VATICAN II AND POLAND 173prose style that distinguished him from many of his colleagues;
and the unwavering support of Więź’s editor-in-chief, a future
dissident and prime minister of Poland: Tadeusz Mazowiecki.
One of Więź’s founding members, Eska became its pointper-
son early on for ecclesiology, pastoral life, and aggiornamento. His
first writings on the need for reform in the Church came in the
September 1958 issue of Więź, just one month before the death
of Pius XII elevated the reforming John XXIII to the throne of
St. Peter.143 Following the elderly pontiff ’s election, Eska wrote
regularly on the Church. Following the January 1959 announce-
ment of an upcoming ecumenical council, Mazowiecki suggested
that he consider collecting his essays into a single volume.
Published in 1963 during the Second Session, Eska’s book be-
came a manifesto of the ZNAK movement’s identification with
Vatican II. Its title, Kościół otwarty (An open church), spoke to his
hopes for reform not just within Polish Catholicism, but indeed
throughout the entire universal Church. Drawing extensively on
Karl Rahner, the essays assembled in the volume reevaluated,
among others, the Catholic Church’s pastoral future, the role of
the laity, and the place of ideology (especially so-called “integ-
rism” and “progressivism”) in the Church.144
The cornerstone of Eska’s open Catholicism lay in the recogni-
tion that the Catholic Church had become a “Diaspora Church.”145
By this, Eska meant that the vibrancy of Catholicism must be
judged not according to declared membership in the Church or
regular attendance at Mass, but by Catholics’ active efforts to re-
shape the world around them. Measured according to these crite-
ria, most believers of “good will” found themselves at odds with
some aspect of pre–Vatican II teaching, rendering them a “dias-
- Juliusz Eska, “O kierunek katolickiej formacji intelektualnej,” Więź, no. 5
(1958): 11–20. - Karl Rahner, Theological Investigations, trans. Karl-H. Krueger (London:
Darton, Longman, and Todd, 1966), 5:115. - Juliusz Eska, Kościół otwarty (Kraków: Znak, 1963), 107.