Since it was founded in 1863, the Cetinje Theological Seminary has been working as a secondary theological school headed by a rector. She was never a college or a university. It is an ordinary, yet unique in Montenegro - a secondary school "for future priests". Since its foundation, its managers (so, high school principals) are appointed as rectors. Out of respect for that specificity of the oldest modern Montenegrin high school - the renovated Cetinje Seminary did not break such a tradition. Therefore, every administrator of this theological college, in its long history, was titled rector, so that honor also belonged to the writer of these lines. I'm saying this both because of the elementary lack of information of those who see some "anomaly" in this, and because of the general public. The work of our school was conceived and continues to this day - as a meeting of religious and educational (scientific) motives in people. On that note, but more because of some other malicious remarks and attempts to falsify the facts, here is a rector's presentation of imbuing faith with irrefutable facts:
1. It was one of the most beautiful days of my life. Lithia in Pljevlje with countless people and the silence of the participants in front of the mosque there, so that nothing disturbs the prayer from the minaret. I felt the boiling of love at "100 degrees" and said that "the corona virus has nothing to look for in Pljevlja"! Date - Thursday, March 12, 2020. After that, in the following months there were no lithia, but no "corona" in Pljevlja. I am neither a medical epidemiologist, nor some kind of prophet, I just saw what everyone present saw: the all-pervading love of God. Soon, the covid-19 virus invaded Montenegro - but, miraculously, not Pljevlja. In the first wave of this epidemic (March 17 - June 2), in the middle of infected Europe and the Balkans, there was not a single infected person in this city! Not because of pop, not because of human words. But there it is, because of God's miracle that everyone present that evening felt. Is it forbidden to believe in miracles?
2. None of the officials in the SPC, and I don't even know of a case in another local Church, believes or has declared that this virus does not exist. The fact that the priests called for incense and prayer, while respecting the prescribed health measures - who did it harm? Just as I do not question scientifically justified methods against the spread of an epidemic, I believe that there is no epidemiologist in the world who will prove the harmfulness of incense and prayer. Who loves, who believes - let them go. The belief of some Christians that in Montenegro litias protected us from infection does not belong to scientific evidence, nor to criminal acts, but is an experience of someone's spiritual intimacy. Faced with such an attitude, I can only point out the fact that Montenegro is the last European country where covid-19 has been confirmed. And that after the end of lithium - on March 17. And the example of Pljevlja shows that the virus apparently did not spread through the map of liturgical gatherings, nor through an expansion that would have anything to do with such mass gatherings. We (don't) know so much about the virus, that it is really a matter of human (and poetic) freedoms - to say: "While the convoys were going, there was no corona".
3. Some malicious propaganda outlets of the former government spread orchestrated hatred towards the Church with the story of "mushroom spoons". That story began after the published recordings in front of the Nikšić Cathedral, where it was seen that the faithful were taking communion with a single spoon. According to the estimates of the state services, on March 22, 2020 alone, around 1.500 citizens took part in such a ceremony, all over Montenegro. Should we say that it is 5 times more than the total number of infected in the first wave? This was followed by a unilateral and debatable ban on the participation of citizens in religious ceremonies. And what are the epidemiological consequences of liturgies served in this way at the beginning of the epidemic? The facts say: 20 days after March 22, there were no new cases in Montenegro, and a month later we had Montenegro without a single infected person.
4. It is a special miracle how these quasi-media magicians, traditionally dedicated to the quarrel "two eyes in the head", reacted to the scene of the historic ritual on March 22, 2020 throughout Montenegro. It is not known whether their "professional-medical" insight into the contagiousness of this ritual (never proven by anything) or their "professional-theological" view of how this form of ritual was overcome is more fascinating. Before the famous March 22, 2020, the Church in Montenegro has been giving communion to the faithful for at least a millennium. Fortunately, we are not a nation without history, nor without museum materials. Visit any treasury of any monastery in Montenegro and you will find, among other relics, church vessels with a chalice and a spoon. And it's not that we haven't had challenges (plague, fever, smallpox...), that in the past time we've modified something. Of course, the Church does not impose such a ceremony on anyone. On the contrary, in the age of corona, she calls on the faithful to, for the sake of the general environment, be patient and wait for the infection to pass. In addition, the Church respects positive regulations and when the state announces its official position regarding gatherings, the Church is there to be the first to accept it. Now, if on the days of Easter we serve in empty churches without believers, and on those same days, shopping centers, ATMs, construction sites, catering facilities... then what sense does it all have?
5. The average Orthodox priest in the 21st century, with this way of performing the rite, gives communion to the faithful in hospitals, prisons, family homes and - whoever does not know, let him hear - that priest is obliged to complete such a rite himself, with the same spoon. Before this corona plague, there were sick, infected, hygienically untidy - who called the pope, and the pope answered. No one has ever heard of a case where even a priest became infected in this way. In Montenegro, from March to August of this year, in both the first and second wave of the epidemic, there was not a single sick priest, despite the inevitable attachment of this service to this way of performing rituals. I don't "flag" the Holy Secret. Her strength is in God's authority, not in statistical data. This is an internal church matter and takes place among the faithful, not among the curious. Those who do not believe have nothing to look for in this topic, nor does she have anything to look for - outside the Church.
There was no monastery or city church in our country that the Most Reverend Metropolitan Amfilohije did not visit several times a week to serve liturgies (both those until March 22, and those after, and those after the declaration of the end of the epidemic). He was also detained because he served the Holy Liturgy. To this day, the entire Church believes, and in fact the Church knows, that he did not get infected at such a ceremony.
6. Bishop Joanikije, together with Nikšić priests, was in custody for three days because of the mass gathering of people in Nikšić on May 12, 2020, on the day of Saint Vasilij Ostroški, glory and mercy to him! Despite the fact that he personally, on that very day, called the people not to come to the traditional litia. Despite the fact that, in spite of his calls, almost all of Nikšić came out to that procession. Despite the fact that two weeks after that court-police mess, Montenegro became "the first European country without patients"...
7. At least we Orthodox in Montenegro do not have churches without iconostasis. And on the iconostasis there is that curtain by the imperial doors. So that it wouldn't be like in that animated movie "What is this for, but it still doesn't work" - let me clarify. In addition to the visual-pedagogical role of icons that "speak more than a thousand words", the curtained iconostasis also performs a protective function. It protects the most sacred moments of the service from the view of those present. In contemporary Orthodoxy, we have a big controversy about whether such an understanding has (not) been overcome. Today, many priests do not close the door and draw the curtain, but that is not the topic of this text. The topic is - that there are some moments of the service that are not shown, and recording or taking pictures of them is not recommended. The secrecy and unrepeatability of those moments is part of Orthodox mysticism. I belong to a part of the clergy who, even before the corona, loudly fought against the loud clicking and buzzing of the apparatus in the temple, so my request that the cameraman "cut" the video with the communion of the faithful had only and only that intention. Not to show the public what a good part of that public, outside the Church, is unable to understand. If the communion of the faithful is not a topic that occupies certain people's life's attention, why should we impose it on them through the media? And if there is anything wrong or sinful in that rite, let the state authorities please check the whole thing and sanction it. And if there isn't?
8. Anyone who would reduce their information to the "propaganda points" I'm talking about - could think that we in Montenegro have never knelt in churches, but we were "led" to do so by the SPC and its priests. It is more callous than uneducated - without a single word resembling an argument, to ignore numerous historical allegations that the Church in Montenegro was both Svetosava and Vidovdan even before 1918, and that this is one of the important reasons why not a single mother's son among the Montenegrin priests took off his mantle after 1918 and gave up his service in the Church, which, according to DPS standards, was "occupational". Somehow, I trust the Montenegrin priests of that time more than contemporary agnostics and atheists - when it comes to church issues. And when it comes to "kneeling in the church" and the famous "never" - again I have to refer to our Montenegrin history. Well, let all the passionate revisionists of historical events from 1918, 1945,...etc. - they say that "there is no point in going back to the past". I will certainly not be involved in politics.
We Montenegrins have a book from the 15th century which, among experts on the subject, is called the Psalter of Đurđ Crnojević. The book is a contemporary of our capital, and the most frequently repeated sentence in it is "Come to worship our God"! In one of the psalms (94th in order) it is also written: "Let us kneel before the Lord our Creator". And so on, and everything like that. And since the Cetinje Monastery is the oldest house in Cetinje, which has never extinguished its hearth, I remind the readers that bowing from the psalms, accompanied by body movements that befit it, is a tradition of Cetinje and Montenegrin monks. I would add to this the information that in the Principality of Montenegro (according to authentic documents) the service of the Lenten liturgy of the preconsecrated gifts was never interrupted or suspended. That service is unimaginable without the kneeling prayer of believers in the temple. The liturgy on Trinity Day is also unimaginable without the same kneeling in the church. It is about the regulations of universal church typics, written and copied from Jerusalem through Mount Athos and Constantinople to Petrograd. And our church books from the 18th and 19th centuries were mostly delivered from Russia. So people who say "we never knelt" might be better off saying for themselves: "we never read" or "sorry, we didn't know"...
9. When it comes to our big trouble, the second wave of the covid-19 epidemic in Montenegro, we can confidently claim that in this tragedy we are part of a great global disaster, and that with all the (dis)respect of health measures, we share the fate of the surrounding countries. However, a problem greater than health is the misuse of corona victims for political and ideological purposes of anti-church propaganda. What name should I call the claim that Metropolitan Amfilohi's funeral had a negative impact on the epidemiological situation in Montenegro, in the sense of some kind of "bomb", "incendiary" and the like? At the mentioned funeral, numerous health measures were violated, and some things could have been better organized... but let's look at the facts resulting from those failures. Because mistakes are one thing, and their consequences (may sometimes be) something completely different. We Christians do not expect miracles at every step and every moment - because "not every day is Christmas". But sometimes there are special days...
Unfortunately, we went from a country with no infected people to "the largest number of infected people in the region" in mid-July this year. Reports from health organizations say that during September, our homeland became the leader in the Balkans in terms of the number of infected people per 100.000 inhabitants. I don't know how blind you have to be to not clearly connect this disaster with the parliamentary elections that were announced by the state leadership for the end of August with the guarantee that "everything will be under control"? We see the expansion of corona in Europe in mid-October, when, for example, a 150% increase in infected people is recorded in a completely non-Orthodox country such as Slovenia. For the most part, all analysts agree that our predicament here was caused by prematurely opened borders this summer and elections scheduled in stormy weather.
10 When it comes to the funeral itself, we will have to go back to elementary data, the most important of which is that everything took place in the period from October 30 to November 01, 2020. From November 02, the number of infected people increases, but (be careful!) the number of those tested (October 31: number of tested 734 - positive 275; November 03: number of tested 1.253 - positive 491). So that Tuesday. On November 03, the number of people tested is growing rapidly. Already tomorrow, November 04, the number of people tested tripled compared to the last day of October (2.000 people tested - and 874 patients).
Immediately after the metropolitan's funeral, tests from private laboratories enter the official processing of Montenegrin health data, which, until then, was not the case. And - that is a good thing: the more tests, the more examined Montenegrin citizens, the better the records of our doctors. Only if there were no optical illusions regarding the "disaster brought to us by the Church". The Church did not manage well in the circumstances of the mass gathering in Podgorica and Cetinje, and it should not run away from responsibility. However, if we believers and priests had asked ourselves, we would never have wanted the Metropolitan's funeral. In its organization, the NKT measures that were selectively applied across the country were of no use to us, especially when we were burying the most beloved and respected among us. Waiting for the profession to announce itself on this issue - I am looking at the official figures of our Institute: November 06, 1.449 tested - 546 patients; On November 10, 1.372 tested - 546 patients; On November 15, 1.378 tested - 491 patients; On November 20, 1.739 tested - 502 patients; On November 25, 1.953 were tested - 570 patients... In all countries of Europe and the surrounding area, the number of infected people increases during November. In our country, the number of people tested is also increasing. The numbers are increasing inexorably. My impression is that in November there is no "explosion" or particularly sudden growth here in Montenegro. But there is stigmatization that the Church suffers for everything that is and is not to blame.
When Zafranović filmed his "Occupation", his theme was war between states, armed conflict between nations. His film "in 26 pictures" brilliantly shows how senseless war is and to what extent it humiliates the human race. For this "war" of ours with announcements and accusations, which is happening among us, among our own brothers and in the name of political, identity ideologies; "war" between "patriots" and "traitors", in which the covid-19 epidemic is also in the service of proving who is the bigger Montenegrin - for him, these 10 pictures were enough to describe my feeling of nausea in the encounter with hatred and lies, but also the feeling of faith and hope that, in the end, truth and love will please everyone more. The author is the rector of the Cetinje seminary
Bonus video:
