© Fraktura, 2016
Hubert Butler's Balkan Essays look at some personalities and events from the history of Southeast Europe in the twentieth century from a perspective to which the local public is not accustomed. The problem of the role of the Catholic Church and Cardinal Stepinac in the tragic whirlwind of World War II is commonly viewed through the prism of clerical-nationalist apology on the one hand and left or liberal criticism on the other. Hubert Butler approaches this problem from the standpoint of Christian morality. Butler’s Christian moral consistency was reflected in scrupulousness, empathy, humanism, ecumenism, and, ultimately, in astonishment at the painful disparity between that same morality and the actions of his nominal earthly representatives.
Balkan Essays present not only a different value but also a different time perspective. They provide a useful insight into the way the past viewed itself. Historiographical cognition thus becomes more complete because it enriches today's insights into historical contradictions with the insight of their impartial and well-meaning contemporaries.
Irish Pages & Lilliput Press 2003 / 2014
Translated into: Croatian
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