The Roman Catholic clergy and the notion of Lithuanian national identity

ENThe Polish-Lithuanian state (or the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth) did not exist on the political map of nineteenth century Europe. Following the third partition of the Catholic state (1795), the Russian Empire annexed the larger part of it. However, the memory of statehood endured and occasionally burst out in spectacular ways (such as the Uprisings of 1830-31 and 1863-64). The suppression of the 1863-64 Uprising might be considered as the symbolic onset of the process that separated the notion of modern (ethnolinguistic) Lithuania from that of Polish-Lithuanian statehood (thus also the concept of historical Lithuania). At the end of the nineteenth century, the Lithuanian national movement was already asserting the idea of modern Lithuania in the form of political programs. Although among these programs there was no specific attempt to emphasize particular confessions (even those of Christian Democrats), Catholicism was always implicit in the Lithuanian national movement, and its attitudes were expressed in the illegal press. This Catholic tendency (which also included laymen) strived to sustain the status of Catholicism in the Russian Empire (where the national religion belonged to the Orthodox Church). Besides, it was looking for a place for the Catholic Church in the ethnolinguistically defined modern Lithuania that was starting to be designed. When we talk about "Lithuanian nationalism," we define the nation as a territory, culture, and an idea of citizenship that is built upon a belief in the equality of every individual. In contrast, in the premodern period, "nation" essentially meant the upper social stratum/estate. At the end of the nineteenth-century, then, "Lithuanian nation" signified continuity with the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, that is, a united Polish- Lithuanian state. At the end of the nineteenth century, the broader Catholic Church lost its unifying function for specifically Lithuanian Roman Catholic clergy. [Extract, p. 84]