RESOLUTIONS
Of the Diocesan Assembly of the Serbian Orthodox Diocese
of Eastern America Monroeville, PA February 29-March 1, 2008
The clergy and congregational presidents and delegates of the
Serbian Orthodox Diocese of Eastern America meeting at St. Nicholas
Serbian Orthodox Church in Monroeville, Pennsylvania under the
omophor and archpastoral oversight of His Grace Bishop Dr. MITROPHAN,
bring forth the following Greetings and Resolutions:
1. We greet
and ask the blessing of His Holiness Serbian Patriarch PAVLE
and all
the hierarchs of the Serbian Orthodox Church, who “rightly
divide the word of truth” of Holy Orthodoxy, and who pastor
the flock of Serbian Orthodox Christians throughout the world.
We especially pray for the health His Holiness the Patriarch,
that God will grant him healing, strength, and health for many
years. Eis polla eti, Despota!
2. We welcome the promulgation of the new constitution for the
Serbian Orthodox Church in North and South America, which paves
the way for the final administrative reunification of the Serbian
Orthodox Church and the total healing of the tragic disunity
which began hampering our common work and witness 45 years ago.
We pray for and express our complete readiness for this total
God-pleasing unity in all respects and aspects of Church life.
3. We greet and express our unity in Christ with all our brothers
and sisters, Orthodox Christians both here in America and throughout
the world. May we all rededicate ourselves and each other continuously
to our Lord Jesus Christ as found in His Orthodox Faith and Church,
and may we all be worthy of our high calling as we seek to bring
this faith to the whole world. To this end we welcome concrete
signs of this unity of faith and work, such as the Standing Conference
of Canonical Orthodox Bishops in the Americas and its activities
such as International Orthodox Christian Charities, the Orthodox
Christian Mission Center, the Orthodox Christian Fellowship for
college students, and the Orthodox Christian Education Commission,
and pledge our cooperation and support to them. May we all grow
together in faith and love and spiritual understanding through
our common worship, our common Eucharist, and our common Christian
ethos, which transcends every worldly division.
4. We declare
with all our souls and minds that, as Serbian Orthodox Christians,
our Kosovo and Metohija has always been—and
is especially now—most dear to us as the soul and heart
of all Serbs. With one voice we vehemently condemn the February
17, 2008 unilateral and illegal declaration of “independence” by
the Albanian-dominated parliament of the Serbian province of
Kosovo and Metohija. To our shame as Americans, this action,
in contravention of United Nations Security Council Resolution
1244, the United Nations Charter, the Helsinki Final Act, and
all norms of international law, was taken with the tacit approval
and at the de facto instigation of the United States government,
which quickly led a number of nations in recognizing this illegal
government as a new sovereign state.
Serbia’s intervention to put down the armed insurrection
of Albanians in its Kosovo province has been used by the United
States and other major western nations to justify NATO’s
U.S.-led aggression of bombing Serbia for 78 days in 1999, and
now to justify their recognition of this illegal “independence.”
Yet it has been evident for decades that Albanians in Kosovo
have been bent on creating an ethnically pure Albanian state
and eradicating all trace of Serbian history and culture in the
very cradle of Serbian religious and cultural identity. As is
becoming more and more evident, these actions by the Albanians
of Kosovo have enjoyed support from outside powers, including
the United States, which emboldened them to undertake an armed
insurrection, creating a dangerous situation in the province
to which the Serbian army responded, as would the army of any
country in the world in such a situation. It was and is totally
wrong to impute any motive except the restoring of law and order
to its province to this response of the Serbian army.
The United States and certain western European governments,
choosing to call these measures taken by the Serbs ethnic cleansing,
and their hysterical repetition of these patently false, one-sided
and prejudicial charges in attempting to justify their bombing
of Serbia in 1999 and their present recognition of the phony
state of Kosovo does not make these charges true. These actions
of the United States, on the contrary, make the repeated statements
of high U.S. government officials that they remember with respect
that Serbia was allied with the U.S. in two World Wars, and that
they want good relations with Serbia, ring hollow and ironic.
States do not treat allies as the United States has treated Serbia.
They do not make entrance into the European community contingent
upon renunciation of national sovereignty, national history,
and national interests. It is a shame and a tragedy that the
United States has taken its one consistent ally in the Balkans,
a people which has consistently felt a close affinity with the
American people and its values, and has demonized them and destroyed
them.
The bombing
of Serbia, the forced withdrawal of Serbian forces from Kosovo,
and the
placing of Kosovo under an international
protectorate have all been used by the Albanians to advance their
plans for an ethnically pure Kosovo through terror. Thousands
upon thousands of Serbs and also other ethnicities have been
forced to abandon their ancestral homes for exile, while many
others have been killed or kidnapped and presumed dead. Those
remaining have been forced into ethnic ghettos guarded by KFor
for their own safety against the ongoing enmity of their Albanian
neighbors, without prospects for meaningful employment, education,
medical care, freedom of travel, or future improvement. 150 Serbian
Orthodox churches, monasteries, cemeteries and cultural monuments,
including some medieval masterpieces of art and architecture,
and whole Serbian villages, have been destroyed in the past dozen
years. It must be emphasized that fully a third of this wanton
destruction was carried out by Albanians since 1999—that
is, as U.N, U.S. and NATO forces were present but too often looked
the other way. We lament this fact, and the fact that our news
media has neglected to cover these destructions and atrocities.
We reject
the remarks of the United States Secretary of State to the
effect that
Serbs need to “get over” what
Kosovo has always been and continues to be for the Serbs and
accept the new reality imposed by U.S. and NATO force of arms.
We lament and refuse to accept that the United States and some
Western European countries consistently ignore and discount the
thousand year history of Kosovo as being not only in Serbia,
but being the very heart and soul of the Serbian people, the
birthplace of the Serbian nation, looking only at the last few
decades and emphasizing and over-emphasizing the Albanian majority
in that part of Serbia. By doing this they have sanctioned the
ethnic cleansing of Serbian Orthodox Christians from Kosovo and
Metohija that took place during Tito’s communist regime,
and which has continued as the world apathetically looked on.
This Muslim Albanian ethnic cleansing of Serbian Orthodox Christians
from Kosovo and Metohija has played a major role in achieving
their disproportionate majority in the area. We lament and condemn
this approval of the expulsion of Serbs from their ancestral
homes and lands in Kosovo and Metohija, as well as the terrible
expulsion of Serbs from Serbian Krajina (Croatia) with the help
of the United States government.
In the face
of this long history, the Serbian people have no reason to
believe,
as the western powers repeatedly claim, that
the former leaders of the KLA, now transformed into the government
of the new “independent” Kosovo, are now committed
to the protection of human rights and elemental freedoms for
their non-Albanian residents. We remind the United States that
its Albanian clients in Kosovo, far from expressing peaceful
intent, blackmailed the U.S. and NATO with the threat of violence
against their own allies if they did not receive independence.
We can see only the tragedy and outrage of terrorism rewarded
as Kosovo is forcibly wrenched from its rightful place in Serbia
and a new Islamic state is installed in Europe, in the holiest
of places for the Christian Serbian people.
Therefore, we join Serbs and people of good will everywhere
in rejecting this bogus independence of the Serbian province
of Kosovo. We express our solidarity with His Grace Bishop Artemije
of Raska and Prizren, his clergy, monastics, and his faithful
flock, and all the embattled Serbs of Kosovo, whose presence
reminds the world that Kosovo is Serbian, and who maintain and
guard our greatest national shrines, including the Patriarchate
of Pec, Gracanica, and Visoki Decani. We pledge ourselves to
support them morally, spiritually, and materially as they represent
us all in this Serbian Holy Land. We also commend and thank those
nations and organizations which have refused to recognize this
illegal declaration of independence. Finally, we call upon the
United States and other architects of Kosovo independence to
abandon this failed and illegitimate policy and return to the
tried and tested norms of international law. With one voice and
heart we join Serbs everywhere in proclaiming: Kosovo is, and
will always be, Serbia!
5. We note with alarm recent attempts by certain international
players to modify the Dayton accords to restrict the rights of
Republika Srpska within Bosnia-Hercegovina, and we support Republika
Srpska in its struggle to maintain its prerogatives in accord
with international agreements.
6. We greet
with joy the decision of our hierarchs that the 2009 National
Church
Assembly–Sabor of the Serbian Orthodox
Church in North and South America will be held in our Eastern
American Diocese, at St. George Church in Canton, Ohio. This
will be the first Sabor held in our diocese, and we pledge to
do everything possible to make it a productive and fruitful one.
7. Finally, we thank our hosts of St. Nicholas Church in Monroeville,
PA for their exemplary hospitality to all of us at this Diocesan
Assembly.
