Latin and Vernacular: Vota of Polish Bishops to the Second Vatican Council

Abstract

This article seeks to answer the question of what language-related requests Polish bishops made to the Vatican in their vota to the Second Vatican Council. In inductive research, documents submitted by ordinaries and auxiliary bishops, collected in the “Polonia” and “Gedanum” sections, will be subjected to a content analysis. This will allow us to demonstrate the extent to which language issue were important to the local Church and, after sorting out emerging themes, detail the expected changes. The arguments justifying these requests will then be discussed, and, in the final section, a case study will present the most comprehensive proposal by Lucjan Bernacki, auxiliary bishop of Gniezno. The thesis, which stems from the research, assumes that the change in the language of liturgy permitted by the Second Vatican Council was not a exerted pressure on the Church in Poland but was highly anticipated by both the faithful and the bishops.