24 PIOTR H. KOSICKI
diplomatic relations in 1970, as well as the short-lived reformist
“Croatian Spring.” Although a subsequent repressive turn ended
hopes for a more permanent liberalization, the short-lived expe-
rience of reform and aggiornamento inspired in part by Vatican II
prepared the path, at least in Croatia, for Catholics to play a role
in political opposition in the 1980s.
While Yugoslavia had the Croatian Spring, Czechoslovakia
had its celebrated Prague Spring. As in Yugoslavia, so in Czecho-
slovakia did the pursuit of ecclesiological reform coincide with
attempted democratization within the Communist Party. James
Ramon Felak documents in the fourth chapter what he calls the
Communist aggiornamento in the context of reformist Catholic im-
pulses migrating from Rome to Prague. The Party co-opted some
of these—for example, restyling the old philo-Communist Peace
Movement of the Catholic Clergy as “Pacem in Terris,” after the
1963 encyclical. Yet lasting liturgical and pastoral reforms took
hold, even amidst a Czech population inculcated with centuries of
skepticism toward the Roman Catholic Church. The convergence
of Communist and Catholic aggiornamenti outlasted the suppres-
sion of the Prague Spring, surviving the so-called political “nor-
malization” of the 1970s to play a visible role in the Velvet Revolu-
tion of 1989.
Unlike Hungary or Yugoslavia, Communist Poland saw no ne-
gotiations at the highest levels between regime representatives
and the Holy See in the years of the Second Vatican Council—
though leading lay activists repeatedly attempted to bring both
sides to the table. Poland did, however, witness the largest and
freest flow of information and people back and forth across the
Iron Curtain to Rome throughout Vatican II. Conciliar debates
and reforms opened the door not only for Polish bishops, but
also for lay activists to make their mark on Church and Cold War
alike. The clearest long-term result of these exchanges was the
papacy of John Paul II. Along the way, however, Poland became