Factionalism in Church-State Interaction: The Croatian Catholic Church in the 1980s

Among the approaches one might adopt in studying church-state interaction is one that endeavors to treat both church and state as active subjects and which tries to be sensitive to factional divisions within both. This approach makes it clear that just as a regime may have a religious policy, the churches may also have policies toward the regime, and that the resulting relationship reflects the interplay of both policies. If there are factions in both state and church, the policies of both will be the subject and the product of continuing debate and struggle among the factions.Sensitivity to factionalism is not a black-and-white issue but a matter of degree. Nevertheless, Western writings on church-state relations under communism may be grouped into four general categories. In the first category are works treating both church and state as unified (nonfactionalized) entities—either explicitly (by denying factionalism) or implicitly (by ignoring it as analytically unimportant).