evoke negative emotions years later. The ‘people’s’ authorities tried to obtain relevant information in order to neutralise the clergy’s plans and intentions in advance, while marginalising the Catholic Church, which had existed in Krakow for centuries, and its traditions based on customary, secular and canon law. Particularly negative feelings and reactions arise from the communist authorities’ deliberate, malicious obstruction of the planned funeral activities, as well as from the conformist attitudes of some clergy who are agents of the security apparatus. This event illustrates the deliberate actions of the communist “people’s” government in rugging the Church to the margins of social life, secularising the nation and depreciating centuries-old Catholic traditions.