Member of Parliament Dalija Orešković commented on the showing of Thompson’s concert on HRT.
“If we praise the Church for the religious education of the Croats, the Church will justify itself that there is nothing wrong with showing the recording of the Hippodrome concert, even though there were more prayers than at Sunday Masses. The Church will say, HRT is state television, not chapter television, and Corpus Christi is also a national holiday. Then whose greeting is Za dom spremni?
From tonight, both state and religious. I’m not saying it’s Christian, somehow Christ doesn’t go with fascism to me, but religious in the sense of beliefs that are woven into the iconography and lyrics of the songs. Not all of us can find ourselves in these beliefs,” she wrote on Facebook.
The announcement also states the following:
“Za dom spremni plowed through the Hippodrome, then in the assembly hall, if he could on HRT, why shouldn’t we greet each other in the same way in the Church? Praise be to Jesus and Mary, Msgr. Dražen Kutleša, Za dom spremni! You are going on a trip to the Vatican, by plane you say?
May God protect you from patriotic kidnappers and bombs planted for someone’s national interests. Ask the Pope when you talk to him, what about empathy for a woman whose husband was killed at work, what about children who were left without a father. What about basic human decency?
Thompson will always have his audience. And it’s a shame, actually, that in what happens at his concerts, we can’t talk in a different context, highlight what could be beautiful and good.
But what the state, with the blessing of the Church, presented tonight as its choice for a religious and state holiday, is a clear political message from both the government and the Church that stands with such government, but it is not us.
I hope that at least someone from the Church will say: don’t be such believers. Don’t be like that Croats either. Wearing a t-shirt with the jail number of a hijacker on an international flight cannot but be controversial, just as it cannot but be controversial to shout the salute Ready for home.
Tonight, not only did the state and the Church fail in what they should be, but the attitudes of their ruling and governing structures came out of the closet.”
