By: Mladen Vušurović
Friends ask me, I know true friends, where I was on September 5 this year. Unfortunately, I was not at the Cetinje barricades, with the people of Cetinje who started and wrote a new page in the continuity of Montenegrin history. I belong to my people with all my being, without a shred of restraint and thought, I support the protest against the enthronement of the Metropolitan of the Church of Serbia in the Cetinje Monastery.
So here's the order. I was baptized back in 1989 in the Serbian Orthodox Church, in my personal search for God, in the Vavedenje monastery in Senjak. When I am already looking for God, let me be baptized, I calculated that it is so right, and the Church, like any other, is completely irrelevant. My godfather at the baptism, a distinguished pre-war Belgrade professor of literature, then in his ninth decade of life, contributed to the choice. He was my first neighbor, cheerful in nature, smiling and always ready to joke, which brought us closer. As I sometimes brought him bread from the store, and other necessities, I told him: when I am already feeding you, let you baptize me, so you renounce the devil at baptism for me. He agreed, with enthusiasm, to teach me the faith and Orthodoxy, today I keep the cloak with which he clothed me, and the haircut I received from the priest, more as a dear memory of my godfather than of God, because I did not find him there, although I received him at baptism.
The priest wrote the baptismal certificate, examined what he did not know, exclaimed about the nationality and wrote Serbian, I kept silent, I did not come to the baptism to reveal the nations, neither bothered me nor the godfather objected, even though he knew I was Montenegrin, because that's how we became closer, he recognized me and loved me like that.
Of course I knew who I was. Even in preschool, my mother once said to me: we are Montenegrin sons, we are baptized with three fingers. And who would oppose his mother's vow and love. She was born and raised in the immediate vicinity of Catholics from Krajina on the shores of Lake Skadar, so she taught me how they are baptized, first left and right, we first right and then left to heart, it was easy to master this first lesson of faith.
Nationality remained stable, along with love for parents. Sometime in the early nineties, I came across a serious historical book about Peter I Petrović Njegoš, i.e. Saint Peter of Cetinje, written and read by Branko Pavićević. Then the nation erupted in me, until then it was on the level of emotion, but it grew into knowledge and providence, it erupted with fierce flames, it lifted me up with the majesty and uniqueness of civilization and culture that our ancestors built, through the centuries. I realized that compared to my birthday, when I was born as a Montenegrin, everything else in life will be easy for me. It has always been easy for Montenegrins to die for Montenegro, for its honor, name and freedom, independence and autonomy, through the centuries, it is difficult to be born, but once we are born, we have no return and renunciation, except to escape into arrogance, which is the greatest human vice. For several years in a row, I bought and read, underlined, history books, procured and borrowed, I was more ambitious to learn the history of my people, than during my student days, to be an excellent student.
I sought God persistently, and in various ways, to laugh at myself, from this distance, through teachings and books, through pilgrimages and travels, through human destinies and confrontations. I visited dozens of Balkan temples, Mount Athos and Hilandar twelve times, and experienced an offer and an unusual part there. On his first visit to Hilandar in 1992, the economist Vasilije told me, let's baptize you. Baptized already, I say. And in that search for God, I came to the fear of God, a serious level of knowledge, but it overwhelmed me, you will not scare me anymore, I renounce you as I renounced the devil at baptism, everything else would not be me. I needed this balance, harmony in soul and heart, equal renunciation of the devil as well as of God, there are both, they are lurking, so whoever grabs more. With the day of renunciation of God for me began true spirituality, since I opened my being both for good and for evil in people, the search for truth, as opposed to religious dogmas, was inevitable my choice, which rewarded me many times, uplifted me.
Recently, I come up with and ask myself again, have you sought God, and have you ever prayed to him, begged him, at least once, when it was the hardest or easiest, most beautiful or horrible thing in your life, so you never did, I can't lye myself, I'm not going to lie to myself, so how can I believe in you and not ask you for anything, that's not the point.
Then came the nineties, and Metropolitan Amfilohije, and he expelled me from the Serbian Orthodox Church. He disgusted my church and faith, instead of spreading spirituality and love, he started a fierce pogrom of Montenegrins, as if it were his mission and vision. It is as if because of that he sat on the throne of St. Peter of Cetinje, to swear and curse us, to mock and humiliate us, to distract us from his being, to salt our minds, which we would simply say, to destroy traces and artifacts, the end of the monastery buildings and churches in Montenegro, falsifies history and tradition, invents nations and educates nationalists. And who would be normal to say: this is my Church, this is my Metropolitan.
In the meantime, on Lucindan in 1993, the holy autocephalous Montenegrin Orthodox Church was renewed in Cetinje at the All-Montenegrin assembly, and Metropolitan Antonije Abramović, a highly respected clergyman, was elected the first head of the renewed Montenegrin Orthodox Church.
I took my baptismal certificate, it was the twenty-first century, he took it to Cetinje with the then Metropolitan Mihailo, to enroll me as an admirer of the Montenegrin Orthodox Church (CPC), drank brandy with him, we talked cordially. At the registration of the nation, he also exclaimed a Montenegrin, no less passionately than the Serbian priest at his baptism. This act, clearly, was no longer related to any search for God, but a determinant important for my daughter, to find out when the time comes for who I am and where I belong, which is why I joined the CPC admirers. I will teach her to tell her suitors that she also belongs to the CPC, to lie to them if necessary, so whoever does not respect her, will certainly not love her. Because today, the propaganda against the CPC is so orchestrated and strong, disastrous for the spirituality of the Serbian nation in particular, it entered everyday life with mockery of our metropolitan, our “non-canonical” Church, so no one wonders which canon the Montenegrin Orthodox Church does not respect. No less canonical than any other, of course.
The people continued to live during Amfilovije's time, numerous village, tribal fraternal churches and temples were the subject of a kind of plebiscite, a declaration of whose and whose priests they could act. Many opted for the CPC, some for the SOC, in Old Montenegro, some opened the doors of village temples to the priests of both churches, some are still litigating, whether judicial or fraternal. In our brotherhood of Vušurović, everyone was unanimous and decided on the CPC without thinking, I don't know a single Vušurović who was against. They didn’t ask me, nor did they need to ask me, after all. Priest Stanišić came in the early nineties, a couple of times, with a gun under his priest's uniform, to drive us to the SOC, the brothers told him not to harass us, so he gave up on us, neither he nor any SOC priest came anymore.
And then Amfilohije was succeeded by Jovan Mićović, Metropolitan of the Church of Serbia, the so-called Montenegrin Littoral, of the Metropolitanate of Montenegro and the Littoral, who continued Amfilohije's mission even more fiercely. He called Montenegrins mushrooms that will disappear after the rain, a couple of weeks before the enthronement. It remains for me to wonder whether, with a clear consciousness and conscience, he could have declared such an abomination, or maybe the lying Covid-19 left a trace, distorted his mind and conscience. But it will be sooner that he was so taught, brought up in his Church, carried away by vanity and imagined that it was his turn to sit on the throne of Montenegrin bishops, he had to lay down, over and over again, his autochauvinistic allegiance to the Church that taught him that and such spirituality and religion. As Cetinje and the Cetinje Monastery are age-old symbols of Montenegrin statehood and identity, the indomitable spirit of freedom and originality, it was necessary to humiliate Montenegrins, to break any resistance to the ideology of sainthood and national persecution, which Amfilohije's mission so zealously continues.
It is a brutal process of assimilation that began a century ago. Serbian nationalism is radicalizing, it is a matter of permanent brutal aggression that aims to destroy the Montenegrin nation. Metropolitan Joanikije also found himself in this mission, he likes this mission, it seems to him that Montenegrins are a nation threatened with extinction, so here is his endless happiness.
The barricades did not make me happy, but made me nervous, how to proceed. There is only one way ahead of us, the time has come to ask for our shrines, to clearly and loudly, clear consciences and undisturbed worlds, write to the Metropolitanate of Montenegro and the Littoral Church of Serbia to leave the Cetinje Monastery, to leave the Montenegrin shrine, to return it to whom it belongs, Montenegrin people and the Montenegrin state. We Montenegrins are no longer ready to compromise, and we have been ready for dignified and private compromises with Serbs all our lives, without doubt and guilt at any time for our readiness to compromise, but more, for centuries we do not accept any compromise. Especially not to our detriment, to the detriment of our ancestors, our name and part, our national being, ethical and ethnic, our state whose every lump and rubble is flooded with suffering and sacrifice, blood and tears of the weak Montenegrin. The time of compromise is over, we are left with a fight for the name and the future, for the Cetinje Monastery above all, for all our saints, as it has always been, only the fight for Montenegro is eternal. From the fire and the spark, generations were born to teach the flame of freedom and truth, justice and independence, the part and dignity of the Montenegrin, the chivalry and heroism of the Montenegrin. And again, Montenegro and Montenegrins will live and be born forever.
The Montenegrin Orthodox Orthodox question is without a doubt extremely complex and complicated, intricate and shrouded, encompassing many centuries and sciences, traditions, but also charters and documents, factual and historiographical writings. I read everything, almost everything that was written on the topic of the Montenegrin Orthodox Church, so today it is crystal clear and unconditional that the Cetinje Monastery, founded by the charter of Ivanbeg Crnojevic, was organized as an independent, as a throne chair of an independent and autocephalous Orthodox Metropolitanate, to which only the lord Ivanbeg appointed the heads of that Church, the metropolitan – Cyrus Visarion and the bishop – Cyrus Babylon.
Master Ivan Crnojević opens a new epoch of local Orthodox Christianity, in the discontinuity of the St. Sava diocese of Zeta. Charters and other chrysostoms testify that “in Christ God the faithful and God-protected Lord of Zeta” does not refer to its succession in a single letter. Canon law is unambiguous.
The seventeenth rule of the Fourth Ecumenical Council reads:
“If a new city is established by the imperial government, or is established in advance (in the future), in such a case the dilution of ecclesiastical areas should follow the dilution of the state and civil.”
There is no doubt that from the first day since Master Ivan Crnojević built the Monastery, he wrote the founding Charter and handed it over to the Montenegrin people, the Montenegrin Cetinje Monastery, belonged to the Montenegrin people and the Montenegrin state, whose foundations we continue today. The time has come to ask what is ours, our holy places, we must not and cannot escape from ourselves, nor do we have a place from our Montenegro, and our ancestors. They call us day and night to come to mind and moral. Let's ask the Cetinje Monastery to be returned to us, let's move towards that sacred goal. Our civilization, which we want to inherit and continue, whose first-class monument is Cetinje Monastery, is more valuable than the state, it transcends the state, it reaches into our being. Unlike the barricades from September 5, the whole being indicates to me that the departure of Metropolitan Joanikije from the Cetinje monastery should be accompanied by flowers and applause. I live for that day when we will send him off with dignity, as a day of true reconciliation between Serbs and Montenegrins, which will inevitably happen.