By Andrej Nikolaidis, CdM columnist
Some things are simply hard to – if they ever – change.
If St Peter of Cetinje had appeared in person yesterday in the Cetinje Dvorski trg (eng. Castle Square), addressing the Montenegrins, he’d have continued where he left off before death interrupted him.
Which can be understood as a confirmation of the eternal duration of the saint’s warnings. But also confirmation of the eternal duration of Montenegrin flaws.
Did anyone watch the footages showing clashes among Montenegrin Orthodox Church (CPC) supporters yesterday without feeling endless nausea and discomfort? It was – as we could see – a testimony that, as my friend observed, there is simply no end to the collapse. Because the bottom doesn’t really exist. What you declared to be the bottom yesterday, tomorrow you see as something high above us.
Let’s put aside the fact that if you claim to be a Christian, Christmas is the last day you should indulge in violence. When you fight on Christmas, it’s like crucifying someone on Easter: it’s not that you misunderstood something, but you understood nothing.
There’s little left in this world of the original Christian teachings. In the West, Christmas is commercialized: it’s another day when money is wasted. In our country, Christmas is nationalized. But not in the sense that it became an asset that passed into the ownership of the state. No. Rather literally: Christmas has become the property of the nation.
Despite popular opinion, the Montenegrin Orthodox Church, after restored, had an excellent basis to develop. It was the kind of Christian church that, if there was luck, would have remained forever if Rome hadn’t appropriated Christian teaching and if Christianity hadn’t become the religion of the Empire. That church was like the early Christians. It had nothing, it was poor, it represented the voice of the oppressed. It was the opposite of the luxury, power, and arrogance of the Serbian Orthodox Church. Although it didn’t escape ethnophyletism, it didn’t become the engine of Montenegrin nationalism – possibly because that nationalism exists only in a superfluous and pale attempt. But it didn’t grow. To end up splitting and becoming weaker than ever.
Yesterday that church hit the rock bottom.
Pro-government media yesterday mocked at it, and that mockery spread on social media as traditional expressions of hatred against Cetinje and its residents.
The CPC is imploding. Chest-thumping and empty stories never prevented implosion.
Whoever separated politics from Christianity was wasting their time. Originally, Christianity’s very revolutionary. And very, very political, as it arises not only as a religion, but also as an anti-imperial ideology. The Revelation of John is, among other things, an anti-imperial manifesto.
What political message was sent from Dvorski trg yesterday? A bad one. Even worse than that.
When we’re facing hard times, let’s fight each other. We have no enemies, this is the land of flowing milk and honey. So, let’s be enemies to each other. What is a man without moustache and without enemies?
And when he embarrasses himself, what then? As always: he blames everyone except himself. BIA is to blame, Milo, the DPS, also the spirit of Amfilohije. Everyone else is guilty just not “us”.
And that’s maybe the worst: the total absence of self-reflection, self-criticism and awareness of responsibility.
It’s a guarantee of future demise.
(The opinions and views of our columnists aren’t necessarily those of the CdM news team)
