ABSTRACT
The Second Vatican Council was a watershed for the Church and, more particularly, a time in which modernizing currents within the Church received strong encouragement, in certain aspects, from the Holy See. After the trying experiences under the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, the Croatian Catholic hierarchy initially welcomed the establishment of a separate Croatian state. The authorities continued to try to persuade Archbishop Stepinac to break relations with Rome; instead, Stepinac denounced the proposal in yet another pastoral letter. Since it had proved impossible to co-opt the Church hierarchy, the authorities quickly pursued an alternative policy of trying to sow divisions and discord within the Church and to win over portions of the clergy into a cooperative relationship. A more tangible symptom of this strategy was the promotion of the priests' associations, which would lie outside the authority of the bishops.
