VATICAN II AND POLAND 179into his hands.166 This illegal leaking of confidential drafts by a lay
auditor made it possible for Zabłocki to write a serious intellec-
tual history of the pastoral constitution’s development, published
in Polish two years after the Council’s conclusion.167
Covering the Council
Meanwhile, the contacts made by Turowicz in Rome literally
shaped the week-by-week Polish reception of the Second Vatican
Council as it unfolded. For all of the devastating repressions suf-
fered by the Catholic Church in Poland during the Communist
period, those same years were also a time of unprecedented cul-
tural, intellectual, and social engagement and leadership for the
Polish laity. Poland was the only country behind the Iron Curtain
that was able to send “independent” Catholic activists, who then
received official credentials as journalists in the Vatican press of-
fice, allowed to observe portions of the Council. Given this ac-
cess, the “open Catholics” achieved an authoritative voice as they
mediated the Council back to Poland.
As with the bishops, passports were granted or withheld to
lay journalists for any number of reasons: some strategic, some
ad hoc. Yet, with exceptions few and far between, Communist Po-
land had journalists on the ground in Rome for all of the sessions
of the Second Vatican Council. This on-the-ground presence clear-
ly mattered for the Council’s reception back home—in particular,
for the active young Catholic intellectuals waiting each day with
bated breath for news from Rome, seeking to understand the
transformations of their Church underway in the Vatican.168
The undisputed leader among Polish Catholic mediators of the
- Zabłocki, Dzienniki, 1:561.
- Zabłocki, Kościół i świat współczesny: Wprowadzenie do soborowej konstytucji
pastoralnej “Gaudium et spes” (Kraków: Znak, 1967). - Friszke, Oaza na Kopernika, 75–87.