Summary
Hubert Butler: The Balkan Essays
The Balkan Essaysby Hubert Butler look at some figures and events from the history of Southeast Europe in the twentieth century from a perspective that the local public is not used to. The problem of the role of the Catholic Church and Cardinal Stepinac in the tragic maelstrom of the Second World War is usually viewed through the prism of clerical-nationalist apologia on the one hand and left or liberal criticism on the other. Hubert Butler approaches this problem from the point of view of Christian morality, who consistently lived through his biography and his work. Butler's Christian moral consistency was reflected in scrupulousness, empathy, humanism, ecumenism and, in the end, in amazement at the painful disproportion between that same morality and the actions of its nominal earthly representatives. They provide useful insight into how a bygone era viewed itself. Historiographical knowledge thus becomes more complete because it enriches today's insights into historical contradictions with the insights of their impartial and benevolent contemporary.
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