I am glad that Michael Potemra is enjoying my new book, Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, but I fear he is not correct on the matter of Pope John Paul II and Vatican II. Let me explain why. Wojtyła’s stance towards Vatican II and its aftermath is of considerable significance, so I hope that you’ll put up with a long reply.

It is not possible to gather who voted in which direction from the published Acts of Vatican II. My account is based on the private judgments of the French Dominican theologian Christian Duquoc, and the distinguished and much-lamented Dominican theologian Eduard Schillebeeckx, both of whom were close observers of events at the Council. Bishop (and then Archbishop) Wojtyła was present for a good deal of the Council’s deliberations and was indeed much involved in the debate about Gaudium et Spes, the draft for which he did not like — so much so that he submitted his own version in the name of the Polish bishops. It was rejected.

Soon after the Council, Hans Küng, Schillebeeckx, Karl Rahner, and Yves Congar (whose now published journals do not reveal great enthusiasm for Bishop Wojtyła), complained that the Curia was putting brakes on the reforms envisioned by Vatican II. That process much accelerated once Wojtyła became Pope John Paul II. He worked with the Curia consistently to police reforming theologians. He dictated the agenda for episcopal synods, refused to allow bishops to discuss matters such as the compulsory celibacy of clergy, and voted against many proposals made by synods. Küng and Jacques Pohier were disciplined in the second year of his pontificate. He made it known that he did not like communion received in the hand, he refused to laicize priests (as Paul VI had done), and he marginalized the role of local bishops by his actions as pope on his frequent international journeys.

John Paul II also commissioned a Catholic Catechism after the Council, which neither John XXIII nor the Council wanted, and revised the Code of Canon Law (again not wanted at the Council); the theology expressed in both of these goes in a very different direction to Vatican II. One crucial principle so prominent in the thinking of Vatican II, “Collegiality” in making decisions on the future of the Church, has been set aside during both John Paul II’s papacy and that of the present Pope.

All this has been done while the Vatican has consistently spoken of its faithfulness to the principles of Vatican II. There have been two ways of expressing opposition to those principles: One has been to express opposition openly, as Michael Potemra notes has been done by some ultra-conservatives. The other has been to rewrite the history of Vatican II, as those in the Vatican and their admirers have been doing over the last quarter-century and more. It is not surprising that ultra-conservatives have been infuriated by this latter strategy. But that’s what both John Paul II and Benedict XVI have done.