FIVE
VATICAN II
AND POLAND
- • • Piotr H. Kosicki
Five decades after the Second Vatican Council, the Catholic
Church’s place in Polish public life remains bitterly contested.
Polish commentators—Catholic and secular alike—regularly ques-
tion whether Vatican II had any practical impact on Poland.1 The
few Catholics who style themselves as reformist “children of
Vatican II” must fight tooth and nail to make themselves heard.2
Opponents of the Council’s reforms—including the excommuni-
cated “Lefebvrist” Society of St. Pius X—have seen to the trans-
lation and circulation in Polish of their diatribes against Vati-
can II.3 Even the Polish episcopate seems uncertain about the
conciliar legacy: in 2014, its deputy head equated Catholic re-
formism with “the uncompromising, public discrediting of those
who stand in defense of the truth”—in other words, the road “to
relativism.”4 Polish commentators seem right to wonder if the
127- See, especially, the May 1999 special issue of the Znak monthly devoted to
the legacy of Vatican II for Poland; “Co Sobór zmienił w Polsce? Ankieta ‘Znaku,’ ”
Znak, no. 528 (1999): 31–136. (Unless otherwise noted, all translations from the
French, Italian, and Polish in this chapter are the author’s.) - Zbigniew Nosowski, ed., Dzieci Soboru zadają pytania: Rozmowy o Soborze
Watykańskim II (Warsaw: Biblioteka WIĘZI, 1996). - Marcel Lefebvre, Oni Jego zdetronizowali: Od liberalizmu do apostazji, tragedia
soborowa, 2nd ed. (Warsaw: Te Deum, 2002). - Marek Jędraszewski, “Obecność Kościoła w życiu publicznym” (June 12,