Could a Catholic please explain WHY?

[Nine_Two]

I have read a few articles from that website, and it certainly gives a more balanced view by mentioning how things were for Catholics prior to the war in the former Yugoslav(what certain Catholics did to the Orthodox during the second war was in many ways precipitated by what Catholics had endured for decades before the war by Serbian Orthodox).

This is a very problematic view. Not because it isn’t at least partially true, but because it absolves one generation of crimes against someone because at some point during the previous generation the rolls had been reversed. This unfortunately will generally (as in the case of the Balkans) go back indefinitely. The excesses of the Croatians during WWII was used as justification for crimes committed by the Serbians during the Yugoslav wars. We’ve seen these chains unfold in discussions between Catholic and Orthodox before on the cause of the Great Schism. “You did W” “Well you did X” “Only because you did Y” “Which only happened because you did Z”, and on it goes.
Rarely do a people who live with each other just suddenly go toward genocide. Something always happens first.

P.S. Moreover, I have heard it said even by some Orthodox that OrthodoxInfo is not a very kosher site so be careful which sites you choose to attain your information.

She didn’t use orthodoxinfo (although I can’t vouch for the site that was given in general, the point it makes is a fair one).

 

[Augustine3]

Would you mind making the point more directly, because I can only see two alternatives from what you actually wrote, what Jharek said, or that you believe being Orthodox is a crime worthy of death - and I don’t for a minute believe you could possibly be saying that.

Forced conversions and killing Orthodox for simply being Orthodox is certainly wrong and sinful. I merely meant if the killings happened then we need to investigate why and under what circumstances. The Church certainly wouldn’t canonize a murder of the innocent as this website would have us believe…

 

[josie_L]

**This is a very problematic view. Not because it isn’t at least partially true, but because it absolves one generation of crimes against someone **because at some point during the previous generation the rolls had been reversed. This unfortunately will generally (as in the case of the Balkans) go back indefinitely. The excesses of the Croatians during WWII was used as justification for crimes committed by the Serbians during the Yugoslav wars. We’ve seen these chains unfold in discussions between Catholic and Orthodox before on the cause of the Great Schism. “You did W” “Well you did X” “Only because you did Y” “Which only happened because you did Z”, and on it goes.Rarely do a people who live with each other just suddenly go toward genocide. Something always happens first.

No, the view is not problematic, i.e., historical events are not meant to be understood in isolation or rather without context, i.e., if more people had a better understanding of history then no one be would pointing fingers or harbouring resentment/anger because we would then realize that we were all guilty of wrong-doing (so I am not condoning the actions of anyone). A correct interpretation of historical events can be the means to dissolve the biases/prejudices that certain communities hold against others, case in point, the Crusades, i.e., how many times do we see this interpretation of the Crusades as being bad, and thus by association, Christians being bad, but Muslims being good,i.e., the victims of the Crusade. False interpretations of history is why people continue to commit acts of violence towards other communities they believe wronged them in the past (without ever thinking beyond the superficial interpretation given them).

 

[MommaduckofMany]

She didn’t use orthodoxinfo (although I can’t vouch for the site that was given in general, the point it makes is a fair one).

Thank you. I’ve learned over time that orthodoxinfo is not the greatest place to gather more than a myopic view. The link I did use was the exact one that was being passed around on FB, so I posted it exactly as it was being shared.

 

[josie_L]

What does that have to do with Blessed Aloysius Stepinac?

 

[LilyM]

It was a sincere question, for those that wondered. I asked it on my FB page and limited commentators to Catholic and Orthodox only, because I did NOT want people using it merely to slam or rabbit trail. I finally deleted after a bit of conversation.

Basically, it came down to (or seems to come down to) this man being blamed more for the fact that he was in a role of authority during this and this happened UNDER him. However, whether he had direct part, who knows. There are good and bad posted about him. My issue was, if this man was directly involved with forced conversions and slaughter of common Orthodox, then why the heck cannonise him? Any “miracles” from his body would have to be deemed demonic as his actions throughout life were evil. But, the conversation boiled down to the fact that we do not specifically know (or had enough information for the discussion). I did have a friend that grew up Greek in Albania and she recommended the book Decameron…having to hide her ethnicity growing up and not being able to even hint an interest in the Church (Orthodox), this is all closer to home for her.

So, basically, the answer came down to “unresolved” either direction.

My question was asked though because this was the first I’d heard of it and I was a bit shocked. There are priests that had helped save lives (of those not of their faith) and those should be the ones remembered.

St. Paul persecuted many a Christian before his conversion of heart but still died a Saint and is revered. We can separate the good he did during his life from the evil. Same is required with many Saints - some were guilty of great and horrible sins.

 

[josie_L]

Basically, it came down to (or seems to come down to) this man being blamed more for the fact that he was in a role of authority during this and this happened UNDER him. However, whether he had direct part, who knows. There are good and bad posted about him. My issue was, if this man was directly involved with forced conversions and slaughter of common Orthodox, then why the heck cannonise him? Any “miracles” from his body would have to be deemed demonic as his actions throughout life were evil. But, the conversation boiled down to the fact that we do not specifically know (or had enough information for the discussion). I did have a friend that grew up Greek in Albania and she recommended the book Decameron…having to hide her ethnicity growing up and not being able to even hint an interest in the Church (Orthodox), this is all closer to home for her.

I finally found the post I was looking for (it is a longer version of an excerpt taken from Rychlak’s book “Hitler, The War, and The Pope”):

"The leader of the Roman Catholic Church in Croatia at that time was Archbishop (later Cardinal) Aloysius Stepinac. Others have noted that when the brutality began, Stepinac ‘“almost immediately . . . used his position to speak out against the maltreatment of Jews and Orthodox Christians.”’ He also conducted extensive relief work, including hiding refugees in Church buildings. Stepinac was recognized as a staunch opponent of Fascist leaders, but after the war, he was a threat to the Communist regime that took over. Communist leader Josip Broz Tito put Stepinac on trial, and he was convicted of having supported the Ustache goverment’s brutality towards the Serbs and of having engaged in forcible conversions.

During Stepinac’s trial, the prosecution produced a report allegedly sent by the archbishop to the Pope dated May 18, 1943. It bitterly condemned the Serbs and the Orthodox Church. It also showed Stepinac to have been working for the Ustashe and calling the Pope to arrange for foreign intervention in Yugoslavia. Stepinac denied having written or sent this letter. It was not written on diocesan paper, and it did not have an address or signature. It was in Italian, instead of the formalized Latin style normally used by the archbishop. It referred to Stepinac as ““metropoleta de Croatie et Slovoniae,”” but Stepinac never referred to himself that way. It contained detailed information about Bosnia and its history, which Stepinac was unlikely to know, especially as Bosnia was not part of his diocese. The Communists claimed that the letter was found in the Croatian Foreign Ministry offices, but Stepinac did not send his reports there. The prosecutor claimed to have a copy signed by Stepinac, but he never produced it at trial, and it does not appear in the record of court documents.

**In December 1941, copies of another letter, this one signed by Dr, Prvislav Grisogono, a well-known Catholic and a respected Croatian politician, came into circulation. It was addressed to Stepinac, and it condemned the Church for permitting priests and monks to kill and torture thousands of Serbs. The writer condemned the sending of nuns, ‘“with a dagger in one hand and prayer book in the other,”’ to convert the survivors. The letter provided alleged details of priest-led gangs of thugs . . .

Although this letter was reprinted in many books after the war, it was a forgery. Grisogono, the supposed author, was in the Gestapo prison at Banjica, near Belgrade, at the time that the letter was supposedly written. On his release from prison, Grisogono wrote to Stepinac to disown the letter. After the war, Grisogono’s son and daughter also confirmed that the letter was a forgery. The son and daughter of another man, Adam Pribicevic, acknowledged that their father had forged the letter. The father’s political assistant, Vlastimir Stojanovic, confirmed their story.**
In 1985, Stepinac’s prosecutor, Jakov Blazevic, acknowledged that Stepinac had been framed and that he was tried only because he refused to sever ties between Croatians and the Roman Catholic Church. Blazevic said that if Stepinac had agreed to head an independent Catholic Church he would not have been brought to court.

In 1992, Croatia came out from under the thumb of Communism. One of the first acts of Parliament in the newly independent state of Croatia was to issue a declaration condemning '" the political trial and sentence passed on Cardinal Stepinac in 1946. Stepinac was condemned, declared the Parliament, ‘“because he had acted against the violence and crimes of the communist authorities, just as he had acted during the whirlwind of atrocities committed in World War II, to protect the persecuted, regardless of the national origin or religious denomination.”’

Nearly forty years after the trial, one of Tito’s senior legal officials by the name of Hrncevic, who had put together the original case against Stepinac and arranged the trial, stated: ‘“The indictments were designed rather more for publicity than for legality.”’ Yugoslavian politician dissident Milovan Dilas, who had once been close to Tito, said that the problem with “Stepinac was not his policy towards Ustashe, but towards the Communists.”’

 

[TRH1292]

I think most of the accusations against him are communist propaganda, mostly now admitted as forgery’s as others have documented. I’m not sure why people think you can trust a communist show trial against a religious leader of any kind.

 

[pablope]

It was a sincere question, for those that wondered.

Basically, it came down to (or seems to come down to) this man being blamed more for the fact that he was in a role of authority during this and this happened UNDER him. However, whether he had direct part, who knows. There are good and bad posted about him.

 

[josie_L]

I think most of the accusations against him are communist propaganda, mostly now admitted as forgery’s as others have documented. I’m not sure why people think you can trust a communist show trial against a religious leader of any kind.

Because Communist propaganda is/was so widespread that it will take awhile before truth is properly disseminated, and even then, people may prefer propaganda to the truth because it would serve their purpose, i.e., to malign the Church.

 

[commenter]

When I’m thinking better of the RC, something like this comes through and it’s one of the things that simply should not be.

theorthodoxchurch.info/blog/news/2014/02/roman-catholic-church-to-canonize-archbishop-stepinac-the-mass-murder-of-orthodox-christians/

I’m sitting here in my American suburb, free from any strains of the Hell that Abp Stepinac, the Serbs, Muslims, and Jews all had to go through, when it took courage just to live each day. People who are now safe and comfortable critique those people.
I don’t know what this man went through then, I’m wondering what I should be doing right now. The Nazis are gone now, but legal abortion is as deeply ingrained in MY culture as Nazism or Communism ever were, with 100 times as many victims.

If MommaduckofMany wants to find reasons to “think better of the RC”, she sadly won’t find much courage coming from me personally, but she might well find that one particular church seems to be the strongest bulwark against the real fascism, the real scourge of violence of our own generation.

 

[Nine_Two]

No, the view is not problematic, i.e., historical events are not meant to be understood in isolation or rather without context, i.e., if more people had a better understanding of history then no one be would pointing fingers or harbouring resentment/anger because we would then realize that we were all guilty of wrong-doing (so I am not condoning the actions of anyone). A correct interpretation of historical events can be the means to dissolve the biases/prejudices that certain communities hold against others, case in point, the Crusades, i.e., how many times do we see this interpretation of the Crusades as being bad, and thus by association, Christians being bad, but Muslims being good,i.e., the victims of the Crusade. False interpretations of history is why people continue to commit acts of violence towards other communities they believe wronged them in the past (without ever thinking beyond the superficial interpretation given them).

The problem is that you only provide a partial context which makes your side look saintly, and the other side look demonic, which is exactly the mindset that lets it happen again and again.

 

[josie_L]

The problem is that you only provide a partial context which makes your side look saintly, and the other side look demonic, which is exactly the mindset that lets it happen again and again.

How am I providing a partial context, i.e., I’m not trying to avoid an explanation for the atrocities that were committed by the Ustase, nor am I trying to undermine the evil that was perpetrated by them? But if we are going to talk about of the evils committed by some Catholics during the War, then how can we do so without bringing to light decades of Catholic persecution by the Serbs? It would be ahistorical to explain the events that took place during this time in this region in a vacuum, i.e., without a proper historical background of said region!

 

[josie_L]

Here’s just a little of that historical background I was referring to:

One of the most outstanding and most popular personalities in the Croatian political history was Stjepan Radic (1871-1928), the leader of the Croatian Peasant Party, assassinated in the Yugoslav parliament in Belgrade (capital of present Serbia) in 1928 together with his colleagues. The assassination was organized at the Royal court in Belgrade. Radic strived to renew the Croatian sovereignty and the economic and cultural emancipation of Croatia. He wanted the state of the Southern Slavs to be reorganized on confederative basis, without Serbian hegemony.

The culmination of the Serbian police terror took place during the personal dictatorship of king Aleksandar Karadzordevic since 1929. One of the historical documents from that period, showing methods' of the Serbian police and administration, is a bill [JPG] on 13 dinars and 15 paras charged to a Croatian family in 1934 for five bullets fired at the father, who was sentenced to death. The families were persuaded even to pay the expenses’ of the execution within eight days, under the threat of confiscation of their property. Croatian archbishop Alojzije Stepinac reported about this event to the French diplomat Ernest Pezet in 1935.

For more details see

•A photocopy of the bill received by the son of Ivan Varga to pay 13.15 dinars for the five bullets by which his father was killed on January 11, 1934 (see the bottom of the page).

•[Cristophe Dolbeau], and Marija Novak: “Stepinac o srpskom teroru u Meddimurju”, Glas koncila, May 17, 1998, p. 20.

Belgrade made use of the world economic crises in 1929 to destroy the Croatian banking system, which had been the strongest in Yugoslavia.

Out of 165 active army generals of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (1929 - 1941) only 2 were the Croats, and - 161 Serbs. In 1937, out of 22 Yugoslav ambassadors 20 were Serbs and only two Croats, see [Peric, p 42].

All this led to the formation of the Croatian separatist group called Ustasha, which gathered around Ante Pavelic (1889-1959). It had been supported by the fascist Italy.

Croatian scientists were also victims of the Greater-Serbian terror. So Milan Sufflay, historian of international reputation known by his numerous scientific contributions, especially in the field of albanology, was assassinated by a steel rod on a street in the center of Zagreb in 1931. After the dramatic events that followed, Albert Einstein and Heinrich Mann sent an appeal to the International League of Human Rights in Paris to protect Croats from the terror and persecutions of the Serbian police. It was also published in the New York Times (6th May 1931). As we learn from this letter, the newspapers in Zagreb were not allowed to report about Sufflay’s activity; it was not allowed to attach a half-mast flag on the main building of the University of Zagreb in his honour; the time of the funeral could not be announced publicly, and even condolence messages were not allowed to be telegraphed. In their letter Einstein and Mann hold the Yugoslav king Aleksandar explicitly responsible for the state terror over the Croats. The letter concludes that it should not be tolerated that killings be allowed as a means to achieve political goals. We should not allow killers to be promoted as national heroes. The king himself was assassinated by a Macedonian patriot in Marseille in 1934 (there are indications that there was a collaboration of the Macedonian Revolutionary Organization with the Ustasha organization).

•Albert Einstein and Heinrich Mann: Appeal on the occasion of killing of Professor Milan Sufflay in Zagreb

•New York Times (May 6, 1931): Einstein Accuses Yugoslavian Rulers in Savant’s Murder,

•A Letter of Protest sent by American intellectuals organized by Roger N. Baldwin, Chairman of the International Committee for Political Prisoners, to the Yugoslav representative in Washington on November 24, 1933.

In 1934 the Croatian community in the USA sent

APPEAL TO THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS (now UN)

with 43,000 signatures of American Croats. The petition urged the League to secure the independence of Croatia from Yugoslavia on the plea that Yugoslavia was mistreating the Croats. It was initiated by Ivan A. Stipanovic (1890-1970), a parish priest in Youngstown, Ohio, USA. The petition began with a reference to Woodrow Wilson’s plea for the right of self-determination. The memorandum was sent to embassies of all nations represented in the USA and to the Pope Pius at Rome. Signatures were collected during 1932 and 1933 in 26 American states, Washington, and in three provinces in Canada, and all of them authenticated by notaries public in these states. The petition was soon stolen from the Geneva archives of the League of Nations, see an article published in Youngstown Vindicator, 10th December 1934.

croatianhistory.net/etf/et112.html#jugo

 

[MommaduckofMany]

St. Paul persecuted many a Christian before his conversion of heart but still died a Saint and is revered. We can separate the good he did during his life from the evil. Same is required with many Saints - some were guilty of great and horrible sins.

Paul converted and his life changed…we have evidence of that. Do we have evidence of this other person? (I write this based only on what you wrote…I’m still reading through the thread)

 

[LilyM]

Paul converted and his life changed…we have evidence of that. Do we have evidence of this other person? (I write this based only on what you wrote…I’m still reading through the thread)

We also have much hard evidence that Paul sinned grievously in the first place - not least his own frank and free admission of such.

There is much less evidence that Stepinac did the evils he was accused of. Charity demands we give everyone the benefit of the doubt where doubt exists, and assume innocence and hence no need of repentance rather than guilt.

 

[Nine_Two]

How am I providing a partial context, i.e., I’m not trying to avoid an explanation for the atrocities that were committed by the Ustase, nor am I trying to undermine the evil that was perpetrated by them? But if we are going to talk about of the evils committed by some Catholics during the War, then how can we do so without bringing to light decades of Catholic persecution by the Serbs? It would be ahistorical to explain the events that took place during this time in this region in a vacuum, i.e., without a proper historical background of said region!

That’s just it. You want to mitigate the issue by saying “they did X first”. You know full well that it has been a back and forth over the centuries. What you’re doing is shifting blame. If you actually want to put it in historical context you would be making this point, and not “they only did it because Serbs”.