Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.53745/ccp.47.92.5
On the agenda of party meetings: the Catholic Church as a continuous problem of the League of communists of Croatia 1979-1988
Davor Marijan
orcid.org/0000-0002-3722-6981
; Croatian Institute of History, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
The topic of the article is debates about the Catholic Church at the meetings (sessions) of the Central Committee of the League of Communists of Croatia and its Presidency in the period from 1979 to 1988. During that time, the Catholic Church was discussed at more than 40 different sessions, plenums, and meetings. The public was not informed about these discussions, due to the established practice that the League of Communists did not hold a public dialogue with its opponents. However, the "dialogue", i.e. the official relationship was maintained through state or political (party) committees such as the Commission for Relations with Religious Communities or the Committee for Social Issues of Religion of the Socialist Alliance of the Working People of Croatia. Therefore, the goal of this article is twofold: firstly, to contribute to the study of the political system in self-governing socialism and its actual functioning, which was examined on the example of the relationship towards the largest religious community in the Republic, and at the same time the biggest ideological opponent, i.e., the Catholic Church. The second motive was to investigate to what extent the Presidency of the Central Committee of the League of Communists of Croatia, as the most important center of political power and the central authority in the Socialist Republic of Croatia, dealt with the Catholic Church from 1979 to 1988.
Keywords
Catholic Church; religiosity; Croatia; Yugoslavia; League of Communists of Croatia
Hrčak ID:
313280
URI
Publication date:
23.1.2024.
Visits: 219 *