VATICAN II AND POLAND 155land since at least the early-modern period. Mary was symboli-
cally crowned “Queen of Poland” in 1656 by King Jan Kazimierz
to honor the successful Polish defense one year earlier of the
Częstochowa fortress at Jasna Góra, home of the icon of the Black
Madonna. In August 1956, with Primate Wyszyński still under
house arrest, the acting head of the Polish episcopate launched
the Great Novena, a decade-long celebration of “Poland’s surren-
der into maternal servitude to Mary, Mother of the Church, in re-
turn for the freedom of Christ’s Church.”86
As it happens, the two most prominent Polish clerics of
the twentieth century, Wyszyński and Karol Wojtyła, indepen-
dently arrived at mystical devotion to the Virgin Mary: Wojtyła,
through his experience of forced labor during World War II,87
and Wyszyński, during his years of house arrest in the mid-
1950s.88 It was Wojtyła who had announced at Vatican II during
the First Session that proposed schemata on the Church and on
the Holy Virgin Mother must be connected. He explained, “in the
fact that the Holiest Mary is, in the Church—the Mystical Body
of Christ—both the Mother of the Head and the Mother of all
members and cells of the Body, one finds at the same time her
motherhood over the Church itself.”89
The principal argument against elevating Mary to “Mother of
the Church” was that strengthening the Cult of Mary went di-
rectly against the spirit of ecumenical dialogue with Orthodox
- On the devotional connections between Mary’s 1656 coronation, the 300th
anniversary celebration of that event in 1956, and the 1966 celebration of the mil-
lennium of Polish Christendom, see Raina, Jasnogórskie Śluby Narodu Polskiego; Jan
Kubik, The Power of Symbols against the Symbols of Power: The Rise of Solidarity and the
Fall of State Socialism in Poland (University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University
Press, 1994), 110–17. - George Huntston Williams, The Mind of John Paul II: Origins of His Thought
and Action (New York: Seabury Press, 1981), 279–84. - Wyszyński, Zapiski milenijne, 19.
- Karol Wojtyła, Communiqué, in Skrzypczak, Karol Wojtyła na Soborze
Watykańskim II, 197.