VATICAN II AND POLAND 193alike, the Council constituted an unprecedented space of trans-
national engagement. Yet none of the players were able to escape
the constraints of Soviet Bloc ideology and Cold War geopolitics.
As a result, the immediate consequences of the Council were, in
fact, overwhelmingly negative.
The relationship between the episcopate and the PZPR de-
generated to its nadir at the very moment when the Holy See was
most interested in bringing Ostpolitik to Poland. Moreover, the
relationship between the episcopate and the laity also suffered.212
Within the year or two following the Council, most Western Euro-
pean countries had introduced the vernacular liturgy, with priests
facing the congregation, rather than the altar, as they officiated
Mass. In Poland, however, these reforms took effect only begin-
ning in 1968, and they progressed at a painfully slow pace.213 Only
in 1968 was the first missal printed in Poland that was not en-
tirely in Latin; it was, however, only partially in Polish. The first
full Polish-language missal was not published until 1986.
Once the tensions of the Millennium campaign had dissipat-
ed, lay activists began to appeal to Wyszyński to speed the pace
of reform. They left meetings with the primate feeling rebuffed,
even mocked. As early as 1965, following his return from the
Fourth Session, the primate warned the Warsaw Catholic Intel-
ligentsia Club against “intellectualizing the Church, as if it con-
sisted entirely of philosophers.”214 The club’s resident theology
expert, Stanisława Grabska, complained that Wyszyński had sent
her, Swieżawski, and others away when they came to him in Feb-
ruary 1967 to request that priests face the congregation during
- In addition to the fallout from the 1963 memorandum that Stomma sent
to the Vatican behind Wyszyński’s back, the primate also took exception to a de-
bate published by Więź on the future of priestly vocation in Poland. The result was
a multi-year ban preventing Polish clergy from writing for the journal; “Dyskusja o
księżach w Polsce,” Więź, no. 123 (1968): 3–36. - Mazurkiewicz, “Recepcja Soboru,” 29.
- Quoted at Porter-Szűcs, Faith and Fatherland, 50.