Syndicate: Re: Collective responsibility - Church hipocrisy

["Mihajlo Acimovic" <mihajlo@angelfire.com>]

The first paragraph is for syndicate subscribers only, the rest is for everyone. Question for jungle-world: Is this good enough to get published? Same question for Arkzin/Bastard.

I was trying to stay out of this collective responsibility debate, because I think it is pointless.
However, since nobody seems ready to speak my mind, I'm gonna have to do it for me. 
If michael.benson@pristop.si had been observing even the media in Slovenia, he would have noticed that

THE CHURCH AND THE CRIMINAL

The Serbian Orthodox Church had made a very loud denunciation of Milosevic in 1996/7 around christmass, when it officialy declared that Milosevic should resign immidiately. In January 1997, after the police cordons and student protesters had been blocking each other for over a week in Kolarceva street, in downtown Belgrade, the patriarch led a religious procession through this street, before which the police cordons retreated.
This, however, does not justify the church's hipocrisy, as many of it's priests have gone to Bosnia and Croatia, during those wars to hold religious services for the troops. Also, Patriarch Pavle was not so eager to oppose Milosevic during his climb to power. In those late 1980s, the church was holding a far more nationalist position. In fact, vladika (a position similar to archbishop) Artemije was one of the leaders of serbian nationalism at the time. In those days, as now, the church was upholding an extremely heavy pressure to force the government to introduce Religious Science - meaning as a school subject at all levels of education, where children would be thaught to live up to the church's hipocrisy.
The church's official viewpoint is that Religious Science would not be mandatory, AT FIRST. This was often stated, even on television, by high church representatives, (I think this includes Artemije, but can't remember). The church has also been most persistent in it's attempts to force the government to return the Bogoslovski (means God'S-letters or God-Adressing) faculty, currently church-funded and controlled, back into the wings of Belgrade university, from where it was banished during Tito's government. The government has even been ready to accept this demand, but the church has demanded to maintain control of the faculty, so this faculty would be funded by the taxpayer's money, but the church would have absolute control. This would be a total breach of the University codex, not that anyone cares.
The church has also declared that it supports the division of church and state. I'll let you draw your own conclusions from this one.
It has also come to my attention that the church has not even suggested that a resignation should be handed in by Radovan Karadzic, the ex-leader (is he ex?) of the Republic of Srpska, the serbian entity in Bosnia.
It hasn't made any insinuations about the war-crimes done in, say, Banja Luka, the second biggest city in Bosnia, now capital of the Repulic of Srpska, which used to have a very high percentage of Muslim population. Did they say anything about Srebrenica? What about Vukovar? 
The answers are, as always, simple. In the Republic of Srpska and the Republic of Srpska Krajina (the latter was the Serb-rebel country in Croatia, 1991-1995), the
Serbian Orthodox Church had already succeeded in getting the governments to introduce Religious Science as a mandatory school subject in both elementary and highschools. That's why Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic are not criminals. They did introduce Religious Science. That's why Arkan is not a criminal. He had priests preparing his army spiritually (and for good money) for every campaign of looting and ethnic cleansing (amount of bloodmoney donations to the church is not available to the author). The Serbian Orthodox Church has often praised the governments of the Republic of Srpska and of Republic of Srpska Krajina, for their longsighted policy in the introdution of mandatory Religious Science for all students, regardless of religious beliefs. Republic of Srpska is still a country of the Serbian people, according to it's constitution, so any notion like "regardless of ethnicity" would be pointless.
Milosevic's government, however, has not introduced Religious Science at all, so Milosevic is a criminal, who should resign, in fact, "Milosevic is a bolshevik" (Artemije). He prevents Serbian (who else could live in Serbia?) children from getting a good christian education and thereby, prevents their spiritual growth. This has been the reason for the downfall of the Serbian people. As a vladika once said, "Children should be thaught christianity from their first year, from the cradle".

Mihajlo Acimovic
macim@angelfire.com
http://www.angelfire.com/nv/mihajlo


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