Review article
CROATIAN CATHOLIC MOVEMENT INITIATIVES AND ACCOMPLISHMENTS IN THE PUBLIC LIFE
Anton Bozanić
; Biskupija Krk, KRk, Hrvatska
Abstract
Croatian catholic movement and its members aimed to surpass the level of the traditional religious experience and train themselves for a permeation of different sectors of private and public life with catholic principles. The types or organisations were not the old fashioned closed structures which would protect the members from outside influences, but, on the contrary; these were open societies that acted publicly in schools, universities, communities and other. Therefore the appurtenance to the Catholic movement denoted the public confession of faith in an ambient that in a great deal had already distanced itself from the Church and the faith.
Just like similar catholic movements in Europe, the starting aim of the Croatian catholic movement was the defence of faith and of the Church. But, if it had remained only on that level, history would remember it just as one of many restoration movements which in upcoming new times remained without results. On the contrary, it developed positive programmes of action in religious, educational and social field, firstly among students, then in other strata of society. It accentuated the religious, national and democratic components as the three fundamental ideas on which it based its work. Croatian catholic movement promoted its mission of restoration out of the fields in which different interests of political parties and economical groups were in conflict, which had enabled a surpassing of local boundaries, strengthening of the conscience of a common religious and national belonging. Promoted as a student movement, it conserved the qualities proper to youth: freshness, enthusiasm, optimism and faith in the victory of good, unselfish work for higher religious and national ideas. After the completion of their studies, the members of the Church organisations kept the signs of optimism, freshness of spirit and concern for the matter of faith/religion. The Croatian catholic move ment, at least in the period of Mahnić, managed to introduce catholic principles in the private and public life, but it is not easily evaluated. It did not manage to stop the influence of the liberal ideas because those were promulgated in a larger context of the worldly processes. The indicator of the success of the Croatian catholic movement remains the fact that in the catholic organisations the great majority of the members reinforced and strengthened its beliefs, and by keeping during the whole life an important spiritual-christian formation, by
its activity especially on the field of education and literature, it affected the ambient in the matter of faith. In this sense, it assumed
a dimension of an outer manifestation because it was an organised community of apostolate which aimed at a spiritual, social and cultural
renewal of the Croatian people. Mahnić wanted to say that faith has something to say in all fields of life.
Keywords
Croatian catholic movement; public life; Christian principles; mass media; social activity
Hrčak ID:
121844
URI
Publication date:
21.1.2011.
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