Domovina uredništvo
During my latest visit to Croatia, March 2020, the country has not only had to deal with the vicious threat of COVID-19 (Coronavirus) spread, desperately trying to avoid the devastation that the neighbouring Italy was living, but a series of terrible earthquakes and aftershocks in Zagreb also forced the country to its knees. People may say that I must have had the worst time ever there during my latest visit, but actually it was a time that brought out much goodness in people, much bravery, good friends, clarification of what is the most important in one’s life. But it brought out much evil in people and especially the evil of communism, which still hovers above and in Croatia.
For any reader who has ridiculed even the notion of Yugoslav communism being active in Croatia today can merely look into what has been said by some public personalities during this crisis and come to the conclusion that there is no conspiracy theory regarding this but that the undermining of people’s faith is, sadly, alive and kicking in Croatia (you take away a person’s faith, you take away their identity) just as it was during the communist regime in Former Yugoslavia.
For example, Mrs Rada Boric, a leftist women’s rights activist had via Facebook commented on the recent Zagreb earthquake and concern over the rebuilding of hospitals. In that situation, she did not forget to mention the churches! “I hope they can finally find their way! It’s been shown that one doctor was worth more than 20 priests. And the Church has enough of our budget money to repair the damages. After all, this vulnerable life is more important now,” Boric wrote.
Of course, Boric failed to demonstrate where or who has shown that “one doctor is worth more than 20 priests”; perhaps she was reminiscing upon the Yugoslav communist mantra to that effect, to which she undoubtedly subscribed and evidently still does.
The role of faith and the role of practicing medicine in healing the sick and the injured are roles that are inseparable from one another. The technological advances of the past century tended to change the focus of medicine from a caring, service-oriented model to a technological, cure-oriented model. Technology has led to phenomenal advances in medicine and has given us the ability to prolong life. However, in the past few decades physicians have attempted to balance their care by reclaiming medicine’s more spiritual roots, recognising that until modern times spirituality was often linked with health care. Spiritual or compassionate care involves serving the whole person—the physical, emotional, social, and spiritual. Such service is inherently a spiritual activity. Rachel Naomi Remen, MD, who has developed Commonwealth retreats for people with cancer, described it well:
Helping, fixing, and serving represent three different ways of seeing life. When you help, you see life as weak. When you fix, you see life as broken. When you serve, you see life as whole. Fixing and helping may be the work of the ego, and service the work of the soul (Remen RN. Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories That Heal. New York: Riverhead Books; 1997)
The Church teaches, promotes and encourages compassion. The Church is for great majority of people in Croatia the bedrock of spirituality and hope and this spirituality, this compassion, spills into health care via the very people who attend church and work in hospitals. Why someone would want to deny the Church to the people is a question that beggars answers, especially at this time of terrible crises with Coronavirus and earthquakes in Croatia. The answers do indeed lie with individuals (like Rada Boric) who will try any which way to destroy that wonderful Croatian spirituality and compassion that has created an independent democratic Croatian State away from communist Yugoslavia.
And hence, one response to Boric’s activities and sayings that is worth noting is the speech in the Croatian Parliament delivered on Friday 27 March 2020 by the retired General Zeljko Glasnovic, MP for Croatians living outside Croatia and it went like this:
“Dear colleagues, we live in the times of deep fake, fake news and mental coronavirus, and we have it here in Croatia as well. The crisis is not yet over, we have assessed the damage, and some are already calling for the collapse of the Croatian state and openly speak of hate against the Catholic Church. We are 80 percent Catholic and why are we tolerating that? That is a minority, which terrorises us. These moral typhus’s appear in the virtual world and on the web. We, for example, have some ‘centre for citizens’ courage’, what is that, is that one of the NGOs that receive 1.5 billion kunas from the government budget. Is that one of those? They are bothered by everything Catholic, they rejoice that the church in Palmoticeva Street has collapsed (in the earthquake), we have a journalist here too … some Bartolovic woman, I don’t see her here today, a hundred devils peek out of her, she receives money, calls upon the corona, the plague, to descend upon the Croatian state, I believe she writes for Serbian News, and perhaps receives some half a million kunas from the state budget.
Also, we have Rada Boric and she is bothered by some things. She says one doctor is worth more than 20 priests. Let’s talk about the data … where were these great civil rights defenders when I lay sick and wounded in Split hospital, when the corridors were full of the wounded and sisters, nuns, cared for them. No, they weren’t there, they were releasing wind in the Zagreb cafes, they did nothing. Community kitchens, thousands of meals – Caritas. Almost all care for the homeless – Catholic Church, charitable things were done by it, from Split to up here. That’s only a small drop in the sea of all that. Hospitals in America were built by the Catholic Church, all six hundred of them. I could talk about this all night. Let’s continue – Germany – the Catholic Church, the largest private employer in the country, half a million employed; they were sending money to us during the Homeland War. Croatian missionaries in Africa face danger every day, they are there in Tanzania, in Congo, every day death awaits them because they face the possibility of becoming victims of cannibalism. Where are those feminists, why don’t they go to North Africa, to Maghreb, and give talks there about sexual organ mutilation of women, about children there, but instead they sit here effusing brains to us; but that’s them and they are among us. There is no vaccine against them nor will there ever be. Let’s move on – Croatian Catholic Missions, who gathered Croatians living abroad into communities, preserved our collective identity, our collective memory, and sent millions upon millions of dollars to us during the war.
Now, these moral typhus’s, antifa hicks, are raising themselves on two feet secretly convening the downfall of the Croatian State. Don’t be fooled, they are here with us. They’re sitting here with us but they have disguised themselves and they’re only waiting for the Croatian State to fail while putting on an act of democrats and cosmopolitans…
When an end to all this will come I do not know, but would perhaps suggest, oh I forgot the universities – Oxford, Bologna, the oldest university in Europe – the Catholic Church – today people are waging war against civilisation and Croatia. I would perhaps suggest when they vacate other people’s apartments, which they took after half of Zagreb was murdered (after WWII) and live in them comfortably, they depend on Croats, we pay for their sinecures, their travels, for their children’s education abroad – they live well and they’ve created a second generation of emigrants. For them, the moral typhus’s, the Yugozombies, life is always good.
When the sun comes out, when this (coronavirus crisis) passes they will come out like rats from a lair, we could take a Canadian fire-fighting aircraft, holy water, holy salt, and perform mass exorcism. The smoke raised would reach the borders of Slovenia, like Hiroshima, we would see the mushroom all the way to the Austrian borders. That is perhaps one form of salvation for these people, we have no vaccine but we must understand and ask when someone says something, check on what is being said, there are many liars, it’s better to have a lie detector than a Kalashnikov and ask yourself who is saying things to you.
Some were baptised on a forklift and now carry the Crucifix and the medal of St Benedict around their necks. Caution! Event the devil can quote the Holy Scriptures.”
Then Goran Maras, MP for Social Democratic Party (former communists), raised an objection saying that Glasnovic had in his speech breached parliamentary Procedure Rules and “it’s hard for me that people in these hard times have to listen to such nonsense from Glasnovic. I’m sorry that you (The Speaker) are not reacting because he personally attacked Mrs Bartolovic, Mrs Rada Boric, a whole profession of journalists, our co-citizens who are at this time fighting against this plague and I think you should react. Hate speech should not be tolerated in the Croatian Parliament.”
Glasnovic’s reply: “There was no hate speech, the truth hurts, Mr Maras knows that, he is vaccinated against the truth and he confuses the people here, we know who here is the young Lenin.”
Speaker of Parliament: “Good. There was no breach of Procedure Rules.”
