nale for his approach to renovatio accomodata: “There are fanati-
cal liturgists who would wish immediately, tomorrow, to have
in their hands a missal [in Polish] because, if they don’t have it,
the whole Kingdom of God will fall. Yet the heart of the matter
lies elsewhere. There is no need to emphasize that. The goal is for
people to pray, for people to want to pray, while the language in
which they will do it is a secondary matter.”218
Miscommunications over the liturgy show how difficult it is to
come up with a simple balance sheet for Vatican II’s impact on Po-
land. Contemporary commentators like the Munich-based émigré
Józef Mackiewicz, as well as historians like Sławomir Cenckiewicz,
have claimed that Vatican II became a tool in the hands of the
Communist regime. As the argument goes, Communists exploited
the Council to the detriment of the Church in Poland, with lay ac-
tivists becoming the unwitting allies of the Polish secret police.219
Yet, even acknowledging the documented role of the Polish
security apparatus—for example, with the anti-Marian memo—
this interpretation gives too much credit to the Communists
and too little to all of the remaining players. Within the episco-
pate, as within the laity, there were differences of opinion and
strategy. Wojtyła worked to acquire a voice in the Vatican, while
Wyszyński prioritized the Polish Millennium. The ZNAK move-
ment split over whether or not to continue cooperating with the
regime in the wake of the Millennium conflict. Even more dif-
ficult for ZNAK were the dramatic events of March 1968, which
brought both mass beatings and political repressions of protest-
ing Polish students and a mass exodus of Polish Jews facing anti-
Semitic persecution.220 For the laity, these events became entan-
gled with the Council’s legacy.
- Quoted in Raina, Kardynał Wyszyński, 5:175.
- Józef Mackiewicz, Watykan w cieniu czerwonej gwiazdy (London: Kontra,
1975); Cenckiewicz, “Cisi sprzymierzeńcy reform.” - On the Polish student protests, see Eisler, “March 1968 in Poland.” On the
anti-Semitic purges, see Dariusz Stola, “Anti-Zionism as a Multipurpose Policy In-
VATICAN II AND POLAND 195