Friday, October 30 - Metropolitan Amfilohije of Montenegro and the Littoral died. The most hated and most loved personality in Montenegro during the past three decades. In fact, one of the two, the dead race with President Đukanović, both in terms of the number of opponents and the number of fans, lasted until the metropolitan's death.
Everything will come into its own only when some new historians start studying recent Montenegrin history. Based on facts, not feelings. And the facts demand that the metropolitan's worldly works be separated into religious and political parts.
Because of his merits for resurrecting the reputation of the church after the fall of communism, he was admired by the most knowledgeable experts of Orthodoxy, and the followers of the Serbian Church worshiped him. Because of his political views, too often expressed in very harsh words, he was very hated on the Montenegrin side. Opponents did not remain indebted to him, on the public stage he was their main negative hero from enthronement to death.
However, his fate was typically Montenegrin. Like all the most influential figures in Montenegro during the last two or three centuries, he spent the second half of his mandate trying to correct himself from the first.
That was the case with Njegoš, King Nikola, Blažo Jovanović, Milovan Đilas and Milo Đukanović.
Metropolitan Amfilohi, despite the objective differences, has something else in common with them - contemporaries mostly did not notice these changes, and of those who did, many did not know how to interpret them...
***
Saturday, October 31 - Lucindan, for many only a red letter in the calendar, but for me a holiday of freedom. For years I spent it in Cetinje, with ten to fifteen thousand other free people.
I have tried many times, from the beginning of the nineties until today, to describe the freedom that could almost be felt in Dvorski trg in those years.
Unfortunately, it never worked out for me.
I can't even now, I'm afraid that pathos would cast the truth in the shade.
I haven't been to Cetinje for a long time, and women from Cetinje haven't been preparing en masse for Lučindan for a long time either. They have no reason since the restored Montenegrin Church died together with Bishop Antoni.
In Podgorica, the reception of condolences for the deceased Metropolitan of the Serbian Church began in the afternoon. Reporters note that too many mourners do not follow health measures.
Another form of disrespect first caught my eye. You don't go to penance in sneakers and bare shoulders, especially not in church...
And it's not about respecting the cult of death, but social protocol. The difference between a party and a funeral is drastic.
***
Sunday, November 1 - On the so-called the public service begins broadcasting the funeral of Metropolitan Amfilohi. Celebrated and insulted in that TV house depending on the needs of the regime. Because it has been exclusively his service for a full thirty years.
Of course, they lack those short breaks with Andrijan Kadija and Vladan Mićunović. Which will not be repeated soon, the hopes for a new government are fragile.
Why TVCG decided to broadcast the funeral of a man whom it heavily accused even just before his death - is not explained.
The public's right to know could be a rational reason for not being a "Witness of God's Love". By which this same right was fiercely denied by the fierce whitewashing of the past of the three state creators and performers of the war for peace.
Under seal and in front of at least 300.000 living witnesses. Who remember that Metropolitan Amfilohije attacked all non-Serb peoples and countries in the Balkans, and that with harsh words.
Those same people also remember that Milo Đukanović, at the same time and in cooperation with the state, military and police leadership, carried out those attacks - with heavy weapons. And he was not forced to do so by the metropolitan, but by his own will for power.
But the metropolitan supported and protected war criminals? It is, but that's only half the truth. The first obligation of a real public service is the full truth, and it reads - those war criminals were war comrades and closest comrades of the Montenegrin state leadership. So close, respected and respected that the state government delivered 150 refugees under their war knife, of which 83 never came home.
For these merits, one of them - Radovan Karadžić - received a state award a year later.
I took too long to write, that's why I watched the video of the funeral with peace only the next day.
***
Monday, November 2 - What a parade of hypocrisy and corruption! Parties that, according to their own calculations, exposed more than 50.000 of their supporters to the corona virus face to face for hours "express concern" for the health of their opponents who came to repent.
At the same time, on the eve of the patriotic rally, they did not issue any warning about compliance with legal measures.
The Montenegrin Littoral Metropolitanate started warning from Friday. First with a press release, and then in personal contact of the clergy with the citizens in front of the Cetinje Monastery.
Every morning, priests in Podgorica offered masks and disinfectants. In vain, the citizens mostly ignored it.
High church and state officials did not set a good example for them either, but even without an obvious example, adults are expected to take responsibility for their own health and that of others.
Because the obvious teaching of disastrous consequences has been going on for nine months.
Farewell speeches remained in the shadow of the corona story. And it shouldn't have...
I understand the shock of Zdravko believers, but I don't understand that it is still not clear to Mandate Krivokapić that what is allowed for a believer is not allowed for a future prime minister. Intimacy with the metropolitan is allowed in the home and church space, it is forbidden in public speech.
The mandate holder must show absolutely the same respect for all confessions, he was not mandated to form a holy synod but a government of all citizens.
The President of the Assembly Aleksa Bečić also lost sight of the fact that he is at the head of the assembly of all citizens. And that he should keep to himself the hope that the metropolitan "will be the last bishop who had to defend the church from a part of his people". After all, the metropolitan himself never said that he was defending the church from any people, but from the authorities.
However, if it had not been for Bečić's speech, it would not have been possible to hear that Montenegrins still live in Montenegro.
Despite this, Patriarch Irenaeus continued to pretend that they did not exist. And the believers present do not know what the deceased, to whom he was saying goodbye, thought and said about him. Only he was not able to remove him, as he did to Abbot Nikodim Bogosavljević. Who was relieved of his duties ten years ago due to his statement to Radio-Svetigori that "the Montenegrin nation was not created by God, but is the fruit of human vanity and weakness".
Bishop Joanikije revealed as many as three "secret Serbian Golgothas". The third is Montenegro, where in thirty years the number of Serbs - tripled?!
So much for the hope that, if he inherits the title, he will also follow Metropolitan Amfilohi in an effort to ease Montenegrin-Serbian divisions.
***
Tuesday, November 3 - I wrote about this effort only during the liturgy, even though I noticed the Metropolitan's softening of his own hard positions much earlier. Searching on the Internet for excerpts of his letter to the patriarch from 2007, in which he explains that after the change in the state status of Montenegro, there should also be changes in the status of the Metropolis, I came across a long analysis of the above-mentioned archimandrite:
"When called out by S. Marović in 2007 that he should announce that the Orthodox Church in Montenegro is for both Serbs and Montenegrins, the Metropolitan wrote neutrally: Has anyone ever heard me or read my text in which I identify the Orthodox Church with by which nation? Is there anywhere else my signature as a metropolitan other than the Orthodox Metropolitan of Montenegro and the Littoral? In the following, he reminds that at his proposal in 1992, the wording Orthodox Church was inserted into the Constitution of Montenegro...
The church public is not unaware of Metropolitan Amfilohi's intention to achieve broad autonomy for the Orthodox Church in Montenegro. Everything was already ready. The text was written and the document was on the table. He was prevented from doing so by the principled and clear attitude of Patriarch Irinej, but also by the responsible and honorable attitude of Bishop Joaniki from Budimlja-Niššić, who did not agree with the autonomist church policy of the aging Archbishop of Cetinje...
Where did this transformation come from in relation to the understanding of the nation by Metropolitan Amfilohije, from a Kosovo-Njegoševo Serb to a Šmemanovo-Ziziulov-Drljevic Montenegrin... Amfilohije the traditionist, traditionalist, Justinian, was a Serb, and Amfilohije the modernist, ecumenist, Ziziulian is a Montenegrin... The last stage of his transformation from a Greater Serb to a Greater Montenegrin is also implied by the separation of the Montenegrin Metropolis from the SPC, which, as we are witnessing, is entering the last, final phase..."
PS I'm taking it too long again, there's no space left for Wednesday and Thursday. It's not a beam, nothing caught my attention anyway. In addition to the epitaph on the tombstone: "Amfilohije/ Archbishop of Cetinje/ Metropolitan of Montenegro/ Exarch of the Sacred Throne of Peć/ 1938-2020/ on the throne of the Metropolitans of Zeta/ Montenegrin and Littoral/ 1990-2020". It seems that Archimandrite Nikodim has not noticed him yet, otherwise he would have already requested that the metropolitan be posthumously excommunicated from the Serbian Church.
Bonus video:
