ARROGATION OF THE FLOCK

AIM, ZAGREB, December 4, 1994 The topic of "conversion" of the Serbs in Croatia has still not reached its closing chapter. The topic was opened way back two and a half years ago, when Milorad Pupovac alarmed the public with the datum of 11 thousand "converted" Serbian children, and although no tangible evidence for that was ever found, either in favour of against it, despite it - or maybe even just because of it - passions are still not checked, so that the deputy of the "most Croatian" of all parties, Drago Krpina, amd a member of a Serbian party, Dragan Hinic, even started a fight because of it.

The two namesakes, or almost namesakes, showed with their own broken heads that coincidences can be of no help in this case, although closeness is such that, strictly speaking, "conversion" is not even possible, and least of all "christening". Both religions, the Catholic and the Orthodox, belong to the same, Christian religious circle, and mutually recognize most of the sacraments, the sacrament of christening being one of them. If someone is, therefore, christianed in an Orthodox church, he/she will not be christened again by the Catholic church, and vice versa, and in principle, there are no problems about that. But, Krpina and Hinic certainly would not have fought if there had been nothing about it, and, therefore, the recent instruction of Zagreb Archbishop, Franjo Kuharic, was received with great interest. The Archbishop demanded that all parish priests in Croatia check how accurate the figure of 11 thousand was (even over 14 thousand was mentioned), and that they report about it in the shortest possible time (which is just expiring).

Kuharic's decision is a brave one, in view of the red-hot connotations which link this story to the events between 1941-1945, maybe even the bravest he has ever reached, since the Cardinal is not satisfied by simply take just a principled negative stance in relation to "christening", but starts from the preventive assumption that something has actually happened and he now demands investigation - what and how many ? But, it can be presumed in advance that the initiative will bear no fruit, simply because those who have "cleansed" their religious identity or the identity of their children, will not admit it, (just as those, mostly at the time of the rush for citizenship, who have changed their "inconvenient" Serbian names and surnames into "more appropriate" and safer Croatian ones, will keep silent about it). The key issue here is that the people of Serbian nationality "voluntarily" had the names of their children removed from the Orthodox Churcg registers, and "handed them over" to the Catholic church (which is accomplished by taking the christening certificate from one church to the other), just as noone forced them to change their Milos into Milan, or Koviljka into Katarina.

Everything, therefore, takes the form of a small war that the people are losing with themselves, so that even "militant" Hinic admits that this is primarily the problem of parents and indirect psychological pressure they succumbed to, than the result of a certain organized action of the state or the Church. But, even if that were the case, which it is not, at last not completely, the question remains if this makes the problem lesser? And can the external factors which forced people to "take Catholic religion" (which is the only appropriate term) be granted amnesty just because the club which made them do it did not hang by the waist, but was, "in a more sophisticated manner", hidden under the coat? Even this cannot completely remove all the doubts, because taking the Catholic religion includes the right of the people to choose freely and change their creed.

That is why Kuharic is right when he says that there is a serious dilemma which can hardly be resolved: "There are parents who are not Catholic, but wish their child to receive certain religious instruction, and if such a parent asks a clergyman that the child remain in class with its schoolmates, what ought he to do? If the clergyman sends the child out, forbids it, he will be accused of discriminating the child, and if he accepts it, he will be accused of proselytism". Kuharic's warning is especially topical in mixed marriages, where one of the parents can convince (or "convince") the other that "time has come for our child to learn something about my religion", and this is primarily the affair of the parents, so that the Orthodox priests who refuse to take such children's names off their books - which is also happening - are also using some kind of spiritual coercion, even if it were provoked by another coercion.

But, the Cardinal is still not touching the key issue - introduction of catechism into schools, for the time being, as an "optional" subject, but soon and according to the announcement of the lady Minister of education, as a compulsory subject. It is well known that, despite the opposition of a considerable number of people from the Church, it has finally accepted the generous, but actually cunning, offer of the state to move catechism from church premises into schools, which belong to the state, and not as instruction about religions but, actually, as introduction into religion - Catholic, of course - which both the authorities and the Croatian Democratic Community (HDZ) claim as "state" religion. By having accepted it and by having done nothing to change this, the Church has agreed to have catechism co-opted from the private sphere into the strictly controlled public (state) sphere, and to have new "Catholics" recruited through it, as a cloned species which in fact belongs to noone, not even to itself, but will grow very quickly. The parson of the Serbian Orthodox Church Municipality in Zagreb, Milenko Popovic, recently stated for the weekly "Pecat" that at least 50 per cent of children of Orthodox creed in the city were nowadays attending Catholic catechism. Most of them are from mixed marriages, and the most frequent reason for their removal from Orthodox church registers are "disagreement between parents", and "fear that the children will have problems, if they declared themselves to be Orthodox".

Besides that, Popovic says, "I know of many cases that the children who were christened here, are now simply declaring themselves as Croats and Catholics, although they have not even come to have their names removed from the books". Yet, Popovic admits that he, too, has more catechism to do nowadays than ever before. There are still "about 45 children" attending his instruction, although he assesses that out of some 100 thousand Serbs who lived in Zagreb before the war, there are not more than about thirty left, "so that in the sense of catechism, one could even say that the situation has improved". Popovic explains the increased interest for catechism by the fact that "many did not send their children to catechism lessons before even if they were believers", and now the interest grows, so that "even numerous military men regularly attend church services", and people have "small pensions, so we help them as much as we can with humanitarian aid".

Just like Kuharic, Popovic does not mention certain aspects of the issue which would help get a comprehensive insight into the problem of conversion to Catholicism. Primarily, if it is true that despite everything, the interest for initiation into Orthodox religion grows, why is Popovic today the only Orthodox parish rector in Zagreb (he says that he will remain here as long as at least five people come to his church), and they can be counted on the fingers of one hand in the whole of Croatia? And if he has remained with his believers, why have not the others, but most of them, headed by Metropolitan Bishop Jovan (Pavlovic) withdrew from here, way back in 1991, or at the very beginning of the war, and even before it? In fact, the Serbian Orthodox Episcopate in Croatia fled much before its believers, who began to leave in the beginning and in mid 1992, so that the unbiased observers, including even the intiator of this topic, Milorad Pupovac, agree that the top of the Serbian Orthodox Church fled not because it was in danger - or not primarily because of it - but in order to prove that the danger exists and that it will be present as long as "Ustashe" authorties were in power.

However destructive this criticism of Croatian authorities may sound, it is clear that a close similarity of the critics and the object of their criticism lies below the surface. Because if it is true that the persent regime in Croatia is interested in creating an ethnically cleansed state - and it is - it is equally evident that the summit of the Serbian Orthodox church cordially met them halfways, with an obvious objective to create, somewhere else (in Croatian and Bosnian Krajina), its own empire of ethnically cleansed and religiously attested Serbs. It only remains to be seen whether the flocks of believers will forver let themselves be led by such shepherds. Recently, the Varazdin parish priest interrupted the practice of the local police to send citizens to the Church to acquire "certificates" on "belonging to the Croatian people".

Without beating around the bush, the priest (Zvonimir Bono Sagi) called this practice "racism" and alarmed the Kaptol to stop this and other abuses of the Church. Did the warning come in time, or is it too late for everything?!

MARINKO CULIC