European Christian Political Movement
Here is the new link to the European Christian Political Movement
http://www.ecpm.info/
Interesting site... I note there are two parties in germany. (Assume Zentrum is catholic, as its pre-war namesake was.) Gl;ad to see the CHP on the list too)
And In Poland, the Christian Party is actually in power!!!!
Concerning Poland, the Law and Justice party is no longer in power. You should also note that the Law and Justice party is not formally a Christian party nor a member party of the European Christian Political Movement (ECPM). Law and Justice came about as a merger of about 5 parties, including 2 Christian parties, so within Law and Justice as a national-conservative party there are some organised Christian individuals and individual Christian politicians.
Concerning Germany, Zentrum is not an exclusively Catholic party anymore, but it is certainly a very small party. There is now also a new force in German politics, which in the long run should become a unified voice of the Christians in German federal politics, the Party for Labour, Environment and Family (AUF, Christians for Germany).
Concerning governing parties, the Christian Union party of the Netherlands is currently in the government coalition, together with the liberal-conservative CDA and the social-democratic PvdA.
And last weekend the Homeland Union - Lithuanian Christian Democrats won the first round of the national parliamentary elections.
The site of the youth branche of ECPM also holds some interesting information:
www.ecpyn.org
And In Poland, the Christian Party is actually in power!!!!
Given the date of this original post, I assume you mean PiS (Law and Justice). They are not Christian, but in 2005 formed a coalition government with the L.P.R. (League of Polish Families) who is legitimately Catholic. PiS is about as Christian as the C.P.C. is; they are the standard Republican/C.P.C.-style "conservative" party that pays lip-service to pro-life issues to gain votes. Their government was like a hypothetical situation where the C.P.C. and the C.H.P. form a coalition government -- the C.H.P. demanding pro-life and pro-family policies in return for propping the government. It was the leader of the L.P.R. Roman Giertych, who as Minister of Education, shot-down sodomite indoctrination in the schools, not PiS, for example. Also, PiS torpedoed a private members' bill from L.P.R. attempting to make abortion completely illegal.
The one downside of this was, that the L.P.R. unwittingly gave PiS false "pro-life" credentials as they took credit among the social conservatives for the good policies that were really the L.P.R.'s doing. Then in the next election the L.P.R. lost all of their seats in return for a modest rise in PiS seats and now they have a coalition government between Civic Platform (similar to the U.S. Democratic Party) and the communists.
I am not going to defend the Law and Justice party here, but I will point out some facts to take into consideration, for I think your analysis of the Polish political spectrum is a bit inacurate.
As I allready pointed out Law and Justice came about as a merger of about five previous parties, two of which were Christian. Law and Justice is in fact a pro life party, as are to my knowledge all parties on the right in Poland, as Poland is a very catholic country, compared to the rest of Europe or North America.
To suggest that Law and Justice is comparable to the Conservatives in Canada or the Republicans in the US, is rather daring, since the entire political spectrum in Poland and the US or Canada is hard to compare, Poland being a European country (with a social market economy et cetera). I would rather say that Law and Justice would be the right wing of the US Republicans, and the Civic Platform the left wing of the US Republicans (rather than the Democrats), that is on social issues, on economic issues the Civic Platform is more right wing, laissez-faire, than the Law and Justice party.
Concerning the abortion law, we have to consider that Poland allready has a very strict abortion law, in fact the most strict in Europe, even stricter than Malta and the Irish Republic.
Concerning the League of Polish Families, which surely has some strong pro life positions, it was hardly an effective or credible political force. People such as Maciej and Roman Giertych have previously been involved in fascist parties or organisations. When the LPR got into the parliament in the first place, this was mainly because of low voter turn out, protest voters and elderly people among whom Radio Maria is very popular. This Polish radio channel is known for feeding antisemitism, for which it has been reprimanded by the Vatican several times allready.
I would warn you not to use the pro life position as the only sjibbolet for a Christian party. Which is clear in the case of the League of Polish Families, this is a nationalist (I am not talking about patriotism or love of country which can be a good thing, but about the bad kind of nationalism) party, with some Catholic aspects to it, since Catholicism is considered a part of Polishness. Other nationalist parties such as the Belgian 'Flemish Interest' and the Italian 'National Alliance' (which came forth out of Mussolini's party) have adopted pro life positions just to lure Christian voters.
So, I would not choose to compare the CHP to the Polish LPR if I were you, there may be similarities in life and family issues, but I sincerely hope that the similarity ends there.
The current Polish government does not include the Communists at all. The current government coalition consists of the (liberal-conservative) Civic Platform and the (Christian democratic and agrarian) Polish People's Party.
Admittedly, my Polish is not nearly good enough for me to read news from Poland itself, so my information is either second hand from my inlaws or from English news sources. My impression of L.P.R. was certainly much different from yours. I read the English version of their website and their platform seemed pretty good to me.
I have always been impressed by the published comments I've seen coming from the L.P.R. leaders, such as when Maciej Giertych defended Generalissimo Franco and Europe's Christian heritage in the European Parliament, or when Roman Giertych said "...there is no room, nor will there ever be any room for homosexual activism within the school system in Poland on my watch." after sacking the Director of Polish In-Service Teachers, Miroslaw Sielatycki, for publishing homosexual propaganda for use in Polish schools.
Certainly, I do not contest the valuable contribution to the political debate that a politician like Maciej Giertych has to make to European politics, I merely want to warn that he and his party do not draw solely on Christian political thought, but in a far greater extent on nationalist thought.
Whilst certainly agreeing on some points with Giertych's defence of the Spanish Franco regime, I would not join him in his overenthusiastic endorsement, besides his contribution was beside the point, because it went outside the topic of the debate in which it was made.
Furthermore I feel that it is very sad that the chances for Christian politics in Spain are virtually non-existent, this is very much due to the connections between conservative catholicism and Franco falangism, this should be a warning for all politically active Christians not to become involved in any way with any kind of crypto-fascism or national-conservatism. The startingpoint for Christians in politics should always be the Gospel, rather than tradition or nation.
Can anyone confirm if those Christian parties that do form governments must often adopt more incrementalist policies to achieve their goals? I'm sure that once they reach that stage, pragmatic considerations must join hands with idealism.
These parties operate in such political systems that they can in practice never form a government on their own, they always have to form a coalition of parties to support the government, so obviously there have to be some compromises, but not to the principles of course, only in the execution.