Searching for a Path to Dialogue between Christianity and Marxism in Socialist Slovenia in the First Post-War Decade

Abstract

The article deals with the attempts at a dialogue between Christianity and Marxism in socialist Slovenia in the first decade after the Second World War, when the relations between the state and the Catholic Church were most strained and when the public activities of the Catholic intellectuals were almost impossible. It focuses mainly on the pro-socialist priests gathered in the Cyril-Methodius Society and around the magazine Nova pot [New Path], the only Slovenian magazine at the time that published theological articles and in which Catholic intellectuals were able to present their views. The analysis of their views provides an insight not only into the encounter between this major European religion and the grand secular narrative of the 20th century, but also into concrete political, ideological and intellectual dynamics of post-revolutionary Slovenia, which reveal a much more complex and contradictory image than hitherto.
One of the most productive contributors to the magazine Nova pot was the theologian and philosopher Janez Janžekovič. In the first half of the 1950s, he published a series of articles in which he searched for a dialogue between Christianity and Marxism by detecting a common point between the two in ethics, where the ruling ideology and Christianity would not only meet but even cooperate. Janžekovič defended socialism but rejected its realization on the scientific basis of dialectical materialism, as he believed that any ideology with some extrapolation devolves into a religion and that none is exclusively scientific. In his articles, he also raised issues regarding the relationship between church and state. He promoted unconditional dialogue and called for a regulation of the relationship between church and state, criticising the intransigency of both church and state authorities.
A small, yet intellectually propulsive group of Catholic intellectuals, who rejected the Catholic Church’s stance regarding the incompatibility of Christianity and Socialism posed a challenge and threat not only to the official doctrine of the Catholic Church but also to the communist authorities. However, these pro-socialist Catholic intellectuals were virtually powerless and without any institutional background: on the one hand the church authorities rejected their flirtation with socialism and the attempts to seek a dialogue with Marxism, and on the other the ruling regime deliberately overlooked them, as the realization of the political potentials of Christian socialism could threaten the ideological and political hegemony of the Communists. Faced with the expectations of socialist oriented Catholic intellectuals, the ruling establishment entrenched even more in its rigid views and delayed the possibility of a dialogue between Marxists and Christians for almost two decades into the future.