There is a tomos on the autocephaly of the Montenegrin Church. It is the Tomos of the Ecumenical Patriarch Meletius IV and the Holy Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Constantinople from February 19, 1922. It states that Autocephalous Montenegrin Church, together with the Karlovac Church, as well as the dioceses of Zadar and Boka Kotorska, entered into “administrative unity with the Serbian Church into one autocephalous church under the name 'Autocephalous United Orthodox Serbian Church of the Kingdom of SHS'”.
The Montenegrin Church and the Serbian Church from the aforementioned tomos were Orthodox churches in the Principality/Kingdom of Montenegro and the Kingdom of Serbia, to which identical provisions of the constitutions of the two states were dedicated. Thus, Article 40 of the Constitution of the Principality/Kingdom of Montenegro read: “The state religion in Montenegro is Eastern Orthodox. The Montenegrin Church is autocephalous. It does not depend on any side of the Church; but it maintains unity in dogmas with the Eastern Ecumenical Church”, while Article 3 of the Constitution of the Kingdom of Serbia contained the same text, citing the Serbian Church as autocephalous.
The adjectives “Montenegrin” and “Serbian” in the names of these churches were not folk designations, but rather terms that denoted the local character - one church in Montenegro and the other in Serbia. In this regard, it is necessary to distinguish autocephaly as an organizational fact from organic church identity. In this sense, both Montenegrin and Serbian were Serbian Orthodox, Peć Patriarchal churches, as were all other churches that were part of the “Autocephalous United Orthodox Serbian Church of the Kingdom of SHS”, which would later change its name to the Serbian Orthodox Church.
The difference is that the Serbian Church received a tomos of autocephaly in 1879, as a kind of release from the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. The Orthodox Church in Serbia was part of this jurisdiction until the state was internationally recognized at the Congress of Berlin. The Montenegrin Church did not need such an act as recognition of its autocephaly, which developed from de facto independence after the abolition of the Patriarchate of Pec, to de iure canonical recognition of autocephaly by other Orthodox churches, primarily the Ecumenical and Moscow Patriarchates.
It is in the archives of these two churches that the most convincing evidence of Montenegrin autocephaly is stored. They culminate in diptychs from the 19th century, where the Autocephalous Metropolis of Montenegro is also listed as a local church. Therefore, it is paradoxical that in the escalation of the Moscow-Phanar conflict over who is the mother and who is the stepmother of Orthodoxy - which has recently included Montenegro - both churches are treating the historical fact of Montenegrin autocephaly with ignorance. This would not be the case if the mutation of the memory of the Montenegrin Church had not occurred in Montenegro.
Exclusive Montenegrinity preserves the memory of its autocephaly, excluding the Serbian Orthodox character of its being. It began with a massive legitimate movement for the restoration of autocephaly in the early 1990s, and ended with an uncanonical and divided Montenegrin Orthodox Church, which seems to be disappearing where it originated - on the Palace Square in Cetinje.
Inclusive Serbianism uses the affiliation of the vast majority of Orthodox believers to the Serbian Orthodox Church to Serbianize Montenegrin religious memory and spiritual space. It absolutizes the Serbian Orthodox habitus of the Montenegrin Church, and relativizes to the point of complete denial its autocephaly as non-canonical, temporary, and imposed by the rulers of the state, whose independence was also an enforced footnote in the history of pan-Serbianism.
Inclusive Montenegrinism, on the other hand, insists that the denial of the autocephaly of the Montenegrin Church is tantamount to the denial of the independence and international recognition of the Kingdom of Montenegro. Also, it does not hide the long-discovered pages of history, but includes in its memory the Serbian Orthodox character of the Autocephalous Metropolitanate of Montenegro. Aware of the continuity of the present-day Metropolitanate of Montenegro and the Littoral with the Montenegrin Church, inclusive Montenegrinism affirms and awaits the realization of the historical right of the Cetinje Metropolitanate to archiepiscopal authority and canonical jurisdiction over the entire territory of Montenegro, which it had as the head of the autocephalous church in the Kingdom of Montenegro.
Until then, the Ecumenical Patriarch has no one to write to, as Meletius IV wrote on February 19, 1922, namely that the Church "inherently of good order and canonical order (...) adjusts and regulates the boundaries of church administration according to political changes that occur, insofar as this is permitted by the holy church laws, so that the management of church affairs may be carried out without difficulty and with expediency and so that greater benefit may result from it for the Christian people."
The author is a lecturer at the Faculty of Law, University of Donja Gorica and a correspondent for the project “EUREL - Sociological and Legal Data on Religion” from Montenegro.
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