Well, I saw this photo today:
Note the Polish state's flags draped -in a church- along side the Papal flag. Although popular opinion holds up Poland as some kind of Catholic fortress, it's likely safe to assume that the Polish state is like any other state, and I don't see why one would want to sully a Church with the local state's flag anywhere. People often say "Catholic Poland" as if the nation-state and the Religion were inseparable. People used to say this about "Catholic Ireland."
To steal an idea from Vincent Twomey - During centuries of English Protestant oppression, the Irish equated being Catholic with being a good Irish nationalist and vice versa. Being Catholic became a political act. That's a bad thing, and for whatever reason, it didn't end well. The Church is in dissaray in Ireland, seemingly in far worse shape than other European Catholic countries like Spain and Italy and Portugal.
This may have something to do with the fact that Irish Catholicism is a gray, dour, joyless version of Catholicism (due, according to Twomey, to domination from Victorian England and to Jansenism), but I also wonder if it has something to do with the traditional connection to Irish nationalism. Irish Catholicism becomes political and ceases to be about Christ. Americans should pay attention.
