It is often said that Nikol-aligned propaganda insults the intelligence of normal people. Recently, Archbishop Mikayel Ajapahyan said something along those lines as well. There is real depth to that observation. At times, one almost feels embarrassed to respond to statements made by pro-government and government-adjacent propagandists, because doing so might suggest that you take such absurdities seriously.
It is inconceivable that any Armenian clergyman—let alone someone who has graduated from a seminary—would not know what Orthodoxy (orthodoxia) is, or that the term “orthodox” is traditionally applied to Christians. In the case of Civil Contract members (ՔՊ), such ignorance may be expected; many of them belong to that segment of their generation which, unfortunately, has read little beyond social-media headlines. But clergy—from deacons upward, I repeat—are well aware of these matters. It is simply that, for certain bishops, the fact of serving Pashinyan has switched off not only the “button” of conscience, but also that of intellect and knowledge; hence, they see “Russian subjugation” in calling the Armenian Apostolic Church “orthodox.”
Yet this is not the height of absurdity. According to the same propaganda aimed at well-washed brains, the Catholicos’s brother is a “KGB agent”—that is, an operative of an organization that has not existed for 34 years. (If you are so brave, say it plainly: the Federal Security Service.) The Catholicos himself is allegedly serving the interests of a “foreigner”—which “foreigner”? The same one with whom Pashinyan boasts of having “direct and warm” relations? What, then, prevents that “direct and warm” friend from saying that your enemy, the Catholicos, is serving his interests—and from asking that all this be put to an end?
But even that is not the climax. Recently, it has “emerged” that the sermons of certain—apparently non-Nikol-aligned—priests resemble the ideology of Islamic fundamentalism. In that case, a simple clarification is in order. Those who think so should cite, in the comments, not only from contemporary times but from any point over the past 1,725 years, a single text by any Armenian clergyman that even remotely resembles the preaching of extremist Islamists.
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If defending the rights of the people of Artsakh is fundamentalism, then the greatest fundamentalist is the one who once shouted, “Artsakh is Armenia: that’s it.”
Aram ABRAHAMYAN
