Opening old wounds in Yugoslavia

...Aloisius Cardinal Stepinac, who died in 1960 at the age of sixty-two, had been named Archbishop of Zagreb in 1937 and was highly critical of the Commnnist authorities in the early postwar period...

...Stepinac is not, in himself, the central issue any longer...

...For another, it has opted for greater decentralization...

...In 1946, he was taken to court for collaboration with the enemy and, at the...

...On the other hand, democratic socialists are often more convincing anti-Communists than are conservatives...

...Mitterand's rhetoric on these issues will come where French interests are most directly affected...

...But a more serious threat, from the point of view of the regime, was presented by a petition submitted by leading Croatian Catholic intellectuals and priests in December...

...The question being asked in these ex-colonial countries is whether Mr...

...This petition, addressed to the Federal Assembly, overstepped the bounds of what the regime recognizes as the legitimate domain of religious organizations in asking for an amnesty for all political prisoners...

...Surprisingly, Glas Koncila, the news organ of the Croatian Catholic church, replied that no one had advocated a reopening of the Stepinac case or his rehabilitation and challenged the authorities to indicate why they were opening old wounds...

...However, the major tests for Mr...

...I On one issue, Mr...

...This was always a popular cause on the New Left, and the French Socialists have been influenced by some New Left ideas...

...Mitterand's Socialists offers something to look into...

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...Then again, "Liberty, equality, and fraternity" has always been a tough standard, but one could do worse...

...And governing while seeking substantial changes--and having to do battle with Communists and wary holders of capital at the same time--can only be called, at best, not impossible...

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...Second, Stepinac was archbishop at a time when the church was a powerful factor in Croatian politics and thus represents an earlier pattern, in which the church exercised a legitimate political role...

...end of a spectacular and drawn-out show trial, was sentenced to sixteen years at hard labor...

...Stepinac was widely viewed by Croats as a staunch defender of Croatian interests, even as a kind of patron saint of the Croatian nation...

...As for Israel, the biggest test will be on arms sales to Arab countries...

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...The church, for its own part, has unsuccessfully sought to have religious instruction reintroduced in schools and to increase its own visibility in the political process...

...The latest church-state skirmishes were at least adumbrated in the early months following Tito's death, when Glas Koncila blasted Todo Kurtovic, chairman of SAWPY, for having accused the church of attempting to restore capitalism, forcing a retraction on Kurtovic's part by early October...

...Governing any Western country these days is difficult...

...Finally, in his Christmas sermon in Zagreb, Archbishop Kuharic made public an earlier demand that the authorities give the church expanded access to imprisoned Catholics...

...Mitterand intends to change French policy to their advantage...

...As new patterns of political decision-making stabilize, the threat of minatory change will recede and, presumably, church-state relations will return to the status quo ante...

...His newly named Prime Minister, Pierre Mauroy, is also a genuine pol who has frequently done battle with the Communists, and he could help...

...Prominent among the signators were Kivko Kusic, the chief editor of Glas Koncila, Dr...

...Mitterand's job to prove it...

...Instead, things took a sudden turn for the worse...

...Mitterand, who has always been regarded as a crafty politician, will be putting his craftiness to the ultimate test...

...In rebuttal, Branko Puharic, a top leader in the Croatian Socialist Alliance (the Communist-led mass organization), recently named director of Radio-Television Zagreb, accused the church of meddling in politics and warned that by posing as the guardian of the rights of believers, the church de facto adopted the stance of opposition to the political status quo...

...19 June 1.981:369...

...American liberals have often associated decentralization with "states' rights," always a cover for the maintenance of power in the hands of Southern oligarchies...

...Facts are stubborn," Pierre Mauroy once said...

...Governing France is often more difficult...

...Slobodna Dalmacija, a Croatian newspaper published in Split, soon picked up the refrain and detailed various atrocities of which Stepinac was said to have been guilty...

...Unquestionably the regime would prefer a Catholic church that would be docile and accommodating in the fashion of the (Serbian) Orthodox church...

...The peace was ostensibly broken in late January of this year when Jakov Blazevic, president of Yugoslavia's Republic of Croatia, opened fire on present members of the Croatian Catholic hierarchy for having collaborated with fascist Ustase forces during the Second World War...

...Mitterand has long had strong sympathies for Israel, and Israel's progressive supporters were offered the incongruously pleasant sound the day after the French election of Menachem Begin welcoming a socialist victory...

...Even the Foreign Ministry became involved, warning that resurrection of the Stepinac case could produce no good and would only serve to sour relations between Yugoslavia and the Vatican...

...For one thing, the French Socialists have placed great stress on personal liberties, and on the need to free French state-owned television from the partisan and bureaucratic weight of the government...

...Mitterand's rhetoric has combined two noble sentiments: opposition to Soviet expansionism and sympathy for the Third World--and in particular for those movements in, the Third World seeking economic reform...

...By the end of February, Jure Bilic, Commonweal: 368 president of the Croatian Parliament and one of the ranking members of the Croatian party, had assailed "pro-fascist elements" within the church who "want to be dominant in society" and who have been exploiting the Stepinac issue with this end in mind...

...Articles and discussion questions, 1130 pages...

...Indeed, after Cvijetin Mijatovic, Yugoslavia's ceremonial head of state, visited Pope John Paul II in the Vatican in December, it was widely expected that relations would improve further...

...He also blasted alleged attempts to rehabilitate the late Cardinal Stepinac, whom the Yugoslav Communists had sent to prison in 1946 for treasonous collaboration with the Ustase...

...Blazevic, who played a leading role in the prosecution of Stepinac, is accustomed to the role of antagonist to church pressure and is sensitive to the proclivity of the Croatian Catholic church to exploit nationalist sentiment to its own purposes...

...That the leadership still fears the church's reserve political resources was obvious when Puharic told the presidium that "attempts are being made to turn the church into a real political force inside our society, or to be more precise, an opposition force...

...First, he symbolizes the symbiosis of Croatian nationalism and Catholicism--an identification which has always been anathema to the regime, fearful that religiosity might be used to spur separatist sentiment...

...Puharic again singled out alleged attempts to rehabilitate Stepinac which, he said, amounted to demanding the exoneration of the Ustase themselves...

...The growing acrimony may reflect a renewed struggle between church and state in this country of twenty-two million (in which perhaps six million are Catholics...

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...Meantime, Archbishop Franjo Kuharic of Zagreb sprang to Stepinac's defense, describing the controversial cardinal as a "Croatian patriot and an esteemed church hierarch...

...Despite continued Communist hostility toward him even at his death, overwhelming popular pressure forced the authorities to permit his interment in the main cathedral in Zagreb...

...Jure Kolaris, assistant professor at the theological faculty in Zagreb, and Monsignor Solod, secretary of the bishops' conference...

...This inevitably produces a certain tension in relations which is aggravated during periods of political fluidity...

...It is in this light that one must examine the regime's latest volleys...

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...In the meantime, their respective hierarchs continue their political tug-of-war, each hoping to gain ground and neither confident, for the moment, of the other's intentions...

...Arms are a major export for France, and the arms issue may constitute an acid test of Mitterand's international principles...

...Yet decentralization is by no means an inherently conservative theme, and it will be part of Mr...

...But he aptly symbolizes two ecclesiastical currents which the regime views as inimical...

...TENSION BETWEEN CHURCH & STATE pening old wounds Yugoslavia RAMET T HE RELATIONS between the Catholic church and the Communist regime in Yugoslavia have taken a sharp turn for the worse since Tito's death, despite the apparent absence of substantive issues in contention...

...While the church has not attempted anything so brash, and could scarcely be expected to as long as the Communist party remains in control, it has repeatedly attempted to broaden its prerogatives within the Socialist Alliance of Working People of Yugoslavia (SAWPY), and such endeavors may lie behind regime complaints of efforts to transform SAWPY into an opposition party...

...haved as if there were no important frictions...

...Mitterand will lay down a challenge to left movements elsewhere--and serve as a counter-example to those who say that only conservatives are really on Israel's side...

...Among the former colonial powers, France has been exceptionally successful in maintaining economic and political influence with its former colonies--old colonialism in new bottles, say France's critics...

...Tito's passing produced such a period of fluidity to the extent that no one in Yugoslavia could be certain that the transition would work as planned or how the resulting system would function...

...It is tempting, in this connection, to recall an interview with Der Spiegel last July, in which Milovan Djilas, the former vice president of Yugoslavia turned regime-critic, speculated that "the [Catholic] church in Croatia could become the basis for a Christian-oriented party such as that in Italy or in the Federal I STUDY GUIDE: "A Matter of Faith," a handbook opposing the nuclear arms race for churches and Christian groups...

...His views on the Third World will, quite obviously, clash with Mr...

...As far as foreign policy goes, Mr...

...Hence, the attacks by Blazevic and Bilic, two of the leading hardliners in the Croatian party, may be viewed as a reaction to stirrings within the church itself and as signifying an effort to hold the line on the church...

...From the point of view of other left movements, and notably those in the United States, the platform assembled by Mr...

...The former can be welcomed by the United States, though just what it will mean in practice is less clear...

...Mitterand has already given assurances that existing contracts will be honored...

...Yet, despite passage of a rather controversial law on religious communities in 1978, which the Croatian Catholic church actively sought to amend, church-state relations had seemed to have returned to normal and leaders in both hierarchies beI PEDRO RAMET, a consultant to the Rand Corporation, spent the 1979-1980 academic year in Yugoslavia...

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...Thus, neither church nor state is entirely satisfied with the status quo, and each realizes that the other is dissatisfied...