VATICAN II AND YUGOSLAVIA 79vember 3, 1960, with an affirmative letter in which he noted that
the “normalization of relations with the Catholic Church is a pro-
cess that demands time,” but ought to commence immediately
in “discussions between the representatives of the SIV and the
representatives of the episcopate.” This was vetoed by the Holy
See. Bishops could individually discuss various concrete issues
with the authorities, but a precondition for the normalization
of church-state relations was the resumption of diplomatic rela-
tions with the Vatican through the instrument of a concordat.10
In this oppressive context, fraught with tensions and bitter
memories, the Second Vatican Council and the person of Pope
John XXIII opened unforeseen possibilities for Church renewal
and a new engagement with the repressive regime, which could
not ignore the import of the Council. The Council convened at
the high point of the Cold War, but also in the final phases of the
modernist paradigm, with its stress on progress and human rea-
son. This perhaps suggests an explanation as to why the latter-
day critics of the Second Vatican Council hold it culpable for ex-
cessive optimism and openness. It is, indeed, difficult nowadays
to conjure all the revivalist effects of the Council, especially in the
East European “Churches of Silence.” The bishops from Yugoslavia
were perhaps not among the movers and shakers at the Council—
Vatican observer Xavier Rynne was aware that the “nervous man-
ner” of some of them had a tragic source in the persecution that
they had experienced in Communist prisons11—but their contri-
butions were important in their respective areas of competence.
Croatian Council fathers, especially Stepinac’s successor, Arch-
bishop Franjo Šeper, whom Paul VI named cardinal at the end of
the Council in 1965, were members of various conciliar commis-
sions. Šeper himself served on the Preparatory Commission for
- Ibid., 5–7.
- Rynne [Francis X. Murphy], Letters from Vatican City: Vatican Council II (First
Session): Background and Debates (London: Faber and Faber, 1963), 129.