98 IVO BANAC
The Second Vatican Council and its immediate effects coin-
cided with an abrupt end to ambitious reformist aspirations in
post-revolutionary Yugoslavia. A brief period of ten years (1962–
72) was an era of a great surge of hope, followed by dismal disap-
pointments. Out of it emerged a transformed Catholic Church,
the only free institution in the predominantly Catholic parts of
Yugoslavia, no longer persecuted but under constant watch—
with state conventions as guarantees of its special status, with
renewed press that was admittedly self-policed, but nevertheless
a powerful alternative to party-state fantasies. Tested in hope
and disappointment, the Church would become the only tolerat-
ed opposition in the last two decades of Yugoslavia’s decline. Its
real test would come after the collapse of Yugoslav communism
in 1990–91 and the series of wars that ensued. State agony gave
way to the agony of a Church that was trying to become conciliar
under the least hospitable circumstances.