148 PIOTR H. KOSICKI
The Business of the Council
To determine which bishops would go to Rome, Wyszyński estab-
lished several ground rules prior to the First Session. Their pur-
pose was to preempt the tactics of the Polish security apparatus.
If the ordinary bishop of a diocese did not receive a passport, the
auxiliary bishop would not go, either. If a bishop received a pass-
port without having formally requested one, that bishop would
not go.
There was, however, one bishop for whom Wyszyński consis-
tently went to the mat with Poland’s Office of Confessional Af-
fairs: Wrocław’s apostolic administrator, Bolesław Kominek. This
archbishop was the personification of Poland’s campaign to gain
control over religious life in its formerly German western terri-
tories. As Wyszyński wrote in October 1962, “It is necessary to
underscore at every turn the unity of those bishops [from the
western territories] with the Polish episcopate, for that is in the
interest also of Polish raison d’État.” 71
Wyszyński made it clear to every bishop headed for Rome
that he had certain expectations. The Polish bishops met weekly
on Thursday afternoons in Wyszyński’s Roman apartment. There,
he handed out assignments. Bishops would only address the top-
ics that he had chosen for them, even if these were not their re-
spective areas of expertise. And yet, when they did speak, Polish
bishops spoke not simply on their own behalf, but for the entire
national episcopate.
By the same token, the Polish primate consistently kept the
Poles out of the larger ad hoc organizations that formed in the
course of the Council. The best known among these were the “pro-
gressive” Domus Mariae and the “conservative” Coetus Interna-
tionalis Patrum (which included Holy Office prefect Alfredo Car-
dinal Ottaviani and future Society of St. Pius X founder Marcel
- Quoted in Raina, Kardynał Wyszyński, 4:24.