Bishop Atanasije: Reply to Proto-Presbyter Mateja Matejić

The known but poorly acquainted with the truth about the Orthodox Church in general and the Serbian Orthodox Church in particular, proto-prebyter Mateja Matejić, from America, has written another pamphlet (published on the pseudo-zealot schismatic website “Borba za veru” (Fight for faith), March 4, 2010), entitled “Krivda kao pravda” (Injustice as justice). The treatise of this known follower of Ljotić* in priest’s clothing could as well be renamed “Lies and slander as justice”, i.e. the pseudo-justice of pseudo-zealot, church-destroying circles. All the information of this highly educated but little knowing priest originates either in hearsay or, as in previous cases, from libelous anti-church sites.

I do not intend to reply to priest Matejić regarding what he has written about me earlier and now. “Let him keep it!” said Patriarch Pavle of blessed repose. I would advise him, however, as a brother and concelebrant, to carefully read the decision of the Holy Assembly of Bishops regarding the ancient (not the nouveau riche new age) service of the Divine Liturgy. The multiple layers of that Assembly decision contain three essential elements, and priest Matejić has not carefully read or understood any of them. I barely need to add that he has not even looked at, let alone read, the four volume anthology “Christ the New Pascha – On the Divine Liturgy” / 2,500 pages /, which is available to all who are well-intentioned, and which the pseudo-zealots, of whom we see priest Matejić is one, claim is a “falsification”! – More power to them in their pseudo-fight for pseudo-faith.

The priest writes in the end: “There are several other bishops in whose dioceses things are being done in contravention to the provisions (sic!) of Holy Assembly of Bishops,” and he concludes: “Even this much is enough to see that the case of Bishop Artemije is based on distorted justice.” “I kiss his logic!” said the hegumen of Dečani, Fr. Makarije, of blessed repose. That it is flawed logic that is obviously being pushed forward as justice can be seen by the fact that Mateja Matejić does not want to know that the decisions about His Grace Brother Artemije – especially about the misdeeds of the people closest to him (some of whom are already in prison, while others, like real thieves, are on the run) – are, in fact, the decisions of the same Holy Assembly of Bishops that have been made and issued for no less than three years, and that have not been carried out! Why? Let Bishop Artemije answer instead of representing himself as a great martyr and saying that “all this is slander”, while his eminent defenders talk about how all this is “a cosmic conspiracy”!

The clergy and the faithful Orthodox people in Kosovo and Metohija have accepted the decisions of the Holy Synod and the Assembly, but they have not been accepted by a handful of pseudo-zealots and slanderers for whom the Synod=Assembly=Universal Catholic Church is only what they think it is, and what they injudiciously and unscrupulously judge, adjudicate, condemn.

Open the doors of repentance to us, o Giver of Life!

Prizren-Gračanica, Sunday of the Cross, 2010

Bishop Atanasije,
Administrator of the Diocese of Raška and Prizren
 

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*Dimitrije Ljotić – was a Serbian right-wing politician and German collaborationist during World War II (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimitrije_Ljotić)