Serbian Orthodox Priest...blesses firing squad?

[OrthodoxyUSA]

A friend (an Attorney at work) asked if I had heard about the Serbian Priest who recently blessed a fireing squad before the shot a group of Muslims....

Anybody know anything about this?

Forgive me...:liturgy:

[sin_vladimirov]

Yes.

It was showed by War crimes tribunal in the Hague.

As confessed by the very tribunal itself:
"The actual video tape is a compilation of many things from the life of a soldier in the bosnian serb army. It represent home recording of a period of life from 1992 to 1997"

So, on one scene a soldier is receiving the blessing from an Orthodox priest and then couple of scenes later there is an execution of some POW's.


The "problem" is that the scenes are possibly 18 months to even 2 years apart.

The tape was used in a trial of Slobodan Milošević (ex-president of Serbia, who is a communist, and who was constantly accused by the Church of un-serbian acts, the history is a proof of this).




"Fortunately" for the serbs some of our soldiers did bad things. Very bad things. The things that the new government and (old) Church of Serbia have voiced their extreme un-happiness about, time and time again.

Also, it very "fortunate" that BBC, that presented the news (in the first place, and all the others that jumped on the band wagon) is (are) "following the highest standards of the quality reporting", namely choosing not to mention "some" facts to the public, and thus, accuse Serbian Church of war crimes as defined by "guilt by asscociation" because if a person is blessed by a priest and then a year or two years later he goes and commites hineous crime, well, it must be the fact that Church made him do so.


Good on ya BBC!:thumbsup:

(I would not trust some "news agencies" with my wheather forecast)

[VickiY]

Flips through the Hapgood Service Book...Nope...no blessing of Firing Squads, no blessing for War Criminals....Prayers "For Our Armed Forces" of course...but no mention of the Church limiting them to "Prayers for Our Armed Forces ONLY if they never, never hurt anyone, and go picnic in the woods (on fasting foods, of course) instead of obeying orders"

It is a well accepted fact that soldiers about to go to battle or on the battle grounds, so to speak, will ask the prayers of the Church, and confess, commune, and in other ways attempt to put themselves as right with God as they can. Does the Church refuse to bless those in uniform (including our police) because they might have to do something nasty to someone?

Nope. ESPECIALLY not in countries with mandatory military service.

Just my two cents

[OrthodoxyUSA]

Yes.

It was showed by War crimes tribunal in the Hague.

As confessed by the very tribunal itself:
"The actual video tape is a compilation of many things from the life of a soldier in the bosnian serb army. It represent home recording of a period of life from 1992 to 1997"

So, on one scene a soldier is receiving the blessing from an Orthodox priest and then couple of scenes later there is an execution of some POW's.


The "problem" is that the scenes are possibly 18 months to even 2 years apart.

The tape was used in a trial of Slobodan Milošević (ex-president of Serbia, who is a communist, and who was constantly accused by the Church of un-serbian acts, the history is a proof of this).




"Fortunately" for the serbs some of our soldiers did bad things. Very bad things. The things that the new government and (old) Church of Serbia have voiced their extreme un-happiness about, time and time again.

Also, it very "fortunate" that BBC, that presented the news (in the first place, and all the others that jumped on the band wagon) is (are) "following the highest standards of the quality reporting", namely choosing not to mention "some" facts to the public, and thus, accuse Serbian Church of war crimes as defined by "guilt by asscociation" because if a person is blessed by a priest and then a year or two years later he goes and commites hineous crime, well, it must be the fact that Church made him do so.


Good on ya BBC!:thumbsup:

(I would not trust some "news agencies" with my wheather forecast)


So basically, this gives a false picture of what happened....

Thanks much....

[sin_vladimirov]

Orthodoxyusa:
"So basically, this gives a false picture of what happened...."



Brother, do not get me wrong. There are things that some of Serbs did that are very very very very bad. Things that we serbs have to come to grips with and things that are not Orthodox and Christian and no ammount of wishful thinking will make it so..

There is necessity of military operations, and good strategy, "fair war" and there is plain murder and inhumain actions.

This particular video was shown in regard to oprations in Srebrenica.

I am first one to say that "destruction" of Srebrenica was needed (there are very good reasons for this) BUT killing prisoners of war (no matter how much they "deserve to die") has never been Serbian Tradition. And this last war has changed that. Also, we Serbs can not keep pointing out to the world what has been done to us if we are doing the same thing.

Killing innocent people just because we can, is satanic.
Killing guilty who have been captured or who surrendered is same.

My heart hurts to think of what is being done to the Serbs but also my heart hurts to think what we have done to others (especially to Bosnian Moslems, who ARE our brothers-and I mean this in more ways than one).

There are things that some bad examples of a Serb have to give account to in this life and in the next one. May God judge them as He will.

We have done many bad things, many.


At the same time, "western help" is doing much more damage then good. Everything that Europe, USA (NATO) have done in the Balkans since 1992 has spelled death and disaster.

One can blame a lot of war-crimes to be a direct consequence of the UN and NATO and to remain right.

We serbs are guilty.
We are guilty of selling our faith for hatred.
We are guilty of betraying God, His Church and ourselves.
We are guilty of destroying our own legacy of suffering for Lord.
We are guilty and are being justly punished.
We ate with the devil, and now we need to spew.

We have to deal with that and we are and we will.




But,

when it comes to the western policy in the Balkans, this one remains as wrong as ever.
When in comes to western reporting of the Balkans, this remains as one sided and un-fair since the day it all started.


It remains some "God knows where" place, with some "God knows which" people where something "God knows what" is going on.

Excellent, lets bomb them!
Even better lets lie about it...

So typical.

Nobody is negating what happened, but can western reporters please start saying all the facts, it really would be nice... for a change.



IN SHORT,
YES, that report is false in a sense that half truth is as bad as a lie.

[Llauralin]

Nobody is negating what happened, but can western reporters please start saying all the facts, it really would be nice... for a change.

Not gonna happen anytime soon. Not in any war in the past half century anyway, including the current one...

[sin_vladimirov]

Not gonna happen anytime soon. Not in any war in the past half century anyway, including the current one...

So true, unfortunately, very true.

[Emmanuel-A]

As far as I know, the Serbian Church has condemned war crimes without ambiguity.
I failed to find any articles on this in english (I'm sure someone will provide some).

Here are some in french :

http://www.la-croix.com/afp.static/pages/050610195947.ifbk80gt.htm

http://www.orthodoxie.com/actualitseurope/index.html

[Rilian]

The Serbian Orthodox Church - Not what we've been led to believe (http://incommunion.org/articles/older-issues/the-serbian-orthodox-church)

[moses916]

yay thanx rilian for the article, the truth is out there! ;)

[Marjorie]

Ahh Rilian thank you for the article! Everything I read about Patriarch Pavle I is so awe-inspiring. He is a living saint.

In IC XC,
Marjorie