166 PIOTR H. KOSICKI
bor Party (Stronnictwo Pracy) saw in the younger generations of
ZNAK activists the future cadres of Polish Catholicism.119 In this
assessment, the Christian Democrats were not wrong: among
their beneficiaries were future MPs, senators, and a prime min-
ister of post-Communist Poland. All that these men and women
needed, the exiles reasoned, was a sense of Christian Democratic
identity. 120
Yet these lay activists had different goals. While Zawieyski
played a delicate diplomatic game, Zabłocki—twenty-five years
Zawieyski’s junior—was more interested in the Christian Demo-
cratic exiles and their Western European contacts.121 Meanwhile,
Turowicz and his colleagues from Kraków at times seemed to
side openly with the regime against the primate.122 Rather than
nudge the Polish bishops along, they attempted to go over the
prelates’ heads altogether.
The result was perhaps the greatest disaster in relations be-
tween Poland’s clergy and laity at any point in the whole Com-
munist period. The crisis came to a head in Rome in the middle
of the Second Session. The Polish lay activist Stanisław Stomma,
founding editor-in-chief of the Znak monthly and an MP to the
Polish parliament, went behind the Polish episcopate’s back. In
November 1963, Stomma submitted to the Holy See a memoran-
dum entitled, “The Opinions of the Catholic Circles in Poland
Grouped in the Catholic Intelligentsia Clubs, around Tygodnik
- Stanisław Gebhardt, “Sprawozdanie o sytuacji na emigracji przedstawione
na Radzie SP na Wychodźstwie,” November 18–19, 1956, Archives of the Polish Insti-
tute of Arts and Sciences of America, New York, Karol Popiel papers, box 9.10; see
also Gebhardt, “Działalność na forum międzynarodowym,” in Świadectwa/Testimo-
nianze, vol. 4, Pro publico bono: Polityczna, społeczna i kulturalna działalność Polaków
w Rzymie w XX wieku, ed. Ewa Prządka (Rome: Fundacja Rzymska im. J.S. Umiast-
owskiej 2006), 259–322. - Gebhardt, interview with author, February 23, 2006.
- Zabłocki, Dzienniki, 1:666–68.
- Robert Jarocki, Czterdzieści pięć lat w opozycji: O ludziach “Tygodnika Pow-
szechnego” (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1990).