Tuesday, February 7 - Uh, I was really surprised when I saw Gojko Perović's article in the Vijesti, "When was the Holy Spirit created?". Not because no one from the Metropolis spoke about my writing about the church in these forty years, but because it was he who did it.
Unprovoked, because in my column "Save us, God, our sanity" all the questions and all the objections are addressed to Metropolitan Joaniki and the Serbian Orthodox Church.
I am not writing this "unprovoked" because of the reminder of the time when that church gave spiritual cover to the infamous military-political project known as the war for peace, it seemed far-fetched.
But due to some recent events, which caused Gojko Perović to stop being the rector of the seminary and became the parish priest of Podgorica. And thanks to that metropolitan and that church.
There was no need for him to defend them from me, but not because I once defended him from them. But because some of their positions are indefensible.
Is there any need for me to state my position on the positions of Mr. Perović? No, I thought about the first reading and gave up the right to answer him tomorrow.
On the second reading, I gave up on giving up.
Because the initial indirect expression of Gojko Perović's respect for me turned into an accusation that I was telling - untruths.
* * *
My choice is to start with the truth. And I admit that, compared to his, my knowledge is fragile.
The past of the SPC did not interest me, except to the extent that it is necessary for a student of ethnology in the communist era. Until that church started not only to be interested in my past, but to take it away from me.
Until the late eighties, the sphere of my interest was only the history of the Montenegrin Church, in which my grandparents, their grandparents were baptized...
Both by gender and by home, of course. The youngest of those baptisms is from 1906.
I am a child of communism, but the only thing that united me with that ideology was the time of my birth and growing up without faith in God.
The fact that I am not a believer did not prevent me, but rather motivated me to be the author of the first newspaper report on the celebration of Christmas in the communist Pobjeda.
And that's right in the Cetinje Monastery, seat of the Metropolitanate of Montenegro and the Littoral.
The fact that the MCP was part of the Serbian Orthodox Church at the time did not hinder the good intention of having the Christmas celebration in the state media for the first time, in a version that would be comprehensive even for today's circumstances.
Prior knowledge of the Montenegrin Church did not harm my good intentions. I wrote about whose autocephaly - also for the first time in the Montenegrin media - years ago.
And then, as now, based on historical facts. I published my first findings on that topic in the early eighties, after a two-day scientific gathering of twenty of the most prominent historians and theoreticians of religion.
Neither then nor now, I had no interest in stretching the truth of one side while ignoring the truth of the other...
Because, even as a student of ethnology, I learned something that many of my fellow journalists did not learn even in their later years. That by respecting the arguments of only one side, it is not possible to arrive at the truth. Especially not in a dispute that was caused by forgeries, so falsified lasted for a hundred and a half years and - only formally - ended with forgeries.
* * *
Wednesday, February 8 - I am moved by respect for Gojko Perović, and respect dictates that I first introduce myself and only then move on to the main topic.
So what is the truth about holiness?
- Svetosavlje is first and foremost an appropriate celebratory rhetoric, which most often aims to call for an undefined Serbian national and religious unity, simultaneously dealing with an imaginary image of a centuries-old historical existence in which the Serbian church guarded and preserved the "Serbian people" - says Vladimir Veljković.
This part of his answer only partially explains why Gojko Perović devoted more than half of the text to performances in honor of Saint Sava. I myself supported the maintenance of (i) in Montenegro at the beginning of the previous column.
The continuation of Veljković's answer, however, does not allow the sacrilege to be reduced to - a performance.
- Due to its latent programmatic demands and desire to regulate the life and behavior of the Serbian people or the "Serbian race", sainthood, especially among certain authors, can be considered a certain type of ideology. This ideology was subsequently attributed to the personality of Saint Sava Nemanjić, for the simple reason that there is no evidence that he personally intended to create anything similar.
But Veljković is only a Serbian publicist and religious analyst?
Okay, here is the Serbian historian:
- The fundamental thing: saintliness is an ideology that has no direct or indirect connection with Saint Sava, except that it misused the name of this historical figure. Svetosava nationalism is an ultra-right political ideology that combines two elements - Serbian nationalism and Orthodox clericalism in the 20th century - university professor Dr. Milivoj Bešlin is categorical.
* * *
When was the saint born?
- Our author writes about the event that was held in Kolarac in 1935. where Saint Bishop Nikolaj Velimirović delivered the sermon "Nationalism of Saint Sava". And that's where, according to her, sacrilege begins?! - Gojko Perović was amazed.
Unprovoked, once again, because it wasn't by me, but by people much more famous than me...
- There are most of the sermons of Saint Sava in the 20th century, since the rhetoric and ideology of Saint Sava came into being then, while there was no such way of thinking in the earlier period - I copy once again from Veljković.
Not enough, given his references?
Okay, here's the more reference one again:
- That ideology was born in the wing of the Bogomolych movement of the controversial bishop Nikolaj Velimirović and intellectuals gathered around the fascist Zbor movement in the 1930s. When it comes to the content: the name was taken from Saint Sava, the rest is a product of the spiritual currents on the extreme right in Europe in the thirties of the 20th century.
The term "Svetosavlje" itself was coined by the Ljotićev theologian Dimitrije Najdanović, who in 1932 started a newspaper with that name and published the text of the Svetosava paralipomena. Najdanović, as part of the closest circle around Nikolaj Velimirović, and on his orders, became a member of the fascist movement Zbor Dimitrija Ljotić. (...)
One of Najdanović's immortal sentences is: "Today, as things stand, only Berlin and Hitler can bring us a new reborn Serbian Serbia" - I quoted prof. Dr. Bešlin in more detail.
Why? So let me explain how I don't associate Svetosava with Nazism because of an "event held in Kolarac in 1935", but the founders of the Svetosava ideology did it.
And now I leave it to the readers to judge whether my last week's statement and conclusion are "hasty and unfounded statements of someone who either didn't have time or lacked the will to delve deeper into the topic he was writing about".
* * *
Thursday, February 9 - Finally, my answer on (some) points:
1. Why should the Church (or its religious school) not be able to announce a public competition? Especially if he has a working title and a motive that does not violate the law or any other regulation. The competition, if I understand things correctly, does not obligate anyone to anything. Response is voluntary.
- Not only could she, but she already announced it. The church can do many things, but not everything is allowed in a secular state, especially not "working titles" that propagate nationalism. And sacrilege is, above all, a nationalist ideology.
The competition on the same topic was announced by the same church three decades ago, and the response was also voluntary. It is true that the contest from the nineties was more oral than written, and cannons were used more often than laptops for response.
2. The writer is right when he mentions the wards of two religious schools, but only in the sense that the Church could oblige them to do something. The same can be offered to others...
- It can, and it was offered, but it shouldn't be. Because the church has nothing to ask in public schools. Neither is the ideology among minors, be it Svetosava, liberal, communist, social democratic or any other.
3. Until recently, the most deadly pen of such anti-Svetosava literature was the former director of the Montenegrin police.
- I take your word for it, I haven't read it. But I did read some of his early works from Pljevlja a long time ago, from the era when the Montenegrin police and the Serbian Church were united by the same ideology.
I just don't understand what I have to do with the police. It could rather be said about the Metropolis, its Metropolitan Danilo worked in the police before devoting himself to the church.
And because of that, he had to appear before the Commission for Religious Affairs - as shown by the research of Prof. Dr. Zvezdan Folić - that he rejects the "malicious comments that as a police officer in the Kingdom of SHS he persecuted dissidents".
5. The mentioned sermon "Nationalism of Saint Sava" by Bishop Nikolaj certainly does not belong to the reading for which the "SPC glorifies" its author. There is an impressive library of other, more significant works of his...
- There is, I don't doubt either his education or his literary gift, but that doesn't mean he's not a nationalist.
Joseph Goebbels was also an exemplary believer. And accomplished to the extent that at the age of 24, he received a doctorate in literature and philosophy from Heidelberg. He was a good journalist and an even better writer. But that doesn't mean he wasn't a Nazi.
6. Our "lady Elena" was and remains the wife of a man who supported the fascist regime until its collapse, for two full decades.
- Well, I wouldn't expect this even from Metropolitan Joaniki.
First, she was the king's wife at a time when gender equality was not even desirable, let alone mandatory...
Second, and more important to me, the church where Gojko Perović has been supporting the fascists not for two decades, but for a full 82 years. And she not only supports them, but gives them decorations, she declared some of them to be saints.
Despite this, he has been loyal to the SPC longer than Regina Elena to her husband, even though he is not married to that church.
Bonus video:
