nterfaith Dialogue versus Recent Hatred

Abstract

"Relations between the two largest denominations, the Serbian Orthodox Church and the Croatian branch of the Roman Catholic Church, were critically important for Yugoslavia as a country in which ethnic and religious identities coincided and relations between the churches affected relations between two major nationalities, Orthodox Serbs and Catholic Croats. Premodern controversies, such as the Church Schism of 1054, the Counter-Reformation, 'Uniatism' which originated in the sixteenth century and church quarrels associated with the establishment of Serbian Orthodox dioceses in Habsburg lands after 1690, are still alive in people's memories. In the second half of the twentieth century, however, the two major Yugoslav religious institutions came into conflict primarily as a result of 'recent hatreds' generated by the Second World War."