The article is written by Andrej Nikolaidis, CdM columnist.
A famous anecdote tells how Napoleon once said to a cardinal: “Your Eminence, are you not aware that I have the power to destroy the church?” The cardinal allegedly replied: “Ah, we – the Catholic clergy, have been trying to do the same thing for 1,800 years, and we have not succeeded. You won’t succeed either.”
The church is a very resilient institution, and the clergy are skilled. Finally: we are talking about people who live, and they live very well, from the fact that one man was crucified on a cross 2,000 years ago. The emperors, even Napoleon, first exist and then pass: the church remains. The demand for hope and meaning never declines. Hope and meaning do not need advertising. They are the perfect product: even better than Coca-Cola. Better than coca, which, by the way, was an ingredient in the original recipe for Coca-Cola. Today, the two of them – coca and Coca-Cola, can be bought separately. That’s market…
The Montenegrin authorities have nothing against the clergy: on the contrary. Clergy brought them to power and keeps them in power.
Montenegrin citizens cherish a fairy tale about the democratic changes they have brought to Montenegro with their wisdom, consistency and determination. That’s a funny way to spell “processions”…
Fairy tales are instructive. So is this one, in which, in a way that is understandable to a child’s mind, a complex story about the pact of large capital and clergy is packed. Large capital articulated its own and the interest of embassies and controlled the citizens. The church had power and mass.
The unholy pact of capital and clergy usually ends badly. But not badly for capital and not badly for the clergy. The ways of God are strange – and so are the ways of democracy. You know what: sometimes it takes two steps back to jump five steps forward. Sometimes it is necessary to clericalize a society, in order for that society to be truly secularized. Sometimes the enrichment of the already rich and the additional consolidation of large capital, is the path to a more just society… And sometimes what seems like an insidious excuse is – just an insidious excuse. Democracy, not patriotism, seems to be the last resort for scoundrels in Montenegro today.
Is there anyone who was so stupid that he did not understand that the fact that the government returned the property to the Islamic Community in Pljevlja was just an introduction to what is really going on here? Whatever and however the Church of Serbia asks for, it will get it – that is what it is about. By the way: I use the name Church of Serbia because it is used by the Ecumenical Patriarchate, the greatest authority in Orthodoxy. I reckon a mother knows best what each of her children’s names are.
Still, the Becic’s supporters announced that they had “returned” the property at Sveti Stefan to the Church of Serbia. The question is in the air: how does the party “return” it to the church? Is the state, the municipality or the party that makes the returning? Is there still a law or, I don’t know, a constitution in Montenegro that prevents parties from distributing state property?
The question is, of course, rhetorical. But some other thing is important here.
The Democrats, as well as the entire Montenegrin government, are the client and debtor of the Church of Serbia. The growth of that party would very quickly turn into a decline if the church turned its back on them. Just as they grew with the help of Joanikije, to whose skirts they firmly hang, they could also fall thanks to him. Since they irritated the Church of Serbia by voting for the Resolution on Srebrenica – which, again, they did so as not to irritate the embassies – the Becic’s supporters had to find a way to flatter the church. You know how they say: flattery will get you anywhere…
They could demonstrate their commitment to the church in the spiritual sphere: for example, by allowing the party leadership under Ostrog to remain silent for several months. They wisely decided to act in the realm of the material after all: to express love through property. Because, in spite of everything, the church shares at least one thing with Marxism: the belief that the material base goes first, then the spiritual superstructure.
The war between the Democrats and the Democratic Front for the affection of their mother church is not unfunny to watch – thank you, popcorns please – but its consequences, such as the further clericalization of Montenegrin society and politics, are not amusing.
Arguing about church affection is reminiscent of the story from my first spelling book.
The story was about a group of first-grade pupils looking at Tito’s portrait on the classroom wall. An argument develops among the children: each child claimed that Comrade Tito was watching him/her. The story ends with a teacher entering the classroom and saying: sit down, children, comrade Tito is watching you all.
Replace Tito’s portrait with Porfirije’s, divide the children into Democrats and Front followers and you will get a story about the state of affairs in today’s Montenegro.
By the way, a teacher of sensual lips who will teach children that the patriarch sees and loves all of them, looks as if she was Aleksandar Vucic’s sister.
