I was just thinking to write about the upcoming church holidays, about faith in God's love for us sinful people, and even to say a few words about the successes of the sports teams I support ("Lovćen" is playing again in the First League, and "Crvena zvezda" - the Champions League ...), but they don't give me the "floods and fires" of disinformation and half-information that, in connection with church issues in Ukraine and Macedonia, are spreading through Montenegro and its media space. So many conjectures, assumptions and even malicious interpretations have been "degassed" (literally: freed from obligation; and figuratively: fired into the air) among Montenegrins regarding these topics, that I can no longer even drink coffee with friends without questions arising from a wrong interpretation of events. from high church diplomacy.
Grant, great God, that the canonical issues in Ukraine and Macedonia will finally be resolved, after several decades (in reality, since 1945, the dispute over the Church in Skopje has been going on, and since the beginning of the 90s, the problem in Kiev flared up)!
These years, when I am on duty at the end of the life of Saint Basil of Ostrog, glory and mercy be to him, I am a witness of countless columns (dozens of buses during the day) of Orthodox believers from Macedonia, who come to Ostrog for prayer and blessing. It is a pious people, in many respects even more church-like than us Montenegrins - who, by their arrival and way of behaving, show that they belong to the same Holy place to which we belong. And for centuries. More than a millennium. And in the last 50 years, the episcopate and clergy there have not had canonical unity with the rest of Orthodoxy. Why? Because Macedonian post-war declared atheists and sworn communists started to deal with theology. (These of ours - their colleagues from Montenegro - were "more honest", so when a local party functionary was asked why the Montenegrin communists did not "separate" the church like those in Macedonia, he said that the Committee thought that the Church was dying and that soon it will no longer exist!!!) And how does that canonical problem with Macedonians look like in practice? It looks sad and sickening for any normal Christian. We can read prayers to the Saint, and talk like people - but we cannot take communion from the same Holy Cup, which is the foundation of our ecclesiality.
In Ukraine - all the same, only multiplied by a thousand! At least three organizations called the "Ukrainian Church" are currently operating on the territory of Ukraine - not to mention Uniate and Protestant Christian groups. There are no number of priests and Christian souls who are entangled in this sad knot of misunderstanding, nationalism and political intrigues... and which are embodied in conflicts, (re)seizures of temples, mutual excommunications and anathematizations. Among all these so-called "churches" there is only one - canonical and Orthodox, recognized by all others - the Kiev Metropolitanate of the Moscow Patriarchate. This Metropolitan of Kiev resides and serves God in 90% of Orthodox churches of Ukraine. You will find its priests in the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra (Njegoš's "Holy Kiev"), in the Pochajev Monastery (one of the largest sanctuaries of Orthodoxy), in Chernigov... and now, in the era of the Internet and fast access to information, I do not list the data that everyone can come easily. The Kiev Metropolitanate has about 40 archbishops and a huge number of clergy, monks and faithful people. It is the authentic, real church of Christ in Ukraine of our time, and it has been so throughout the ages.
During 2018, there were significant shifts in inter-church diplomacy relations, so the Ecumenical Patriarch, "first among equals" heads of autocephalous churches in Orthodoxy, got involved in solving these two difficult problems. Thank God! Something that until yesterday was an exclusive internal problem of the SPC (Macedonia) and the RPC (Ukraine) will be discussed at the inter-church level. Such consideration, with God's help, can bring a shift, and even a final solution - although it can also show some contemporary weaknesses of the ecclesiastical unity of the Orthodox Church. Such as, for example, the disagreement between Moscow and Constantinople regarding the role of the "first" - whether it is a question of "honor" or "power"... and similar topics. It would be said that the Ecumenical Patriarch understands things so that he has the "authority" to judge the issue of the canonical status of the former bishop of the Russian Church (and candidate for patriarch in Moscow) Filaret Denisenko (who, dissatisfied with the outcome of the election for patriarch - separated from the Moscow Patriarchate) - and the Church in Moscow itself does not have such power!?!
There are smart and pious heads both in Moscow and in Constantinople, they will solve it even without the "Pope from Cetinje" - but I felt the need to write all this because of our Montenegrin media falsifications of everything mentioned. And it looks something like this: 1) if Constantinople "recognizes" the canonical status of the Church in Macedonia, and if it begins to communicate with the former priest Denisenko - will this have consequences for Montenegro as well?! 2) this assumption is "proved" by the Serbian Patriarch's letter addressed to Constantinople, where His Holiness Mr. Irinej characterizes Montenegrin political leaders as "atheists (godless) and unbaptized"...
Eh... Montenegro had a blessing like no other majority Orthodox country in the world! The Cathedral in Podgorica was jointly consecrated by the Ecumenical, Moscow and Serbian Patriarchs, with the concurrence of numerous heads and archbishops from other local churches. Moscow and Constantinople - in one place and together consecrate one temple! Well, that has never happened in the history of the Church, and nowhere else in the world - except here! But alas - the "civic" DPS (that's the multi-confessional party that considers the issue of the Church in Montenegro at its congress), found a way to sit "on two chairs" and, despite the blessed meeting in Podgorica, on the same day at the city cemetery in Cetinje sent the party leadership themselves (headed by the mayor at the time), with the task of supporting former priest Miraš Dedejić.
And about that Dedejić, this Patriarch of Constantinople with 9 members of the Constantinople Synod, says as early as 1997:
"Let no one dare, not even a clergyman, to dress together or worship with him, nor a believer to receive or honor him as a priest or a cleric, or to kiss his right hand and ask him for a blessing, because he is under a burden unforgivable deprivation of rank and irrevocable decision from the Lord Almighty".
It may be that the Patriarch of Constantinople does not have the best understanding with the Patriarch of Moscow at the moment regarding the status of the former cleric of the RPC, but I claim that he has no doubts about how he views and how he will view this anathematized priest, whom he, with such unambiguous and clear wording, deprived of any the possibility of ever baptizing, marrying or blessing anyone. No one, who was "ordained" by that man, is a priest, neither before God nor before people. Because Dedejić was a priest of the Patriarchate of Constantinople in Rome - so he earned all the above-mentioned "praises" from the church authorities who personally initiated him into priestly service.
And what does Patriarch Irinej write to Saint Bartholomew? He certainly did not write to him about economic, identity or political issues from Montenegro, but about the fact that the undisputed domestic political leader himself, personally, repeatedly repeated that he was an atheist and that, therefore, he was not even baptized. Now, all that can change. And that the believer, God forbid, loses his faith, and that the atheist believes. Personal beliefs and free will are at stake and "emperor and soldier, and rich man and beggar"... but the one who does not currently see himself in the Church is not going to "create" his own church. The Patriarch from Belgrade wrote to the Patriarch in Constantinople about this. And it's so normal.
And if someone asks, what does the Serbian patriarch have to do with Montenegro, and isn't he a symbol of the "occupation from 1918" - well, here's my answer: we Montenegrins have a history even before 1918! Each of our bishops, since the foundation of the Zeta eparchy, was ordained by the Serbian patriarch or the archbishop of Peć or someone on their behalf - until the abolition of the Patriarchate of Peć in 1766. , glory and grace to him), and those bishops from Piva - Sokolovića, who themselves later became patriarchs of Pec... Finally, Montenegro (Zeta) got a metropolitanate, literally on the same day (and precisely because of that) when Pec got patriarch - so those two titles and chairs, for anyone who is literate - are inseparable. Saint Peter of Cetinje was ruled by the Karlovac metropolitans (successors of Pec patriarchs) "only because there were no patriarchs in Pec at that time", and Njegoš, Hilarion, Visarion... remembered "whose they were". In his episcopal title, Mitrofan Ban is called "exarch of the throne of Pec". So, that's how it was when we were independent, before 1918.
For centuries, the Serbian patriarch gave so many blessings and so much support to numerous "lords of Montenegro and the hills", and he did this precisely under the assumption that they were believers and pious, that now he has full moral right and obligation - to inform his brother, the patriarch in Constantinople , how our modern politicians "can" even without the Almighty...
The author is the rector of the Cetinje seminary
Bonus video:
