VATICAN II AND POLAND 131set of primary sources (published and unpublished). The principal
chronological focus will be the years 1958–68. In practice, howev-
er, the chapter will touch on the entire Communist period, from
1944–45 through the appointment in August 1989 of Poland’s first
non-Communist postwar prime minister, Tadeusz Mazowiecki—
a longtime leading lay activist, who had been in Rome in 1963 for
the funeral of Pope John XXIII.
Both participation in the Council and the subsequent imple-
mentation of conciliar reforms were substantially conditioned by
the dilemmas of life in Communist Poland: diplomatic double-
speak, secret police agents, and the need for what George Orwell
once described as “ideological translation.”16 As the diary of Pol-
ish Catholic journalist and politician Janusz Zabłocki reminds
us, the Polish experience of Vatican II was also inextricably em-
bedded within the life-and-death stakes of Cold War geopolitics:
of the menace that engulfed the world, the average Pole had no idea.
And so it goes, that as a result of the constant threat of nuclear ho-
locaust, we have simply become accustomed to it, and subsequent
events in this area cease to make an impression on us. All the more
so, because the censors filter information, and it is usually difficult
to decode their true meaning. The day that will be the last day of
mankind on earth, may thus find us dreaming beautiful dreams,
with no sense of danger whatsoever. Maybe it’s better this way,
since we have no control over our fate in any case? 17
Yet, despite the profound constraints imposed by the geogra-
phy of the Iron Curtain, the Council had a revolutionary impact
on Poland, encouraging some of the most important episcopal
initiatives of the Communist period and laying the groundwork
for an eventual partial normalization of diplomatic relations
- On the influence of the Communist security apparatus on the Catholic
Church in Poland, see Paweł Skibiński, “Infiltracja komunistycznych służb specjal-
nych w polskim Kościele—co już wiemy? Informacja na temat stanu badań,” Teolo-
gia Polityczna, no. 1 (2003–4): 57–70. - Zabłocki, Dzienniki, 1:440.