EU Parliament President's Macedonia Gaffe

Controversial remarks made by recently installed president of the European Parliament Antonio Tajani have hit the media spotlight. According to Greek newspaper Kathimerini, during an interview while visiting Skopje last year, Mr. Tajani stated:

"Macedonia [sic] is a beautiful country. Everyone in Italy knows Macedonia [sic]. Why? Because Alexander the Great and Philip the Macedonian are your very well-known ancestors. There's no Europe without Alexander, as he was the first king who stopped an invasion from Iran and those countries. That's why we call him great, because he strengthened Europe's borders."

The revelation of the comments was naturally followed by vigorous protests from the Greek foreign ministry and the country's main political parties, as well as from one of the most prominent Greek MPs in Brussels, Dimitris Papadimoulis (Syriza party), who is one of the European Parliament's vice-presidents.

The strong denunciation of the comments from Greece – which is a member of the EU unlike FYROM – led to president Tajani posting in Greek on Twitter yesterday that "I know history very well. Alexander the Great was Greek and had ideas that contributed to the birth of Europe".

Preceding Mr. Tajani's tweet was a statement issued by the European Parliament confirming its firm stance on FYROM and that the only name by which it recognizes the country is the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. 

For the record, Antonio Tajani is a member of Silvio Berlusconi's right-wing Forza Italia party as well as the European People's Party.  He was installed president of the European Parliament just over a week ago on January 17.

Ecclesiastical Issues Facing FYROM and its Diaspora (II)

Today we continue from where we left off on our previous post regarding the so-called "Macedonian" church.

We talked about how the church in FYROM is schismatic – i.e. not in communion with any of the canonical churches that make up the Orthodox Communion, whether they be Serbia, Bulgaria, or Russia – and (briefly) explained how this situation came to be.

We also stressed that the same status applies to any (arch)diocese or metropolis in the diaspora identifying as "Macedonian" Orthodox, as these communities are under the jurisdiction of the schismatic church in FYROM.  

A question was sent to us asking whether the Yugoslavs being schismatic meant they had different beliefs. The answer, simply put, is no. For all heretical churches are indeed schismatic, but not all schismatic churches are heretical. 

That said, schismatics still cannot receive holy communion in a canonical Orthodox church. And this makes perfect sense, because there can be no common cup if there is no unity. Just like a Roman Catholic or member of one of the Protestant churches cannot receive communion in a canonical Orthodox church, neither can someone belonging to a schismatic Orthodox church. 

One of us here at Melbourne Macedonian remembers a priest once explaining to him that anyone outside of the Church who goes to a canonical priest to receive holy communion does not receive Body and Blood, but fire. 

Other schismatic churches that have left the Orthodox Communion but still identify as Orthodox include the Kyivan patriarchate of Ukraine (led by patriarch Filaret) and the so-called church of Genuine Orthodox Christians (old-calendarists) based in Greece.

Archbishop Jovan Vraniskovski leads a small church (number-wise) in FYROM that falls under the jurisdiction of the Serbian patriarchate and is canonical. This church was established in 2003 after archbishop Jovan, a hierarch of the schismatic church at the time and based in Veles (Greek Bελεσσά), responded positively to calls from Serbian patriarch Pavle the previous year for the church in FYROM to return its mother (Serbia).

Archbishop Jovan

Note that Jovan, like the schismatic Stefan, also bears the title of archbishop of Ohrid (Greek Αχρίδα). Some may wonder why the city of Ohrid bears more religious importance than Skopje (the capital) for the church in FYROM. This is because Ohrid was once one of the region's main spiritual hubs, where the faith flourished and a number of saints were born. St. Clement (Greek Κλήμης) is one of them. (He was a disciple of Sts. Cyril and Methodius, who brought literacy to the Slavs with the creation of the Cyrillic alphabet.) 

The future of the church in FYROM is unclear. From what it looks like, the status quo will not change any time soon and the group led by archbishop Stefan will remain outside of the Orthodox Communion going forward. There's simply too much politics and too many big egos involved that make reunification with the Serbian patriarchate and the other Orthodox churches very hard. 

Indeed, it's very unlikely that the "Macedonian" church would accept returning to its previous status of daughter church to the Serbian church, thus becoming subordinate once again. And it's even less likely, impossible in fact, for independence to be granted to the "Macedonian" church by the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, for doing so would mean bringing a 15th autocephalous church into the Communion with a name that is not in line with history or nature and distorts the facts.

The Macedonian [sic] Australian Pride Facebook Page

Our friends at Macedonian [sic] Australian Pride have sent their love via Facebook to the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs this Julian-calendar Christmas Eve (6th January). Why? Because apparently a Russian graphic labelling the northern Greek administrative regions of Western, Central, and Eastern Macedonia (and Thrace) with their actual names constitutes Russian recognition of these regions as territories of FYROM.

It's posts like these and the comments that follow that make us laugh and realize that the Yugoslavs really don't have any arguments or facts to back their claims. 

For example, apparently only the ancient kingdom of Macedonia had a monarch. Other Greek-speaking regions had prime ministers and presidents, as they were democracies. Guess that means King Leonidas of Sparta (the 300) was not a king after all. 

Another example is the name Thessaloniki, which was apparently invented only last century. Guess that means St. Paul's two letters to the Thessalonians found in the New Testament need to be renamed. And while we're at it, we may as well rewrite the history books so that the world knows King Philip II never had a daughter called Thessaloniki...

As noted in a previous post, Melbourne Macedonian has no intention of engaging in round-the-clock online warfare with the various Yugoslav-run pages on social media sites.

However, if we see something we deem to be incorrect or deceiving, out of line with history or lacking sheer common sense, we will respond. 

Ecclesiastical Issues Facing FYROM and its Diaspora

Ecclesiastical, that is, church-related, issues are one of our favorites here at Melbourne Macedonian, and in this post we talk about the "Macedonian" church and explain where it stands in the Orthodox world today.

One of the largest Orthodox churches
in the world: St. Sava in Belgrade

To begin, we have to understand what the Orthodox Communion is and see which churches constitute it. Currently, there are fourteen (14) autocephalous, or self-governing, churches within the  Communion. They are, in order of primacy according to Constantinople: the patriarchates of Constantinople (Ecumenical), Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, Moscow, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, and Georgia; and the churches of Cyprus, Greece, Poland, Albania, and the Czech Lands.

As one can see, only four churches have jurisdiction within the Balkans: Albania, Bulgaria, Romania, and Serbia. The "Macedonian" church of FYROM declared itself autocephalous and broke away from the Serbian Patriarchate in 1967. This was an attempt by shady nationalist figures with considerable power at the time to create a separate "Macedonian" church with its own (not Serbian, and by all means not Bulgarian) identity and, above all, authority, and whose existence would strengthen the case for a separate "Macedonian" nation different ethnically and historically to the other peoples of the region, especially the Orthodox Serbs and Bulgarians.

The reason for the "Macedonian" church's declaration of independence being rejected by the Serbian church is that such things cannot be determined by daughter churches, but by mother churches. That is, a church subordinate to another church can only become independent, autocephalous, or self-governing, if the other church grants it this status. In this case, the "Macedonian" church (daughter) could not declare independence from the Serbian church (mother), but the Serbian church could have granted it independence if its synod ever deemed this appropriate. Simply put, this is how things work within the Orthodox Church. For example, today the church of Belarus is subordinate –that is, belongs– to the church of Russia, which became autocephalous in 1448 and was elevated to patriarchate (Moscow) in 1589 by Constantinople, to which it answered up until the granting of independence. 

Archbishop Stefan
(schismatic)

Fifty years on, and the so-called "Macedonian" church currently headed by archbishop Stefan Veljanovski of Ohrid still remains unrecognized by every church within the Orthodox Communion. What this means is that all sacraments conducted by priests belonging to this schismatic church are considered invalid. It should be noted that congregations in the diaspora (e.g. Australia, Canada) identifying as "Macedonian Orthodox" belong to this church.

That said, there is a church within FYROM, a very small one, that is canonical and in full communion with the other churches. This is the church under the jurisdiction of the Serbian patriarchate and led by archbishop Jovan Vraniskovski, also of Ohrid...

But that's all for now: This topic will be continued in a future post.