Catholic Church in Croatia

Similarly to other post-communist countries, the position of churches in Croatia underwent a dramatic change in the twentieth century, exemplified by a largely privileged position in the period before World War II, a severely deprived position during communist times and again a privileged and welcome position since 1990. Such profound alterations were reflected in public debates in the early 1990s which, from the point of view of state-church relations, have been summarized as a dilemma between two possible models: “that of the United States and that of Western Europe, which is varied but basically unitary.” ¹ At large, the countries of Central and Eastern Europe followed Western European norms and ideas, such as respect for religious freedom, respect for the autonomy of religious denomination and selective collaboration of the states with the churches. ² However, the fact is that the gap between what is written in laws and what is happening in practice, albeit present everywhere, seems to be wider in post-communist Europe, and accompanied by some truly regressive developments with respect to guarantees of religious freedom. ³ While there is plenty of evidence of that in scholarly literature, one aspect has not been systematically addressed in literature on state-church relations or religious freedom. As Miklós Tomka noted, the issue was not (or not only) which model to choose and how to implement it, but instead concerned different expectations about the position of church in society following the very specific position, where the religious sections of society and religious institutions had been during the communist rule. A mixture of various ideological positions and various social experiences, inherited and further strengthened in the early 1990s, conditioned debates on the churches and the religious policies advanced by the new political order. ⁴ Thus, this chapter principally aims to reconsider the legal position of the Catholic Church (CC) in Croatia, and sociological data on its position from the point of view of memories of the past circulating in society in the present. The question is which elements of the past underlie and shape the new legal position of the church and all the debates surrounding it. Although the chapter is not based on a comprehensive analysis of narratives, we believe that a brief sketch of history helps us understand how history reworks and shapes the legal and social arrangements that have evolved during the post-communist period.