Petőcz Kálmán (szerk.): National Populism and Slovak - Hungarian Relations in Slovakia 2006-2009 (Somorja, 2009)
Miroslav Kocúr: For God and Nation: Christian National Populism
Miroslav Kocúr that the Holy See was very reserved and reluctant with respect to any efforts that appeared in various places since the 1930s but were perhaps the most articulate in German-speaking parts of the Catholic world. The strongly traditionalistic Vatican viewed any attempts to include the use of national languages in the liturgical refonn as undesirable displays of progressivism. Upholders of these ideas did not yet have the courage to enter into an open polemic with the Roman Curia; instead, they remained in inner exile for long decades. The Catholic particularism has always been manifested through dismissal and even demonization of non-Catholic Christians, Jews, Muslims and other religions. That is why the Council’s position on religious freedom or ecumenical cooperation was considered such a breakthrough. It was a certain kind of Catholic confessional ethno-centrism that was cultivated within the Catholic Church throughout centuries and took on various forms, including Christian anti-Semitism, insistence on excommunication of the Eastern Patriarch following the Eastern Schism, the negative attitude to Reformation following the Western Schism and every division of Christianity into new confessions that followed.24 The differentiation that showed within Christianity through founding religious orders or revivalist movements did not envisage and therefore refused emergence of new denominations that strove to reform the model of power execution. Besides encouraging non-clerical persons’ participation in administrating the church, the Reformation also brought gradual emergence of autonomous non-church institutions and led to secularization of public life. Serious cracks and division lines suddenly began to appear in the previously coherent clerical society with an unchangeable social order that was theologically justified. Emergence of new universities, gradual strengthening of the third estate as the seed of the future bourgeoisie, cultural creation in the field of painting, sculpting or literature that was sovereign and independent from the church establishment - all this needed new interpretation and justification. Such interpretation was soon provided by Martin Luther and Philipp Melanchthon who embarked on theological justification of the Reformation movement that gradually evolved into Protestantism. Although criticism of the Vatican centralism could be traced in several authors’ works even before the Reformation period, justifying ordinary believers’ right to refuse a corrupt bishop and accepting this justification on such a broad scale was something historically new. The previously homogeneous Western Christianity thus began to differentiate politically. Some authors view Protestantism as a key moment in 232
