POLEMICS ON THE ROLE OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN CROATIA

AIM, ZAGREB, April 3, 1996

It is six years now that the Catholic Church in Croatia and the parent state have been living in a harmonious marriage, with mutual attention and understanding. Still, many wonder how long this love story will last. The cynics answer - until the first quarrel. However, for this to happen there has to be a reason, which is still lacking. Although the first skirmishes are in sight (regarding the difficult situation of the workers whom, although mostly Catholics, the state wishes to calm down with plastic bullets and horses), this is far from divorce. However, something is nevertheless surfacing. And that something is criticism of their relations written and uttered by renowned theologists, journalists and scientists.

Among the critics are the Bosnian Franciscans Marko Orsolic and Luka Markesic, the parish priest Luka Vincetic, the politicologist and jurist Ivan Padjen, the theologist Father Bono Zvonimir Cagi as well as the journalist Drago Pilsel, while the independent papers (Feral, Arkzin, Novi List) and some Catholic papers (Svjetlo rijeci, Kana) publish their texts and interviews.

Recently, the Croatian Left published a small dossier on the political role of the Captol in the last six years. All in all, some ten texts describe the common passion of the official Catholic Church and Croatian politics, starting from ancient causes and motives, up to ethnically clean consequences.

Franjo Tudjman explained what it was all about at last year's visit to Australia, saying that this state was created through the community of the "Croatian statehood idea and the Croatian Church", as well as that the Church had first accepted the HDZ (Croatian Democratic Union) programme on the creation of an independent Croatian state. Tudjman thus committed several blunders. The first is that the Croatian state has its own church (Luka Vincentic), the second is that by being a state church it is no longer Catholic, but rather an agency of political ideas and as such a part of the nationalistic practice, and the third that Croatia has become a Catholic state which is, nolens volens, a European precedent of the times. The reason is statistical, i.e. 75% of officially declared Catholics, which, for example, according to the 1982 census numbered only 4%.

How is this possible? Primarily because of the general social hypocrisy. Namely, in recent years believers massively cropped up, particularly in politics and among those in power, who never even heard of church rituals but are deft in kissing the altar, especially in front of cameras. "They have no idea what a holy mass is, they do not know what to do with themselves during trans-substantiation.

They have never heard of certain Catholic dogmas, they do not distinguish between fasting and abstinence, and often do not even know how to cross themselves properly", writes Ivica Mlivoncic in Arkzin. Obviously, three fourths of the Catholic believers inspired the Catholic Church to become their spiritual mentor, while the state, according to the law of "nature" took over a piece of the cake. For example, it is enough to have a birth certificate in order to get citizenship papers, which many Bosniacs from Tuzla, Sarajevo and Travnik realized on time...

However, this intimate relationship between the state and the Church, the ruling party and the Captol is in essence a matter of ideology, i.e. idea on the national state in which only people of Catholic religion, i.e. the Croats, will live. According to professor Ivan Padjen, the clergy secretly wanted a Catholic state and society, while the state did everything it could to make it come true. The Captol thus welcomed the departure of Serbs from Croatia, not because they were Serbs, but on account of their being infidels. On the other hand, the state did not welcome it not because they were not Catholics but because they did not come from our alley. It is easier to understand this attitude if we go a few years back. Namely, the desire to create a Croat state did not proceed from the idea of democracy, of a civil and pluralistic society, but rather from nationalism, which per se does not tolerate other nations.

The motive for political action was not a nation in the modern sense of the word, but as a traditional community "understood in Central European terms", according to which a nation is a people, and not those inhabiting the space of a state with which they are legally bound" (Ivan Padjen). Therefore, the darkest nationalist, rather than religion, is the reason that, six years ago, the clergy forbade the people to vote for anyone else but the HDZ. Not even children believe the story that the Church followed the people and not vice versa. If it is so, and it is, what ultimately links the believers - faith or blood, church or party, religion or biology?

In a normal world, it is the former and in Croatia the latter. As father Luka Markesic says, if the Church is national and ethnic, then it cannot be Catholic. And vice versa, if it is Catholic then it is universal, in other words it is not national, although there are those, such as for instance Don Zivko Kustic, who claim that such intermingling is possible. If the church has become an ethnic community bound by blood, language and customs, with faith being only an alibi, then we come to the question - what is the consequence of such purity? Fascism, ethnic cleansing, or something else? "If religions are identified with nations (...), they will be reduced to mere nations, i.e. tribal religions", explained Marko Orsolic in the weekly Feral Tribune. And that is precisely what happened.

However, these are issues and theses which the Captol cunningly evades. While others waste their energy on the theory of church practice, the Church sticks to the ninth thesis of Foerbach, leaving it to others to do the explaining. In the meantime, preparations are underway to change the Croatian society, to the joy of the clergy and party. Spiritual revival, in other words, the witch hunt against abortion and individual freedoms, clericalism, primitivism, and rural Catholic morality are becoming the prolegomenon of the 21st century. Nevertheless, willing or not, the Church is forced to engage in dialogue with its environs, which has ground to a complete halt. In other words, the Church i.e. religious fundamentalism among most of the priests and clergy is losing the status of a holy cow, already by openly speaking about it.

Thus recently the Panorama and Novi List started a polemics between Don Zivko Kustic and the HHO member, journalist and lay theologist Drago Pilsel regarding Statement No.33 of the Croatian Helsinki Watch Committee, which speaks of the state of religious rights and freedoms (on the necessary break with tradition in which the Church is a pillar of political power, is divorced from the state, on the mutual links between religious communities and the authorities in planning and implementing the so-called human dislocations). From the standpoint of an insulted Croat who cannot "present the shame of his state before those who (...) are dying to hear something of that kind", Don Zivko spilled his venom on Cicak and his companions as foreign mercenaries ("... who are dragging Croatia into some new Yugoslav associations", F.T.), on purpose and at a well chosen moment. He described Statement No.33 as exaggerated and inappropriate. Pilsen responded with a thesis on the so-called Catholic syndrome, blocking the Church as a community, making it one-sided and deaf to the world and the needs of the people. According to father Bone Cagi - "this is a dogmatic way of thinking according to which only what the supreme authorities state is correct".

Actually that is a tradition left to the church by every totalitarian state which embraced it. The polemics went on in two issues and resulted in an interesting thing, seemingly paradoxical. Pilsel as a journalist of a daily paper speaks of the freedom of religion, truth, justice and honesty, he speaks how unseemingly it is to keep on the church and monastery altars (in Herzegovina) photos of Maks Luburic and Rafael Boban, while on the other side Kustic, as a man of the church and editor of IKA (Information Catholic Agency) speaks of the holiness of the nation and state, on political pragmatism and things that must not be said, no matter how true, as according to Don Zivko the state, with its purity and good reputation is above the truth. The described pathology is reflected in the scepticism of Catholic morality towards legislation in force which prevents the establishment of a normal society.

In this connection Prof.Dr.Ivan Padjen says the following: "With the followers of the "Church of the Croats" who have been taught that the observance of positive laws is but a part of the teachings of Karl Marx and the Communist Party, and not of St.Thomas Aquinas and the Catholic church, any authorities in Croatia may behave shamelessly. And that is partly the position of the Captol after the "Storm".

Will the Church warn of the crimes or keep silent about them? Will it remain evangelic or become an "advocatus diabolis"? Will it be Catholic and for man in general or will it rather be national and especially for the Croats? The silence of the Church after the operation "STORM" is in many respects supportive of the thesis on the national Church and the Catholic nation. In other words, that Croats are not ready to face the crimes committed for them and on their behalf, and that the Church supports them in that. The warning of Cardinal Kuharic that a crime is a crime, irrespective of the religion or nation, was issued last September at the pilgrimage of the Croat soldiers to Marija Bistrica, when even the population of Papua knew of the atrocities committed during the STORM.

Anti-intellectualism and primitivism which spread from the society to the Church eroded its reputation (Ivan Padjen), although much time will pass until it is understood that by serving the party and its leader it has betrayed the God in which it allegedly believes. Namely, two institutions permeate each other. The state has become "a pseudo religious cult, not with a president but rather a high priest at its helm" (Boris Buden in Arkzin), because of which those who died for the state did not get a monument, but a shrine - the "Holy Mother of Freedom", which Kuharic gave a name and Tudjman a blessing. On the other hand the Church lost its universal character and became an "ethnical cult" which ritually celebrates a nation and, quite unconciously, the religion it abhors - the pagan one.

In any case, the last six years will be recorded in the annals of the Catholic Church in Croatia as the time of the greatest political influence of the clergy in this century. Its retribalization aided by the state attempted to control normal social changes and the crisis by the reritualization of revival (Victor Turner), through the elimination of traitors and heretics, to finally eliminate its own meaning. Increasingly frequent Church objections against state authorities and lamentations that its criticism and words are misinterpreted and not taken seriously, speak of the belated awareness of the Church that it would be better off without the security of the national ideology which it has become rooted into.

ALEN ANIC