80 IVO BANAC
the Discipline of the Sacraments and on the Preparatory Cen-
tral Commission, and he was elected a member of the Theologi-
cal Commission at the Council. At the Third Session, speaking
on the issue of migrations, he warned that the glorification of a
nation, insistence on racial purity, and autonomy of culture were
obstacles to human universalism and certainly did not represent
a greater good than the solidarity of humankind.12 Cardinal Šeper
also argued for a Christian understanding of materialist athe-
ism. He warned that there were individuals in the Church who,
through their revulsion at the modern world, gave occasion to
atheism; he insisted that it must be clearly proclaimed that their
rigid and immobile conservatism is alien to the true spirit of the
Gospels.13
It is important to note that even the exceptionally conser-
vative Council fathers among the Croat bishops—for example,
Frane Franić of Split-Makarska—were great exponents of ecu-
menism. They warned that the excessive latinization of the Cath-
olic Church was responsible for the longevity of the schism with
the Eastern Orthodox churches.14 In the spirit of the call made by
Paul VI for mutual forgiveness among Christians, Bishop Alfred
Pichler of Banja Luka (Bosnia) addressed the Serbian Orthodox
believers in a Christmas message in 1963 in which he condemned,
in a clear allusion to the Croat Ustašas of the wartime period, the
“wayward people,” who deemed themselves Christians, but who
“killed other people, also Christians, because they were not Cro-
- “Gloria nationis, puritas stirpis, autonomia culturalis, et similia, non sunt
summum bonum, quod in detrimentum solidarietatis generis humani qua talis con-
servari deberet!”; quoted in Nikola Dogan, “Franjo Šeper i Gaudium et spes,” in Ver i-
tatem facientes in caritate: Zbornik radova Međunarodnoga simpozija o kardinalu Franji
Šeperu povodom 20. obljetnice smrti, ed. Željko Tanjić (Zagreb: Nadbiskupski duhovni
stol, 2003), 204n25. - “Proclamemus clare conservatismum illum rigidum et immobilismum... a
vero spiritu Evangelii alienum esse”; quoted in Dogan, “Franjo Šeper i Gaudium et
spes,” 209n38. - Rynne, Letters from Vatican City, 209.