141
T H E  P R O B L E M  W I T H 
C O U R T E S Y :  W O O I N G  T H E 
C A T H O L I C  C H U R C H  I N  L A T E 
S O C I A L I S T  S L O V E N I A
J u r e  R a m š a k
Introduction1
“When the Church and the State opened themselves to dialogue, 
I would have probably decided to join the League of Communists if 
doing so could have contributed to the common good,” a Catholic 
priest told a Slovenian regional newspaper towards the end of 1989, as 
socialism neared its end.2 Can such statements be interpreted as a posi-
tive response to the invitation to religious and non-religious citizens 
to participate in society on an equal footing, which was extended by 
members of the Slovenian socialist authorities in the 1970s and stood 
open to the end of the 1980s?3 
The fact that after 1990 neither priests nor laity ventured such 
statements is not, in itself, proof of the failure of religious policy from 
the period of Yugoslav socialism – despite the insistence of leading 
1  This article is a result of the research program P6-0272 The Mediterranean and Slovenia, the 
research project N6-0173 Religious change in Slovenia and Yugoslavia: Religious conversions and 
processes of atheization, and bilateral projects between Slovenia and Serbia (BI-RS/23-25-054) 
and Slovenia and Montenegro (BI-ME/23-24-013), all funded by the Slovenian Research and 
Innovation Agency (ARIS).
2  Izidor Pečovnik, “Če bi pomagal k skupni blaginji in če bi lahko, bi postal komunist,” Novi 
tednik NT&RC, December 28, 1989, 13.
3  Jure Ramšak, “A Close Flirtation with the Revolution: Slovenian Left-Wing Catholics, the 
Vatican’s Ostpolitik, and a Test of Faith for Socialist Self-Management,” in Christian Moder-
nity and Marxist Secularism in East Central Europe: Between Conflict and Cooperation, ed. Jure 
Ramšak, Gašper Mithans and Mateja Režek (Zagreb: Srednja Europa, 2022).
https://doi.org/10.35469/poligrafi.2025.471 Poligrafi, no. 117/118, vol. 30, 2025, pp. 141–161
P O L I G R A F I
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theologians of the Slovenian Catholic Church on portraying this period 
in exclusively monochromatic tones since its demise.4 A more suitable 
starting point for discussion would be a hermeneutic re-examination 
of the problematic aspects of the relationship between the State (the 
Communist Party/League of Communists) and religious communities 
(the Catholic Church), some of which were discussed publicly, some 
privately, and some not at all. These are precisely the areas that led 
to German historian Klaus Buchenau (focusing mostly on Croatia) to 
wonder “what went wrong.”5 
The Slovenian environment ‒ frequently presented to the interna-
tional public and Vatican representatives as an oasis of coexistence, 
where religious matter could be managed in a different way6 – offers 
a particularly productive case study for analysing the constants, com-
promises, and long-term impacts of the religious policy implemented 
under the banner of the League of Communists (LC).7
The present article, which is based on public and archival docu-
ments of various Slovenian administrative and consultative bodies con-
cerned with religious issues, traces the strategy of late socialist estab-
lishment to integrate Christians as equal partners into the project of 
self-management socialism or at least prevent the obstruction of this 
project by the majority religious population. But these endeavours were 
essentially controversial, for rather than applying the self-management 
principles to the regulation of religious issues, they sought to preserve 
4  Albin Kralj, Teologija osvoboditve in slovenski katoličani (Ljubljana: Nova revija, 2009).
5  Klaus Buchenau, “What went wrong? Church–state relations in socialist Yugoslavia,” Na-
tionalities Papers 33, no. 4 (2005): 547–567, https://doi.org/10.1080/00905990500354046.
6  Jure Ramšak, “The Crumbling Touchstone of the Vatican’s Ostpolitik: Relations between 
the Holy See and Yugoslavia, 1970–1989,” The International History Review 43, no. 4 (2021), 
858–860, https://doi.org/10.1080/07075332.2020.1819859.
7  The most comprehensive scholarly work to date on this topic is Dejan Pacek, Od konflikta 
h kompromisu. Oris odnosa med državo in Katoliško cerkvijo v Sloveniji 1966–1991 (Ljubljana: 
Inštitut za novejšo zgodovino, 2023), while many other relevant insights, from which this ar-
ticle also draws, have been contributed by: Mateja Režek, Med resničnostjo in iluzijo: slovenska 
in jugoslovanska politika v desetletju po sporu z Informbirojem (1948-1958) (Ljubljana: Modrijan, 
2005); Mateja Režek, “Cuius regio eius religio: The relationship of communist authorities with 
the catholic church in Slovenia and Yugoslavia after 1945,” in The Sovietization of Eastern Euro-
pe: New Perspectives on the Postwar Period, ed. Balázs Apor, Péter Apor and E. A. Rees (Washin-
gton: New Academia Publishing, 2008); Jure Ramšak, (Samo)upravljanje intelekta: družbena 
kritika v poznosocialistični Sloveniji (Ljubljana: Modrijan, 2019).
T H E  P R O B L E M  W I T H  C O U R T E S Y
143
the non-confrontational relationship with the (conservative) hierarchy 
of the Catholic Church, even though the latter had been officially de-
nied the role of advocate of believers’ rights. 
This strategy was supported by a series of formal and informal mech-
anisms that created the impression that the northernmost Yugoslav 
republic was undergoing opposite processes to those taking place in 
its immediate neighbour, the socialist republic of Croatia – another 
majority-Catholic republic, yet one where relations between religious 
and civil authorities were far more discordant than Slovenia.8 Still, the 
key questions that should have been addressed within the framework of 
advanced Yugoslav self-management democracy, as the regime defined 
itself, remained to some degree identified as problematic, but essentially 
unresolved all through the end of the 1980s.
From the Cabinet to the Field: The Hesitant Renouncement of the 
Marxist-Leninist Principles of Religious Policy
The position of Catholics, as well as other believers, in socialist self-
managed Yugoslavia was paradoxical and unclear from the beginning, 
and remained so until the very end of the country’s existence. The foun-
dations of Yugoslav communist atheism, laid after World War II and 
based on Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy, stressed the importance of incul-
cating a “scientific worldview” and revealed a key determinant of the 
system – its incapability to tolerate any authority outside its own frame-
work.9 Although granted significantly more freedom than its counter-
parts in most other communist countries especially from the 1960s on-
wards, the Yugoslav LC pursued a religious policy that resulted, as some 
of the leading scholars have shown, in controversial outcomes.10 
8  Roberto Morozzo della Rocca, “Le religioni e la dissoluzione della Jugoslavia,” in Dopo la 
pioggia. Gli stati della ex Jugoslavia e lʼAlbania, ed. Antonio DʼAlessandri and Armando Pitassio 
(Lecce: Argo, 2011), 484.
9  Radmila Radić, “Politička ideologija kao sekularna religija i njena integrativna funkcija,” 
in Dijalog povjesničara/istoričara IV, ed. Hans-Georg Fleck and Igor Graovac (Zagreb: Friedrich 
Naumann Stiftung, 2001).
10  Pedro Ramet, “Catholicism and Politics in Socialist Yugoslavia,” Religion in Communist 
Lands 10, no. 3 (1982): 272, https://doi.org/10.1080/09637498208431033; Paul Mojzes, Reli-
gious Liberty in Eastern Europe and the USSR. Before and after the Great Transformation (Boulder: 
P O L I G R A F I
144
As a matter of fact, it would be more accurate to speak of several 
religious policies, for religious situations varied from one constituent 
republic to another, particularly after the adoption of the new federal 
constitution in 1974, which entrusted the relations with religious com-
munities almost exclusively to republican bodies. The communist elites 
in individual constituent republics implemented each their own dis-
tinct policies and, even more so, strategies of everyday relationships 
with the Catholic Church’s hierarchy and clergy, even though the pro-
gramme of the LC adopted at the congress of 1958, included ideologi-
cal guidelines on the role of religion in Yugoslavia’s socialist society that 
applied to all republics.11 
The different methods of addressing religious issues in individual 
Yugoslav republics and autonomous provinces in the late 1970s clear-
ly affected the work of the Federal Commission for Relations with 
Religious Communities, as internal coordination and the adoption of 
joint decisions became nearly impossible.12 Such modifications of reli-
gious policy were characteristic not only of federal units with diverse 
religious landscapes (Orthodox, Catholic, Islamic), but also those with 
largely homogenous religious landscapes, such as Croatia and Slovenia, 
where Catholics were in the majority. Comparatively, different reli-
gious environments in Yugoslavia exhibited varying levels of correlation 
East European Monographs, 1992), 339–397; Klaus Buchenau, Orthodoxie und Katholizismus 
in Jugoslawien 1945–1991: Ein serbisch-kroatischer Vergleich (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2004); 
Vjekoslav Perica, Sveti Petar i Sveti Sava: Sakralni simboli kao metafore povijesnih promjena 
(Beograd: Biblioteka XX vek, 2009); Mateja Režek, “Searching for a path to dialogue betwe-
en Christianity and Marxism in early socialist Slovenia,” in Christian Modernity and Marxist 
Secularism in East Central Europe: Between Conflict and Cooperation, ed. Jure Ramšak, Gašper 
Mithans and Mateja Režek (Zagreb: Srednja Europa, 2022).
11  The last Party programme, adopted at the 7th congress of the LCY, stated: “When Yugo-
slav communists represent their Marxist materialist world view consistently, they are aware that 
religion, which arises from and is maintained in specific historical conditions of material and 
spiritual backwardness of people, cannot be overcome through administrative means, but only 
with the continuous development of socialist social relations, the diffusion of scientific knowl-
edge and the general improvement of human consciousness, through which actual human free-
dom is progressively pursued and material and spiritual conditions causing various delusions 
and misconceptions are eradicated.” (Sedmi kongres Zveze komunistov Jugoslavije (Ljubljana: 
Cankarjeva založba, 1958), 479–480).
12  SI AS 1211, b. 156, f. 18/1980-II, Poročilo o uresničevanju programa komisije za leto 
1979, January 29, 1980, 5.
T H E  P R O B L E M  W I T H  C O U R T E S Y
145
between religion and ethno-nationalism, which had a major impact on 
the policies of republican LCs. This was mostly a consequence of dis-
similar historical backgrounds, for in Slovenia the religious factor had 
been decidedly less crucial in the nation-building process than it had 
been in Croatia, owing to the ambiguous role of Catholicism during 
the 20th century.13
In the late 1970s, in the years immediately preceding the end of the 
President Tito’s era and for several years after that, one of the biggest is-
sues of the LC religious policy was how to win the loyalty of Catholics. 
In Slovenia, the idea was to engage them in the socialist self-manage-
ment process, for which the Communist Party saw a precedent in the 
participation of wide religious strata in the partisan movement during 
World War II. Christian socialists’ broad engagement in the wartime 
coalition with the Communists was a result of a deep ideological split 
within Slovenian political Catholicism at the end of the 1930s and was 
an exception in the Yugoslav context.14 Nevertheless, the potential de-
velopment of the Catholic left into an independent political organiza-
tion was thwarted already during the war, and its leader, the Slovenian 
poet and writer Edvard Kocbek, was excluded from the leading estab-
lishment after the war.15 
Decades after the war the Party was still afraid that a rival organiza-
tion of socialist orientation could threaten its monopoly.16 With the 
majority of supporters of a resurrection of the prewar clerical model 
exiled, the regime saw the emergence of such an opposition as quite an 
unrealistic threat; a matter of greater concern to them was the Christian 
13  Mitja Velikonja, “Slovenian and Polish Religio-National Mythologies: A Comparative 
Analysis,” Religion, State & Society 31, no. 3 (2003): 233–260, https://doi.org/10.1080/096374
9032000107054; Zdenko Roter, “Odnos med katoliško cerkvijo in državo v osemdesetih letih 
(1),” Teorija in praksa 24 (1987).
14  Egon Pelikan and Gašper Mithans, “Political Representations and the Confrontation of 
Marxism and Christianity in Interwar Slovenia: The Christian Socialist Journal Beseda o sodob-
nih vprašanjih as Case Study,” in Christian Modernity and Marxist Secularism in East Central 
Europe: Between Conflict and Cooperation, ed. Jure Ramšak, Gašper Mithans and Mateja Režek 
(Zagreb: Srednja Europa, 2022).
15  Aleš Gabrič, “Odnos komunistične oblasti do katoliških intelektualcev po letu 1945,” Ne-
čakov zbornik: procesi, teme in dogodki iz 19. in 20. stoletja, ed. Kornelija Ajlec, Bojan Balkovec 
and Božo Repe (Ljubljana: Znanstvena založba Filozofske fakultete, 2018).
16  Režek, Cuius regio eius religio; Režek, Searching for a path.
P O L I G R A F I
146
Socialists, whose independent political organization was completely 
unacceptable to the Party, although they recognized the inevitability of 
the socialist system and were favourably disposed towards a partnership 
with the Communists.17
In the late socialist period, the task of publicly defending the stances 
of the LC was delegated to select Marxist philosophers and sociologists 
of religion. This strategy did not entirely prevent sporadic interventions 
by political structures from occurring, but it did succeed in elevating 
the level of debate, which now continued through an exchange of views 
between young Marxists who encouraged dialogue and had a strong 
theoretical foundation, and theologians.18 
Slovenian Marxist sociologists and philosophers started to shed light 
on the complexity of the phenomenon of religion in the socialist self-
management society sooner and in a more nuanced manner than their 
colleagues from the Zagreb-and-Belgrade-based Praxis philosophical 
school, who erased the atheistic vocabulary from their categorical appa-
ratus under the influence of western Marxism, yet found it difficult to 
avoid doctrinal antireligious views.19 By the late 1970s, the Slovenians, 
after having empirically analyzed religiousness and acquainted them-
selves with progressive Catholic movements in Yugoslavia and abroad 
(South America, Italy, Germany), openly discussed the prospect of re-
ligion surviving within the socialist system and the legitimacy of reli-
gious motivation in the consolidation of socialist regime.20
17  Stane Kavčič and Lev Modic, Socialistične sile, religija, cerkev (Ljubljana: Komunist 
1968), 76.
18  Radmila Radić, “The Yugoslav Authorities and the Christian–Marxist Dialogue of the 
Late Sixties and Early Seventies,” in Christian Modernity and Marxist Secularism in East Central 
Europe: Between Conflict and Cooperation, ed. Jure Ramšak, Gašper Mithans and Mateja Režek 
(Zagreb: Srednja Europa, 2022).
19  Mislav Kukoč, “Problem religije u hrvatskoj marksističkoj filozofiji,” in Religija i sloboda: 
Prilog ‘socioreligijskoj karti Hrvatske’, ed. Ivan Grubišić (Split: Institut za primijenjena društvena 
istraživanja, 1993), 73.
20  SI AS 1277, b. 21, f. 13, Posvet Republiške konference ZSMS na temo Marksizem in 
njegov odnos do religije ter vloga subjektivnih sil do religije in cerkve, April 24–25, 1978, 
1–3. That did not mean, however, that the leading Slovenian intellectuals of Marxist orienta-
tion fully adopted the stances on religion proposed by their western colleagues and European 
communist parties; cf. Daniela Saresella, Catholics and Communists in Twentieth-Century Italy: 
Between Conflict and Dialogue (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020).
T H E  P R O B L E M  W I T H  C O U R T E S Y
147
Sociologists of religion also took it upon themselves to organise field 
seminars for the members of the Slovenian LC since religious issues 
were frequently still shrouded in prejudice, poorly understood, and 
viewed as a deviation from the official Party line.21 Following the trajec-
tory of Slovenian Party’s understanding of religion from the late 1970s 
onwards, a gradual departure from it being viewed as a “reactionary 
phenomenon” can be observed, while the Croatian Party structure con-
tinued to see it as such well into the 1980s.22 
This change coincided with the fact that in Slovenia the most im-
portant positions in the Slovenian LC were taken over by the postwar 
generation of young politicians. Having covered the area of religious 
communities even before becoming President of the LC of Slovenia 
(1986–1989), Milan Kučan stood out among them, obviously influ-
enced by the dialogue-oriented Slovenian sociologists.23 Meanwhile, 
their Croatian colleagues (Branko Bošnjak, Srdjan Vrcan, Esad Ćimić) 
had a limited influence on the matter as the conservative establishment 
(Jure Bilić, Jakov Blažević, Milutin Baltić, Dušan Dragosavac, Ranko 
Pukarić, Zlatko Uzelac) was still firmly in power in this republic.24 
By the late 1970s, the most important Slovenian Party bodies pri-
vately acknowledged the unprincipled nature of Party politics, the sec-
ond-class position of believers in society, and, last but not least, the 
need to abandon the outdated prewar and postwar patterns.25 Yet the 
logic of power monopoly that the Party derived from its Marxist athe-
ism prevented any substantial change to its programme until the end 
of the 1980s. 
21  SI AS 1589/IV, b. 251, f. 757, Drugi del magnetograma 17. seje Predsedstva CK ZKS, 
October 16, 1975. 37/1; SI AS 1277, b. 21, Protokolirani dopisi 13, Posvet Republiške konfer-
ence ZSMS na temo Marksizem in njegov odnos do religije ter vloga subjektivnih sil do religije 
in cerkve, April, 24–25, 1978, 1, 3.
22  Cf. Pedro Ramet, Cross and Commissar. The Politics of Religion in Eastern Europe and the 
USSR (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), 113.
23  Zdenko Roter, Padle maske: Od partizanskih sanj do novih dni (Ljubljana: Sever & Sever, 
2013), 326.
24  Cf. Ramet, Cross and Commissar, 100–101, 113.
25  SI AS 1589/IV, b. 547, f. 5734, Magnetogram 2. seje Predsedstva CK ZKS za idejno in 
teoretično delo v Zvezi komunistov, July 18, 1979, 5/3 AV, 5/7 AV.
P O L I G R A F I
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For believers, what mattered most was not the Party’s theoretical 
commitment to the eventual demise of religion, but rather its practical 
adherence to the principle that, in the meantime, believers and non-
believers should be granted full equality.
Communist Party Commissars, Church Dignitaries,  
and Their Own Self-Management
At the legal level, almost all European state-socialist regimes defined 
religion as “a matter of the individual,”26 and the spirit of this defini-
tion, along with its related provision prohibiting the “abuse” of religious 
feelings for political purposes, permeated the Yugoslav legislation and 
programmatic documents as well. By underlining that the limits of the 
Church’s freedom were set by the Church itself, as the chief Yugoslav 
ideologue Edvard Kardelj stated,27 this unclear situation left room for 
interpretation and arbitrary decision-making in accordance with the 
political atmosphere of the moment.
Customarily, anything outside the Party’s political and social he-
gemony was labelled as clericalism, defined in its broadest sense as “a 
tendency to organise believers in a particular way in relation to mat-
ters of public interest and outside the religious sphere, to propagate 
Catholic views outside the sphere of faith, to establish the Catholic 
sociopolitical, cultural and economic doctrine as a possibility of just 
social order.”28 Those in the Party concerned with religion argued that a 
manifest, outward expression of religious feelings should be redirected 
into an internal, existential form of faith. Based on the premise (una-
vowed in the public discourse) that socialist affiliation and faith were 
mutually exclusive, they declared that “turning religion into a private 
26  Klaus Buchenau, “Socialist secularities: The Diversity of a Universalist Model,” in Multiple 
Secularities Beyond the West, ed. Marian Burchardt, Monika Wohlrab-Sahr and Matthias Mid-
dell (Berlin & Boston: De Gruyter, 2015), 264, 
.
27  Edvard Kardelj, Smeri razvoja političnega sistema socialističnega samoupravljanja (Ljubljana: 
Komunist, 1977), 126.
28  SI AS 1211, b. 55, IV-SZDL, Poskus informacije o stanju odnosov med samoupravno 
družbo in verskimi skupnostmi, undated, 2.
T H E  P R O B L E M  W I T H  C O U R T E S Y
149
matter of the individual that has nothing to do with one’s socialist ori-
entation and activity, means finding balance between prevention and 
treatment in the regulation of religious affairs.”29 But as the appeals 
from local Party officials for an exhaustive definition of “admissible” 
Church activities implied, the implementation of such “prevention” or 
the ideological-political struggle rested on arbitrary bases. 
The question arose whether truly “parallel” political and social activ-
ities existed and how to respond when, for examples, priests established 
clubs where their parishioners could watch television and read religious 
press, or when they organized assistance for the elderly and for farmers 
on high-mountain homesteads.30 Obviously, the regime kept a close 
watch on the preservation of its monopoly in organising all important 
social activities, thus preventing the Catholic Church from entering 
the “social vacuum” and “sucking” passive citizens into post-conciliar 
activities for lay persons.31 
Another problem was the parish councils, constituted in accordance 
with the Vatican II’s Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity, in which 
certain Party commissars saw a transfer of priestly activities into the 
secular environment, where their actions could be interpreted as having 
a broader social background.32 Their objective was therefore to ensure 
that religious citizens did not organise in the fashion of “self-manage-
ment”, which was only reserved for initiatives guided by the LC or its 
mass organizations.
Invented to stand as an example of the “democratic” manner of 
addressing open issues were Coordination Committees for Relations 
between Self-management Society and Religious Communities, estab-
lished in 1970, which met under the auspices of the Socialist Alliance 
of Working People’s (SAWP’s) republican and municipal conferences.33 
Not constituting the authorities themselves, these committees had no 
29  Ibid., 6.
30  Ibid., 5–6.
31  SI AS 1211, b. 6, f. 50, Nekateri aspekti stanja in delovanja verskih skupnosti v Sloveniji, 
November 26, 1969, 5.
32  Ibid., 7.
33  SI AS 1211, b. 6, f. 50, Informacija o formiranju Koordinacijskega odbora za urejanje 
odnosov med cerkvijo in samoupravno družbo pri RK SZDL, December 22, 1970.
P O L I G R A F I
150
power of direct decision-making; their purpose was to monitor politi-
cal problems and ensure, through communication with the parties in-
volved, that the individual problems would not escalate into raising 
fundamental doubt in established Church-State relationships.34 In real-
ity, their sessions, attended by representatives of the authorities as well 
as clergy and lay believers, addressed mainly everyday matters, such as 
obtaining permits for construction or renovation of churches,35 while 
discussions about key parameters of religion policy remained the do-
main of Party decision-makers.
The main republican body in charge of religious policy imple-
mentation was the Commission of the Socialist Republic of Slovenia 
for Religious Issues (CRI), renamed in 1975 as the Commission for 
Relations with Religious Communities (CRRC).36 The CRI was es-
tablished at the very first wartime meeting of the Slovene National 
Liberation Council in February 1944,37 yet operated in the shadow of 
the secret services until the 1960s. After the adoption of constitutional 
amendments in 1971 and the change in jurisdictions, Slovenian com-
munists negotiated all open issues directly with Slovenian ordinaries, at 
republican level, and no longer in Belgrade at the level of federal bodies, 
that is, with the Yugoslav Bishops’ Conference.38 
With the republics facing each their own religious challenges, it 
had become increasingly difficult to harmonise religious policies at the 
federal level, with the republican commissions taking a more or less 
joint stand only on issues related to the Holy See.39 Members of the 
Slovenian CRI/CRRC were representatives of socio-political organiza-
tions and experts in religious issues, but the most important decisions 
34  SI AS 1211, b. 6, f. 50, Skrajšano besedilo uvodnih misli Janeza Vipotnika, December 23, 
1970.
35  SI AS 1211, b. 55, IV-SZDL, Poskus informacije o stanju odnosov med samoupravno 
družbo in verskimi skupnostmi, undated, 4.
36  Pacek, Od konflikta h kompromisu, 47–54.
37  Sklepi in odloki. Prvo zasedanje Slovenskega narodnega osvobodilnega sveta (Ljubljana: Prop. 
kom. IOOF, 1945), 20.
38  SI AS 1211, b. 6, f. 50, Nekateri aspekti stanja in delovanja verskih skupnosti v Sloveniji, 
November 26, 1969, 47.
39  SI AS 1211, b. 156, f. 18/1980, Poročilo o uresničevanju programa dela komisije za leto 
1979, January 29, 1980, 5.
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151
were still adopted in the so-called micro-coordination sessions of the 
SAWP Coordination Committee, which met at least once a month and 
saw participation of five to ten top Party and republican officials. Such 
a structure was thus a guild with a considerably narrower composi-
tion, yet considerably broader powers than the pluralistically composed 
SAWP Coordination Committee and existed until the second half of 
the eighties.40
 Given the unsatisfactory operation of municipal religious com-
missions, the majority of which were only active in large towns, the 
republican CRRC functioned as a meeting place of representatives of 
state and religious authorities, and received up to 400 priests and ec-
clesiastical dignitaries per year.41 
While the majority approached the CRRC with requests and de-
mands related to material conditions of the Catholic Church opera-
tion, some, particularly bishops and auxiliary bishops, the leadership of 
the Faculty of Theology, and editors of religious press, were sometimes 
summoned there to defend themselves after so-called “incidents” (such 
as the publication of critical articles), but more often than not, before 
such “regrettable events” could even happen. Yet even such conversa-
tions ‒ if we are to trust the statements terminating the official records 
‒ would end in a “courteous,” “cooperative,” or even “friendly” atmos-
phere.42 A practice established over the years of CRRC’s operation that 
virtually all newly appointed church dignitaries (bishops and auxiliary 
bishops, heads of religious schools, and monastic orders) asked for an 
audience themselves, as would also most priests travelling outside the 
country or returning from longer stays abroad.43 
40  Božo Repe, Rdeča Slovenija. Tokovi in obrazi iz obdobja socializma (Ljubljana: Sophia, 
2003), 66.
41  SI AS 1211, b. 6, f. 50, Nekateri aspekti stanja in delovanja verskih skupnosti v Sloveniji, 
November 26, 1969, 45.
42  SI AS 1211, b. 6, f. 50, Zabeležka o razgovoru z mariborskim škofom dr. Maksimiljanom 
Držečnikom in njegovim pomožnim škofom dr. Vekoslavom Grmičem, July 21, 1970; SI AS 
1211, b. 150, f. 5, Poročilo o razgovoru namestnika predsednika Franca Pristovška z glavnim 
urednikom Družine dr. Dragom Klemenčičem, September 19, 1980.
43  SI AS 1211, b. 6, f. 50, Nekateri aspekti stanja in delovanja verskih skupnosti v Sloveniji, 
November 26, 1969, 45.
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152
Also, in contrast to Croatia, where such a practice was introduced 
only in 1979,44 the president of the Slovenian CRRC, who was also the 
vice-president of the republican Executive Council (that is, the Slovenian 
government), would invite bishops, heads of monastic orders, princi-
pals of religious schools, and the leadership of the Cyril-Methodius 
Priestly Patriotic Association to New Year’s receptions, which always re-
ceived positive coverage in the religious press.45 Occasions for courtesy 
calls, where even the most delicate issues were not shied away from, in-
cluded not only official receptions but also personal invitations to din-
ners, which bishops received on their birthdays,46 and the bishops’ visits 
to the Yugoslav Embassy during their ad limina visits to the Vatican 
(though those were gladly avoided by Croatian bishops). Especially 
close ties were established between Alojzij Šuštar, who replaced Jožef 
Pogačnik in 1980 as the Ljubljana Archbishop and Metropolitan, and 
the then-president of CRRC, Boris Frlec.47 During the great shifts of 
the 1980s, they also met in private and “enjoyed completely relaxed 
converzations.”48
 Personal contacts with ecclesiastical ordinaries were not the 
only special approach adopted by Slovenian politicians in managing 
relations with the Church. They also avoided introducing repressive 
measures against the clergy. As a result of a political initiative, after 
the end of the 1960s, judicial courts no longer sentenced the clergy to 
imprisonment, pronouncing, in the worst case, suspended sentences.49 
44  Siniša Zrinščak, “Odnos Crkve i države u Hrvatskoj od 1945. do 1990. Godine,” in Religi-
ja i sloboda. Prilog ‘socioreligijskoj karti Hrvatske’, ed. Ivan Grubišić (Split: Institut za primijenje-
na društvena istraživanja, 1993), 120. See also: Pacek, Od konflikta h kompromisu, 455–493; 
Aleš Gabrič, “Odnos slovenske politike prema ‘maspoku’,” Časopis za suvremenu povijest 42 
(2010).
45  SI AS 1211, b. 6, f. 50, Nekateri aspekti stanja in delovanja verskih skupnosti v Sloveniji, 
November 26, 1969, 46.
46  SI AS 1211, b. 150, f. 5, Zapis o razgovoru z ljubljanskim pomožnim škofom dr. Stanisla-
vom Leničem in kanonikom dr. Lojzetom Šuštarjem, November 7, 1978; Zapis o razgovoru z 
dr. Francem Dolinarjem, glavnim arhivarjem in bibliotekarjem ljubljanske nadškofije, October 
19, 1977.
47  Pacek, Od konflikta h kompromisu, 222, 232, 237.
48  Ljerka Bizilj, Cerkev v policijskih arhivih (Ljubljana: self-published, 1991), 38.
49  SI AS 1211, b. 6, f. 18-1974, Odnosi z rimskokatoliško cerkvijo v SR Sloveniji, January 
24, 1974, 5.
T H E  P R O B L E M  W I T H  C O U R T E S Y
153
Although the “hostile outbursts” of certain priests and theologians 
may have merited punishment in accordance with religious legislation, 
courts refrained from taking repressive measures out of the concern that 
it would make the censored individuals into martyrs both at home and 
especially abroad. At the same time, the regime wanted to demonstrate 
its ability to deal with non-socialist tendencies at the intellectual level.50 
The Illusion of Convergence
While in Croatia, Catholic ceremonies organized during the nine 
years of the worship of Virgin Mary (1975–1984) turned into an op-
portunity for ethnic mobilization,51 in Slovenia the 1980s were marked 
by no particular events that could sour the atmosphere between the 
Catholic Church and the authorities. Both sides found a common 
language to deal with practical matters, such as construction of new 
churches, conservation of the religious cultural heritage, priests’ so-
cial security, and religious funerals. There were still some open issues, 
such as the position of Catholic teachers or atheization of children in 
schools, but the Catholic side became more tolerant and its critical 
voices were toned down.52 Until the end of the 1980s, at the base of 
the LC’s relation with the Catholic Church was “the depoliticization of 
religious interest,” so the authorities did not tolerate any parallel activi-
ties and demands for religious radio and TV programs, which had been 
made repeatedly since the end of the 1960s by both Catholic Church 
representatives and believers themselves.53
50  SI AS 1589/IV, b. 557, f. 5897, Seminar o religiji in položaju verskih skupnosti v sociali-
stični samoupravni družbi, February 7, 1980, 33.
51  Cf. Miroslav Akmadža, Katolička crkva u komunističkoj Hrvatskoj 1945.-1980. (Zagreb & 
Slavonski Brod: Despot Infinitus & Hrvatski institut za povijest, 2013).
52  SI AS 1211, b. 156, f. 18/1980-II, Zapisnik 7. seje komisije SR Slovenije za odnose z ver-
skimi skupnostmi, May 6, 1980; SI AS 1211, b. 157, f. 18/1986-II, Poročilo Koordinacijskega 
odbora za odnose med samoupravno družbo in verskimi skupnostmi, undated.
53  SI AS 1211, b. 157, f. 18/1985-II, Zapisnik 5. seje komisije SR Slovenije za odnose z 
verskimi skupnostmi, March 5, 1985, 13; SI AS 1211, b. 157, f. 18/1985-II, Nagovor predsed-
nika komisije SR Slovenije za odnose z verskimi skupnostmi dr. Borisa Frleca na novoletnem 
sprejemu, January 18, 1985.
P O L I G R A F I
154
 In the second half of the 1980s, the issue of public religious life 
centred around the celebration of Christmas.54 Yugoslavia was one of 
the few socialist countries in which Christmas was not a public holi-
day. Believers kept appealing to the authorities, yet the wind of change 
did not blow until 1986, when the president of the SAWP republican 
conference, Jože Smole, wished Merry Christmas to the national TV 
audience (Archbishop Šuštar had done the same via the national radio 
a year before). His gesture caused quite a stir throughout Yugoslavia, 
and was not met with unanimous approval even in Slovenia.55 Smole’s 
gesture raised more doubts in other parts of Yugoslavia than in Slovenia 
since it was not understood as a step towards democratization but as a 
sign of political manipulation with religion.56 
In principle, SAWP conferences in other republics did not oppose 
the act of their Slovenian counterpart, although they did not want to 
repeat it in their own multireligious environments where such gestures 
could have sparked off unforeseen reactions. Thus at the end of 1987, 
the Croatian media only highlighted the theme of New Year’s holidays, 
whereas Slovenian TV and radio channels, as well as cultural institu-
tions, had already enriched their programs with Christmas motifs, al-
beit laying emphasis on the depiction of folk tradition rather than the 
denominational aspect of this religious feast.57 Christmas was finally 
declared a public holiday in 1989, but not as “a feast of peace and fam-
ily” rather as an unspecified work-free day, which was according to the 
republican decision-makers “the optimum that can be today argued for 
in the Slovenian and Yugoslav situation”.58
 The end of the 1980s thus saw a shift in the social and politi-
cal arenas in Slovenia and, consequently, a gradual development of a 
new understanding of the social role of religion and Church. Again, 
54  Pacek, Od konflikta h kompromisu, 327.
55  Stefano Lusa, Razkroj oblasti: Slovenski komunisti in demokratizacija države (Ljubljana: 
Modrijan, 2012), 158–159.
56  The act of the Slovenian SAWP was met with the most negative reactions in Macedonia 
and Vojvodina (SI AS 1211, b. 20, f. 15/1987-1, Informacija o reagovanju domaćih i inostranih 
sredstava informisanja na božićnu čestitku, January 16, 1987, 3).
57  SI AS 1211, b. 157, f. 18/1986-II, Obeleževanje božiča v Sloveniji, undated.
58  SI AS 1211, b. 158, Zapisnik o seji sekretariata komisije SRS za odnose z verskimi skup-
nostmi, June 23, 1989.
T H E  P R O B L E M  W I T H  C O U R T E S Y
155
that was largely the result of the engagement of conciliatory sociolo-
gists of religion, who had regularly attended CRRC sessions for at least 
a decade. Given the reserved stance of theologians (most notably Anton 
Stres)59 who were increasingly present in public life, sociologist Marko 
Kerševan argued at the beginning of 1988 that “the Church no longer 
acts as an organization of power and largely no longer strives for power 
sharing, but prefers to act as one of the entities of civil society, therefore 
its operation can no longer be simply classified under clericalism or 
integralism.”60 
In line with such perception of the Catholic Church’s public role, 
at the end of 1988, the year of the culmination of social turmoil, the 
CRRC estimated that religious communities in Slovenia did not stand 
out from other social entities regarding their critical stance on the then 
state of affairs. The CRRC did notice that the Catholic Church wanted 
to strengthen its social role, yet its prevailing aims were those of stabili-
zation and democratization also espoused by the Party leadership.61 At 
59  At that time Anton Stres, since 1985 chairman of the “Justice and Peace” (Iustitia et Pax) 
Council (later Commission) operating under the auspices of the Slovenian Regional Bishops’ 
Conference, was of the opinion that even if the Catholic Church should not intervene in the 
political arena, it had the moral right to judge open social questions. He also stood against the 
Catholic Church partnership with the ruling communist structures and called for the separa-
tion of the LC from the state and for the abolition of its monopoly of power (Tone Stres, 
“Cerkev je tolerirana, ne pa tudi spoštovana,” Teleks, May 19, 1988). In that period, such a 
stance was quite in harmony with the attitude of sociologists and journalists writing for the 
major Slovenian newspapers, whom however some more conservative communists criticised 
for their “immense trust in ecclesiastical authors” (Zdenko Roter, “Konec nekega obdobja 
(odnosov med katoliško cerkvijo in državo v Sloveniji),” Teorija in praksa 27 (1990), 272).
60  SI AS 1211, b. 158, Verske skupnosti in ustavne spremembe, December 26, 1988, 11. The 
CRRC thus defended both Anton Stres and Alojzij Šuštar whose opinions Belgrade (superfi-
cially) interpreted as proof of Catholic Church political ambitions and its readiness to share 
power with the LC, while in reality they both wanted to stress that the Catholic Church was 
part of civil society (SI AS 1211, b. 3, f. ZVK 1988, Komentar k pisanju biltenov Zveznega 
sekretariata za informacije z dne 16. 6. in 18. 7. 1988).
61  SI AS 1211, b. 158, Pregled in ocena dogajanja v odnosih z verskimi skupnostmi v letu 
1988, undated, 2. One year before, the Slovenian CRRC had sharply rejected the conclusions 
reached by the federal Commission, which suggested that the Slovenian Catholic Church facili-
tated politicisation and the rise of the conservative faction. The Slovenian CRRC sent Belgrade 
well-corroborated analyses showing that the Slovenian Catholic Church did not try to establish 
contacts with the emerging bourgeois right (SI AS 1211, b. 3, f. ZVK 1987, Mnenje o “In-
formaciji o pojavama klerikalističkog delovanja i sektaškog odnosa prema vernicima u SFRJ”, 
April 16, 1987).
P O L I G R A F I
156
the end of the 1980s, this gradualist view, which advocated the preser-
vation of national unity in response to Belgrade’s centralist tendencies, 
served the Church as a well-calculated common denominator with the 
liberal Communist establishment at the helm of the Slovenian LC and 
the republic.
The Catholic Church also did not intervene in the process of plu-
ralization of the Slovenian political arena; according to Anton Stres, 
the Catholic Church was criticized by the opposition forces from the 
Nova revija circle62 for not being among the most vocal protagonists 
of “the Slovenian spring”.63 Since the early 1989, when the Slovenian 
Christian Social Movement developed from the Revija 2000 circle, the 
Slovenian Catholic Church leadership had been caught in the dilemma 
whether to participate in political organization of Catholics or not. But 
even then, it seemed that the socialist establishment, which still tried 
to prevent people from organising themselves on a religious basis, and 
the Catholic Church leadership were of the same page about that, since 
both the CRRC president Boris Frlec and Archbishop Alojzij Šuštar 
stood against the establishment of such (para)political associations.64 
Thus, the movement, which was led by the Slovenian Catholic intel-
lectual Peter Kovačič Peršin and aimed to build on the legacy of prewar 
Christian socialism and its cooperation in the antifascist coalition, was 
left with no support, and the Christian Socialists were excluded from the 
democratization process. Many years later, Peter Kovačič Peršin claimed 
that even then the ruling structures of the Slovenian Catholic Church 
witnessed a strong presence of forces tacitly supported by Archbishop 
Alojzij Šuštar, whose aim was not autonomous political organization of 
Christians but the resurrection of prewar clericalism.65 
With his vision defeated, Peter Kovačič Peršin withdrew and made 
room for Lojze Peterle, who in November 1989 transformed the 
movement into a party – the Slovenian Christian Democrats, which 
62  Božo Repe, Jutri je nov dan. Slovenci in razpad Jugoslavije (Ljubljana: Modrijan, 2002).
63  Roter, “Konec nekega obdobja,” 267.
64  SI AS 1211, b. 158, Zapisnik o seji komisije SRS za odnose z verskimi skupnostmi, April 
10, 1989, 2.
65  Peter Kovačič Peršin, “Misliti, da prevrati niso več mogoči, je naivno,” Delo-Sobotna prilo-
ga, July 2, 2011.
T H E  P R O B L E M  W I T H  C O U R T E S Y
157
later formed the backbone of the first post-socialist DEMOS govern-
ment. After that, virtually nothing remained of the legacy of Christian 
Socialism. A card that the Party establishment had often and readily 
played to legitimise its policies ever since World War II had turned into 
a marginal phenomenon in its own Catholic midst.
Conclusion
Towards the end of 1980, the federal and republican Secretariats 
for Information organized a study trip to Slovenia entitled “Relations 
between socialist societies and religious communities” for over 30 
correspondents of the world’s leading media outlets accredited in 
Belgrade and Vienna. The journalists visited the highest organs of the 
republican authorities, a Catholic religious school, a monastery, and 
the seat of the Ljubljana archdiocese, and everywhere they went they 
were told about a cooperation that the state authorities judged as cor-
rect or even positive. The official reports, however, failed to include 
the answer to a question made by a reporter of the German ARD 
television network, Friedhelm Brebeck, who asked why it had been 
necessary to come precisely to Slovenia to discuss this particular topic, 
and noted that, apparently, everything was clear about the Church-
State relationship at the top levels, but less so at the base.66
As we have seen in this discussion, Party activists in the field did 
view the activities of the Catholic Church for greater lay engagement 
with suspicion, but this was not the only contradictory aspect of the 
LC’s response to the post-conciliar aggiornamento of the Catholic 
Church and the impetus on the part of progressive-oriented groups of 
theologians and laity. There was some ambiguity even at the very top of 
the Communist Party, which departed from postwar practices or even 
concurrent repressive actions in other republics, yet did not follow the 
recommendations of (Marxist) sociologists of religion to thoroughly re-
vise the still operative and essentially Leninist principles of understand-
ing and “managing” the phenomenon of religion. In this context, their 
66  DAMSP, 1980, b. 145, d. 466454, Zabeleška o boravku inostranih dopisnika na studi-
jskom putovanju u SR Sloveniji od 3. do 5. decembra 1980. godine, December 10, 1980.
P O L I G R A F I
158
safer bet was cooperative prelates and priests who were not only uncriti-
cal of the state authorities but also of their own institution. Under the 
surface of this apparent atmosphere of cooperation – complementari-
ness even – between state and religious authorities, currents cultivat-
ing not only marked anti-socialism but also certain visions of integral 
Catholicism were strengthening. The latter came to light not long after 
the Slovenian LC parted from power and the position of Slovenian na-
tional leader within the disintegrating Yugoslav federation.
It is clear that in their attitude towards religion and opening their 
doors to religious members, the communist parties in Western European 
countries took far greater strides than the Communist Party that in-
vented socialist self-management and generally claimed to have made it 
the farthest in the democratization and humanization of society. 
Considering all contexts of political pragmatism within and outside 
Yugoslavia, the question is, of course, whether Yugoslav communists 
would have been able to follow their Italian, French, and Spanish com-
rades in full ‒ but on the other hand, they showed no particular interest 
in doing so either. As a consequence, even the decreasing number of 
priests and laity, like the one mentioned in the beginning of this paper, 
were left without a key counterargument against the ever-louder voices 
from their own ranks, stating that Christianity and socialism just can-
not coexist.
B i b l i o g r a p h y
Arhiv Republike Slovenije [Archives of the Republic of Slovenia, Ljubljana]:
−	 SI AS 1211, Komisija Republike Slovenije za odnose z verskimi skup-
nostmi [Commission for Relations with Religious Communities of 
the Socialist Republic of Slovenia].
−	 SI AS 1277, Edvard Kardelj, osebni fond [Edvard Kardelj personal 
fonds].
−	 SI AS 1589, Centralni komite Zveze komunistov Slovenije [Central 
Committee of the League of Communists of Slovenia].
Diplomatski arhiv Ministarstva spoljnih poslova Republike Srbije [Diplo-
matic Archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Serbia]:
−	 Politička arhiva [Political Archive].
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