nedjelja, 3. rujna 2017.

Independents For Croatia – Impress

Luke gives a summation of the preaching of St. John the Baptist with a rather surprising and funny conclusion.
Then John said to the crowds coming out to be baptized by him, “You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Therefore, produce fruit worthy of repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. The ax lies ready at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.” … As the people were in expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Christ, John answered them all, saying, “I baptize you with water, but he who is mightier than I is coming, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” So with many other exhortations he preached good news to the people (Luke 3:7-9; 15-18).
It is Luke’s calling this “good news” that many people today would find surprising. Summoning people to repentance, calling them a brood of vipers, warning them of blazing fires of judgment, and speaking of axes ready at the roots of trees does not strike many of us as “good news.”
Indeed, St. John the Baptist seems to have missed the evangelization seminars in which we are told to be cheerful and “welcoming,” and advised that honey attracts more than does vinegar. He never heard that we are supposed to be nice and steer clear of unpleasant topics like sin; no, doing that might upset or alienate people.
Perhaps I exaggerate—but just a little. Frankly, we live in thin-skinned times. St. John the Baptist broke all the modern rules about effective evangelization (and so did Jesus). But note that crowds were going out into the desert to listen to him, while we, despite all our “niceness,” are seeing our churches grow emptier. Merely inviting people to a “welcoming community” isn’t going to get us very far. The local bar, lodge, and bowling league are also “welcoming communities.” Some of them do a better job of welcoming than we do. What we are supposed to do is to summon people to repentance and announce the soul-saving message of Jesus, who through word and sacrament is the only one who can save us from this present evil age and from the day of judgment.
Rather than engage in a lengthy discussion about how best to evangelize in our times, let’s simply note that St. Luke describes St. John’s approach as preaching the “good news.” Here are two brief observations about his description:
If you don’t know the bad news, the good news is no news. St. John lays out the bad news that sin has taken its toll and that we stand in desperate need of conversion, because a day of reckoning is coming for all sinners. However, he lays the foundation for the good news to shine forth even more brightly and with a sense of joy and relief. The good news is that the Messiah is coming who will baptize (wash) us with the Holy Spirit and purifying fire. Praise God! In effect St John says, “There is a doctor is the house and His name is Jesus. He has the power and will to save us; if we will give our lives over to Him, He can get us ready for the great judgment and lead us to God in righteousness. St. John the Baptist’s message is balanced; it supplies the bad or painful news that sets the stage for the good news to be really good!
Much of this eludes us (clergy and laity alike) in the modern Church; we seem afraid to lay out what ails people and to show that the cure is exciting and joyful news. Why bother taking the medicine of repentance, prayer and sacraments, if there is no proclaimed sense that I need them? We fail to make the case that sin is a false and unsatisfying lie; we allow others to live on in their denial. Evangelical efforts flounder because if we don’t know the bad news, the good news is no news.
The term “good news” (or gospel) used by St. Luke needs to be understood. For us today the term “gospel” needs to rescued from incomplete notions. The Greek word at the root of this phrase is Evangelion. As Pope Benedict XVI points out in his scriptural commentary Jesus of Nazareth, “good news” is an incomplete understanding of this Greek word. Evangelion, originally referred to proclamations of the emperor; the main point was not that they were necessarily good news, but that the utterances of the emperor were life-changing. Maybe he was going to pave a road, call for a census, or summon the people to war; but when the emperor issued a proclamation your life was going to change in some way. The news wasn’t always positive, but it was good to know what was going on.
This historical insight is important because when interpret the term “gospel” as simply meaning “good news,” it is easy to think of the gospel as only saying happy, pleasant things. Too easily the work of evangelization (proclaiming the gospel) is reduced to wearing a yellow smiley-face button or a name tag that says “All are welcome.”
What makes the gospel the gospel is that it is a life-changing message with plenary authority, not merely that it is pleasant or happy. Translating “gospel” (evangelion) as merely “good news” misses the main point. It is only good news if it can rescue us from the mess we’re in and can bring us out of darkness and confusion into light and truth.
That is what St. John the Baptist is doing here. He sets forth the gospel, a word of plenary authority that both gives the diagnosis and announces the cure: be baptized into Christ Jesus and allow Him to have authority in your life. Not everything St. John says is happy, pleasant, or affirming, but the Holy Spirit, writing through St. Luke, says of St. John: with many other exhortations he preached good news to the people.
 We have a lot to learn from Luke’s brief description of true evangelization.
For a book-length treatment of the problem described here, I recommend reading The Old Evangelization, by Eric Sammons.


It’s often been said that if the law won’t do it, the people will! This goes particularly so with matters that dig painfully deep into national pride that comes with victory for independence and installing democracy. After a ten-year determined rallying battles organised by “Circle for City Square” (“Krug za trg”) association from Zagreb, whose main aim is to rid Croatia of all totalitarian regime symbolism in public places the ongoing focus on removing former communist Yugoslavia’s leader’s (Josip Broz Tito/Marshal Tito) name from the most beautiful Zagreb city square gained stronger than ever political impetus during the May 2017 local elections in Croatia, when an “Independents for Croatia” political party and movement (steered by Bruna Esih, Zlatko Hasanbegovic and Zeljko Glasnovic) made it their electoral promise, if the Bruna Esih list won seats for the Zagreb city assembly.
Having won seats at the local elections, Bruna Esih and Zlatko Hasanbegovic offered support to the beleaguered Zagreb mayor Milan Bandic, who needed partners in order to form a majority in Zagreb Assembly, on condition that the Josip Broz Tito square’s name be changed. The populist mayor was re-elected for a sixth term but he struggled to form a majority in the new city assembly. For several years, Bandic refused to change the square’s name and said the issue would be decided at a referendum.
At its long meeting through the night between 31st August and 1st September 2017 the Zagreb City Assembly voted to strip the name of late Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito from the prominent opera-house square in the city. An historic vote that has delighted multitudes even though opinions coming from the left wing politics continue to raise protests against the vote. One wouldn’t expect anything else from the die-hard communist-loving lot. Given that 29 deputies voted for, 20 against and 1 abstained from voting it is to be expected that a wielding of red axes will last for some time in the camp of the disgruntled communist lot, hence the political unrest and polarisation within Croatia is set to continue.
But the removal of “Marshal Tito” name from that city square is a mighty lever for the pursuit of lustration in Croatia regardless of divisions and polarisation.
That city square will now be called the Republic of Croatia Square. A symbolism in that new name to the city square carries the very potent trait of freedom from oppression, from communism, that Croatian Homeland War victoriously ushered in 1990’s, having defended and liberated Croatia from the brutal Serb and communist Yugoslav army forces’ aggression.
No street or square in Croatia should bear Josip Broz Tito’s name,” said Zlatko Hasanbegovic before the Zagreb assembly vote.
“ It’s a small and belated satisfaction to all victims … of Yugoslav communist Titoist terror”, Hasanbegovic said after the voting was done.
Without a doubt, with several hundreds of thousands of innocent people murdered under the communist regime in WWII and post-WWII times Josip Broz Tito rates as one of the worst criminals in Croatia's history and removing his name from the city square also serves as recognition that the era of communist Yugoslavia was a dark and oppressive age in Croatia's history. Piles of human bones mark more than 800 communist crimes mass graves in Croatia and Tito and his communist regime organised and oversaw the murders.
To underpin Tito’s legitimacy, Croatia’s communists who wrongfully call themselves antifascists fostered and foster an image of Marshal Tito and the Partisans as humane, heroic liberators of all of Yugoslavia's people from fascism and nationalism. But when one is confronted with the facts of communist crimes of mass murder, torture and oppression this painting of the communist regime makes the head spin with abhor. With the removal of Tito’s name from the Zagreb city square the political system that’s laden with former communist operatives will no longer be able to hide uninterrupted or justify the horrid truth behind the communist regime. Whether this will lead to a new political instability in Croatia is yet to be seen, but no objective reality-check in the circumstances of a relatively thriving communist mindset still present in Croatia would tell us that lustration will be an easy task to achieve, anyway. Cornering a dog always requires vigilant defences as the dog will attack and bite. And so it is of no wonder that the road to ridding Croatia of the communist mindset and exposing communist crimes has seen an increased labelling of it as neo-fascism or fascist moves.
The above labeling of any lustration attempts in Croatia (which still has not passed a lustration law that would have been a government obligation after Homeland War victory that ushered in democracy and rejected communism) would appear to evidence the fact that the procedural and legal-institutional issues occupy a marginal place in any “official” debate about lustration, and that main sources of discord are more ideological and political than legal. The two main strains within the lustration discourse could well be identified as:
(1) dystopian discourses that paint a frightful picture of a lustrated society and imply that the upheaval of lustration would ruin the chance for democratic evolution, and
(2) affirmative discourses that assert the need for lustration and portray the refusal to implement it as a barrier to successful transition to democracy.
The dystopian opposition to lustration is linked with the left-wing political affiliation or self-identification and the affirmative discourse with the right-wing orientation. The taking down of Josip Broz Tito from the Zagreb city square may serve as to open up a new era in Croatia where pursuits to lustration will take a formal and official shape and see all relevant communist Yugoslavia archives open and lustration law finally delivered by the parliament. Having in mind that the prevailing ideological and political resistance by the left to lustration is seeing increased pressure against the ruling centre-right HDZ/Croatian Democratic Union party as well as the centre-left SDP/Social Democratic Party opposition resulting in popularity polls plummet, as they’re both seen as resisting lustration, real progress towards actual lustration may indeed be on the horizon. It is of no wonder that with rather frequent changes of government Croatia has been in a serious and continuous political crisis for over three years in particular and this aura of political unrest yields itself to fresh political forces paving the ground for lustration. That fresh political force could well prove to be in the hands of the emerging “Independents for Croatia” party and political movement. A significant sway of voters to its side would be a prerequisite to success and as the past two decades have shown new political parties and movements are not news to Croatia. However, a new political movement that centres around completing the task Croatian people had set for themselves in 1991 referendum – to rid the country of communism – has the silver lining required to finally bring Croatia out of its dark communist age. Ina Vukic

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