At a time when Armenia is facing an existential threat, one would expect Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s foremost priority to be defending the interests of the country. Regrettably, however, he is preoccupied with clergy celibacy—a matter outside the government’s purview and a violation of Armenia’s constitution, which mandates separation of church and state.
I believe that Pashinyan is raising the clergy celibacy issue for self-serving reasons.
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Just copy and paste the German word “Gleichschaltung” in the search engine, and you will discover the meaning of this word. This is what Pashinyan dreams of and attempts to do in Armenia. He doesn’t have the power to implement this, but he sure is trying every way to achieve this. Two of Armenia’s neighbors (Iran and Azerbaijan) have implemented this with full force, and its two other neighbors (Georgia, which has begun this, and Turkey, which is close to completing this) are in the process of doing so. This can happen in Armenia, if Pashinyan stays in power, amasses more power and usurps all the checks and balances of the state’s institutions. Pashinyan’s agenda against the Armenian Apostolic Church and his desire to control it, is just one example of this.
I don’t think Pashinyan’s attack on Catholicos has anything to do with clergy celibacy at all. It just makes no sense. There are so many problems the country is facing and so many urgent issues to deal with that this attack on the church has got to be a manufactured one. This is an excuse and a cover for something else and that is to silence the Catholicos over the issue of Artsakh. Pashinyan has attacked just about every institution in the country and the church is the last stand and the church leadership is his last target for raising the question of Artsakh and its ethnically-cleansed population internationally. He wants control over that too. He has long washed his hands off Artsakh and considers this a non-issue and a closed case. What is left for him to do, per enemy demand, is to dissolve the Minsk group to put the last nail on Artsakh’s coffin to get the enemy to sign that fraudulent “peace treaty” which has no third-party enforcement and guarantee and the firm stand taken on this issue by the Catholicos, hence by the Armenian Apostolic Church, he considers an obstacle in achieving the signing of that fraudulent document to use as trophy to take to his former followers to cheat them, for the third time, to get reelected as prime minister to secure his seat in order to save himself from being held criminally liable for all his destructive unpatriotic and traitorous activities. If he thinks he has any say in church affairs, which he does not, well we have both Catholic and Protestant Armenians as well, so when was the last time he raised any issues with the Catholic Pope, for example, for various controversies that the Catholic Church has faced over the years? I’m guessing never!