186 PIOTR H. KOSICKI
Skrzypczak argues, “The Polish bishops themselves, particularly
in the last two conciliar sessions, deemed him to be their official
representative, if not their leader, conferring upon him the right
to take the floor in their collective name.”187 Over the course of
the four conciliar sessions, the bishop from Kraków spoke in ple-
nary session a total of eight times and delivered sixteen written
communiqués to the Council secretariat.
Wojtyła had four core areas of interest: ecclesiology, relations
with the secular world, human freedom, and evangelization.188
Pastoral and theological issues were most important to Wojtyła.
Polish auditor Stefan Swieżawski argued that his friend had played
a decisive role in shaping Vatican II’s reinvention “of the paschal
mystery, a central issue in theology.”189 Meanwhile, French jour-
nalists ranked him behind only cardinals Bea and König as a driv-
ing force behind Nostra aetate, the Council’s declaration on non-
Christian religions.190
Religious freedom was the topic on which Wojtyła spoke most
often. Like his lay friends who promoted “open Catholicism” in
the pages of Więź or Tygodnik Powszechny, Wojtyła, too, sought
to turn Vatican II into a weapon in the struggle against religious
“indifferentism.”191 In a speech delivered in plenary session on
September 22, 1965, Wojtyła insisted that the Council must state
clearly that religious freedom is “deeply personalistic in the Chris-
tian sense, rather than derived from liberalism or indifferent-
ism.”192 The archbishop pointedly distinguished between freedom
of conscience and unrestricted libertinism. Freedom of conscience
- Skrzypczak, Karol Wojtyła na Soborze Watykańskim II, 19.
- Ibid., 113.
- “Określanie tożsamości: Ze Stefanem Swieżawskim rozmawiają Anna
Karoń-Ostrowska i Józef Majewski,” in Dzieci Soboru zadają pytania, 27. - Skrzypczak, Karol Wojtyła na Soborze Watykańskim II, 71.
- This is the same language used by Mazowiecki, “Odnowa polskiego katoli-
cyzmu.” - Quoted in Skrzypczak, Karol Wojtyła na Soborze Watykańskim II, 312–13.