The Julian and Gregorian calendars have Pascha 5 weeks apart this year.
When will we get a common date for Easter?

Side-by-side Easter calendar reference for the 21st century

http://5ko.free.fr/en/easter.php

Thank you for the link.

I had forgotten that, after next year's blessed alignment of the Feast of feasts, Christendom must wait another eight years.

For many who celebrate next year, their next universal Pascha will be in Christ's Eternal Kingdom.

We will get a common date for Easter when the West simply returns to the way of calculating it that was prevalent throught the once united Orthodox Catholic Church of Christ.

It was the West that introduced this innovation, not the East. The East cannot be faulted for maintaining the ancient tradition. Time for the West to "come home" in this regard.

The theory of celebrating Easter on the unmoveable date of the second Sunday in April each year will never be acceptable to all parties, even to many in the West.

Why does the West have this mentality that any return to the real tradition of the Church is a form of "giving in" to the East and a tacit admission that it was "wrong?"

The West likes to experiment with things, like the various Unias (which the Balamand statement has repudiated) and liturgical traditions (which did not result in bringing Protestants any closer to Rome - the only Protestants seeking reconciliation with Rome are High-Church ones who maintain the rites of the pre-Vatican II era).

Rome needs a bit of a shake-up in this regard and, until then, should stop spewing ecumenical niceties that amount to ... nothing.

Alex

I don't think a common date will occur anytime soon. Neither East nor West has any serious interest in a common witness of the Resurrection.

My vote is to follow the traditional Eastern Christian method of calculating Pascha with one modification - that is to use the actual date of the astronomical equinox rather than the Julian-calculated equinox that is currently 13 days after the one we see in the sky. But I fully realize that neither East nor West is going to be open to compromise anytime soon.

Pope Francis seems to be interested in a common date.
Isn't the equinox March 20/April 2?

April 27? Surely not! Not on anyone's calendar!

Unfortunately when an institution makes innovations and changes going back on them is like admitting they made a mistake which is something Rome will never do!

Don't forget the Finnsh and Estonian Orthodox Churches, http://www.johnsanidopoulos.com/2013/06/the-date-of-orthodox-easter-in-finland.html

What would happen if Rome simply went back to the Orthodox date of Easter as it has previously observed for many centuries?

Why is Rome's perspective on returning to the "early Church" etc. positive thing for it, whereas returning to the once shared tradition with the East viewed as a form of "giving in" to the Orthodox?

Why the double standard?

Alex

As extensive past posts in calendar threads on this forum have indicated this is not accurate.

First it should not be a case of East vs. West but right vs. wrong, correct vs. incorrect, fact vs. fiction.

It is generally accepted that the Council of Nicaea gave a prescription for reckoning Pascha/Easter. By the 16th century the calendar used to accomplish that prescription was 10-11 days in error (it is currently ~13 days in error). The error is in the timing of the vernal equinox (northern hemisphere) which the Council of Nicaea (again, as accepted, though not codified in its extant official decrees but from related documents) wanted to be on March 21 which is when it occurred at the time of the Council. Pope Gregory XIII introduced the Gregorian Reform of the Calendar on February 24, 1582. The Bull containing this reform, Inter Gravissimas, is explicit in noting the corrections are to restore the determination of Easter to the desires of the Council of Nicaea:
An old calendar was (and still is) wrong, like a watch that does not keep correct time, and this in a crucial element for following the prescription of the Council of Nicaea. Those who would follow that calendar (the Julian and its Paschalion) more often than not fail to celebrate Pascha according to the rule of Nicaea. The lunar cycle of the Julian and its Paschalion is so out of wack from reality (the actual cycle of the moon) that it is an embarrassment as an astronomical determination; the solar calculation is off 13 days and growing ~1 day more in error every ~120 years (In A.D. 325 it was already 4 days in error from Caesar's original date of March 25 for the vernal equinox, which is why the Council gave March 21 as the date.)

Please, those who pronounce on the calendars, don't assume with the usual characteristic smugness the superiority of the Julian calendar and its Pashcalion because it must be since it's traditional and "Orthodox," and of course the Roman West must be wrong. Here, Rome, the West, the Pope, got it right. The world knows -- acknowledges-- this implicitly. The Gregorian calendar is the present international standard; it is a great accomplishment for what a calendar is supposed to do. It is not an innovation but a much needed correction. The fault if any should be on those who "come home" most years to a Pascha that is at odds with the sun and the moon and the Council of Nicaea and then simply insist that's the way it must be.

Dear ajk,

Actually, the smugness you mention here is rather your own perception. The point under discussion is something of another kind.

The point is raised, by the initiator of this thread, that the two Paschas this year are five weeks apart and so he puts the question bluntly: When will we have a common Pascha?

Your point about the Gregorian calendar being "correct" begs the question, "Correct in what exact way?" In fact, we had a thread year some time ago where a scientific community - astronomers, I think, but I could be wrong - do in fact use the Julian calendar for purposes of calculation etc.

At the same time, even when we see the Gregorian calendar to be correct, that doesn't resolve the issue of the anomalies to the Christian liturgical year that the Gregorian calendar has introduced (about which Fr. Keleher wrote extensively).

Be that as it may, even Rome is not married to its date for Pascha as we see in the proposals being put forth regarding a fixed date for Pascha.

So even Rome is ready to abandon how it calculates Easter for the sake of unity.

In that case, why could not Rome simply adopt the Eastern Pascha (when so many Eastern Churches are already on the Gregorian calendar)?

From Rome's standpoint whether Pascha is in the second week of April each year or in accordance with Orthodox Pascha - it doesn't appear to matter to it.

It DOES matter to the Orthodox East, whether the Churches in question are on the Julian or "Reformed Julian" calendars.

It matters so much that the East will not countenance any discussion of the matter and believes it was mandated by Ecumenical Council etc. And the West did follow the same Pascha until the Gregorian reform.

So there is no question of "smugness" but of determining a way to come to unity quickly and practically.

You are quick to attach the label of "characteristic smugness" to the East, but you overlook completely what could also be termed "Roman arrogance" with respect to a number of dogmas it introduced that have no real grounding in the first 1000 years of the one Christian Church's existence - especially Roman papal triumphalism.

The Orthodox East doesn't like change. From the standpoint of traditionalism - which many would argue is a good standard for judging matters of faith and morals - change should only be introduced very carely, after due consideration, and always by mutual, conciliar agreement rather than the top-down papal pronouncement that accompanied, for example, the calendar change.

So my point is simply this - Rome doesn't seem to care, the East does care, so let's go with the East and be done with it.

I don't believe I ever said Rome was wrong. What I did say is that Rome-Orthodox relations have tended to be a tug of war to satisfy either side that it is right and the other was wrong. That is not good ecumenism and it is not good Christianity.

Alex

I could vote for that too.

The "traditional Eastern Christian method" is also the traditional Western Christian method, that is, the directives attributed to the Council of Nicaea I, and explained as applied under ecclesiastical rules quite nicely by The United States Naval Observatory (USNO) [aa.usno.navy.mil]. Using the astronomical equinox is essentially the Aleppo Statement [oikoumene.org] produced by the WCC with significant Orthodox participation (and not Catholic). It is a move in the right direction and I'm confident it would be supported by the Catholic Church as the USCCB's Common Response to the Aleppo Statement on the Date of Easter/Pascha [usccb.org] indicates.

Looking at the Table for finding Easter/Pascha dates [oikoumene.org] attached to the Aleppo Statement, however, indicates that the Gregorian Paschalion is already doing the job as well as Nicaea would have expected.

If you can convince the Orthodox East to agree - I would be all for it too!

But as some would say, "rotsa ruck!"

(And don't you BCC'ers already follow the Gregorian Calendar and Western calculation for Easter? Fr. Deacon and the Administrator here really do have a conflict of interest in discussing all this! ).

Alex

It's both some of the Orthodox and Catholic East that need convincing. There's no convincing those who aren't open to the truth. The data is there, the conclusion is obvious, the Orthodox who worked on and ascribed to Aleppo are convinced. So what's the problem?

The problem is inconsistency in acknowledging Nicaea's rule and a 2000 year effort by both East and West to follow it and then the solution that the West must accommodate the East by determining the date of Easter by a method that is inferior and in serious error relative to the prescription of the Council of Nicaea I. The error is that the Julian calendar and its Paschalion are inaccurate to such an obvious and objective extent that it puts Easter at a time (more often than not) that goes against the Council of Nicaea. The sun and the moon are witness to this.


Hardly a conflict of interest since the practice of the BCC has not entered the argument which has centered on the facts. Practicing what is true and certain against what is false cannot be a conflict of interest. My argument and the data, historical and scientific, is against the present day validity of the Julian calendar and its Paschalion. There are several valid solutions. The Gregorian calendar and its Paschalion are one of the valid solutions.

Brother Deacon Anthony,

While it is true that the Fathers of I Nicaea did call for precise astronomical calculations to determine the date of Pascha, let us not forget that their very first concern was that all Churches should be celebrating Pascha on the same day.

Furthermore, it is my understanding that the Fathers of I Nicaea actually agreed to have every local Church communicate with the Alexandrian school of astronomy to get the date for Pascha each year, and that this solution simply didn't work in practice. Then (some 70 years after the Council), the astronomers of Alexandria took the initiative to produce a simple formula that could be used by anyone with a basic knowledge of arithmetic to calculate the date of Pascha each year, and it was only after this that the initial and most fundamental mandate of I Nicaea regarding the date of Pascha--namely, that all Churches should be celebrating Pascha on the same day--began to be realized.

From this perspective, then, the Orthodox position on this issue doesn't seem so ludicrous after all.


Peace,
Deacon Richard

Not that I care one way or another, but I can live with either dating scheme. I wonder if the Julian calendar will eventually put Easter in September, if it gets more off and inaccurate. LOL.

Eventually, it will lap (Gregorian) Christmas . . . and eventually, will produce astronomical/calendar years in which there are no, or two, Easters . . .

As for me, I'd dump the tables entirely, and go back the pure astronomical calculations.

hawk

It seems the ancient Egyptians ran into a similar problem. After the passage of enough time, the "wet" months were dry, and the "dry" months were wet. The errors in their calendar had compounded over time and everything was off.

Deacon Richard,

Indeed, the prescription of I Nicaea was mandated to achieve unity in the celebration of Pascha. Those who acknowledge the authority of that mandate should study it, apply it and then follow it. When the best application was the Alexandrian paschalion it was properly followed. When it became apparent that there were problems with its accuracy, errors that were and would be ever increasing, it needed correction.

For the sake of the unity that I Nicaea desired it does not make sense to me to abandon the very rule that I Nicaea put in place to achieve that unity. Both are presently achievable. Why settle for less?

Some may say that it's just a man-made rule, and that is true, but it achieves in a symbolic way the sense of every generation of Christians participating as though today -- the liturgical hodie of the Latin west and the σήμερον (sēmeron) of the Greek East -- by observing the same sequence of celestial events -- vernal equinox, full moon, Sunday -- as at the time of the resurrection. I think this solution of the Council Fathers was quite brilliant and a precious gift to the Church that should not be abandoned or diminished by knowingly inaccurate application. The Aleppo document (see link in previous post) explains it well, in particular (ii):



Deacon Anthony

Knowing what I Nicaea mandated why would a scheme that moved Easter away from the mandated time be ok?

There are no "pure astronomical calculations" to "go back" to.

Implicit in I Nicaea's formula is an understanding that some suitable approximate, idealized scheme would be achieved and not necessarily a yearly exact astronomical calculation. All places on earth cannot simultaneously follow the mandate AND observe Pascha on the same day or, if following a calendar, date.

The Aleppo conference suggested, quite reasonably, Jerusalem and its meridian for making the determination. The Sunday so determined would then be observed throughout the world at the time when that Sunday occurred.

One thing not disputed is the day of the week in the 7 day cycle. A calendar is not need to adhere to the Council's mandate in the essential factors (a calendar is required to have the equinox on March 21). So for whatever meridian is chosen one observes the vernal equinox (by some acceptable though not inherent definition), the full moon, and then the following Sunday. Anyone can then mark that next Sunday on whatever calendar they want and all celebrate Pascha on the same day (to within a day which is all that can be expected) but not necessarily the same date.

The practical solution before computers and virtually instantaneous communication was to go from a calendar with associated tables to a predicted date. Both the Jullian and Gregorian calendars with their associated tables do this.

So, if you go from calculation to calendar there is no problem or discrepancy. If you have a dysfunctional calendar, like the Jullian, you find that the calculated date doesn't always accord with what the calendar predicts for the vernal equinox.

The members of the council were far more knowledgeable on matters of doctrine than science. To what degree did they even know the Julian calendar was inaccurate? Probably not much. At that time, the known world was considerably smaller. It may have been an easier task to celebrate on the same day. They couldn't even conceive that the world was larger than what they knew. I suspect they didn't know so much about time zones, either. In short, their knowledge was limited.

These are part of the reasons I find the whole calendar debate absurd, even though some are willing to go to war over it. Add to that, no one knows accurately when the resurrection actually occurred on any calendar, ancient or modern. It's all arbitrary.

You give the ancients too little credit, at least where astronomy/astrology is concerned in terms of what was desired for a calendar. Nicaea I knew the equinox had moved from Caesar's date of 25 March to 21 March which is the date they gave, correctly, for the equinox. They knew enough and got the formula correct.

Actually it was difficult and took a while to reach anything resembling unanimity.

They knew they were still learning as should we.

No war, just reason and the ability to read the words. It's not arbitrary if you want to follow the Council. You are fixated, tainted, by a newspaper account, chronological view of what the Church has accomplished in what you term "absurd." Read the excerpts from Aleppo that I quoted explicitly. Is that explanation "absurd"? Read the prescription of I Nicaea the way you read the Gospels and NOT, as I trust you do not demand of the Gospels, in which "no one knows accurately" either, in the manner you demand.

Exact chronology occurred at the time of the resurrection and the Church NEVER aims for such as the necessary goal as when the Church sings in its liturgy "today."

Read and learn. Suppose we knew the exact date of the resurrection as you say and we agree it occurred on a known date of some agreed upon calendar. That may seem perfect to some but then we'd be celebrating Pascha on that perfectly known date on all the days of the week, not just Sunday, as the Church demanded. The issue is vexing but not absurd.

Astronomy/astrology? They knew astrology much better than astronomy and didn't have satellites, telescopes, and other devices to accurately make measurements. Let's say they did well with the limited knowledge they had.

Unanimity? Not likely to happen at anytime on this earth. Since the east/west split, even more unlikely.

Learning? Yes, and I hope that never stops.

Absurd? Perhaps, especially since we don't have accurate transcripts from the council. Most of that was lost over time.

Gospels and Easter date? Not the same order of being. Gospels are divine revelation, Easter is a contrived, and arbitrary calendar date.

Exact date of resurrection? There would still be disagreement because east and west prefer to argue rather than cooperate.

Vexing? Yes, but as I mentioned above, some would go to war over those calendar dates. Not worth it by any means, and a distraction from the real job of the church, evangelization and the saving of souls.

Quite well. As a scientist myself I'm impressed with much of what was accomplished and known. You don't have to be a rocket scientist, though, to appreciate what the directive of I Nicaea accomplished. And of course in the 16th c. the Church produces a calendar, "The Gregorian Calendar" that, according to The United States Naval Observatory, "is the standard international calendar for civil use."

I have greater hopes. The facts are there and reason has prevailed on numerous occasions. It is fear of further offending the obstinate children in the rift that keeps many back from advancing with what they know to be valid and proper. At the worse extreme, the Julian calendar has been made by them into their golden calf.

A good start is the Aleppo document. Did you read it? What did you think of the excerpts I posted?

I invite you to rethink saying it's "absurd." What the Council presumably wanted as stated numerous times is NOT, I repeat NOT disputed. We, east and west, have the words and agree. The problem is in the application.

I did not suggest equating the Gospels and the determination of Easter. I did suggested you read the prescription of Nicaea I as its proper genre just as you would or should read the Gospels according to their unique genre.


So I guess you didn't read the Aleppo statement or the specific portions I quoted.

Don't be such a pessimist.

If we, the Church, with God's grace and the Holy Spirit can evangelize and save souls, then we can settle on the observance of the feast of feasts -- ἄξιον, it is worthy.

I read the Aleppo document. It is another committee report by the WCC which has a gift for producing quantities of paper equal to anything from Washington. However, there would be nothing wrong with a common date for Easter and I am not against it.

I am not sure to what degree the Latins are involved, but this is not a hill I would think they would die on. Yes, unity, separation, and divided, all the buzz words we hear from every liberal organization. Many, however, have significant doctrinal issues with the WCC. the word "unity" when used by left-leaning organizations means simply, "stop being so rigid and obsessed with doctrine and go along with us." Some wouldn't buy that dog. A common date for Easter would not bridge those differences and create any meaningful "unity."

Perhaps a common date could be a possibility, although with the current state of the world, both east and west have more important things to worry about - like radical Islam, and survival in a world that considers Christianity increasingly irrelevant.

I have told you and will tell you again: The Gregorian calendar properly quantifies the tropical year as a good calendar should; it keeps the seasons and related astronomical events, like the equinoxes and solstices, fixed. Why do you think the Gregorian calendar is the standard international calendar and the Julian is not?

Not a fact at all; you are quite wrong. Astronomers use the Julian date/day NOT the Julian calendar.

There are no such anomalies. Fr. Serge (of blessed memory) was quite wrong in his appraisal.

Two points.

1) The signators indicates extensive Orthodox participation.

2) Go beyond the preconceived bureaucratic stereotype to what was actually written. I think it's good stuff: good theology and good science. For example (repeating):

To be clear, am referring to the edicts of Nicea, not the bases the Council Fathers used to reach them.

hawk

There was extensive consultation over the course of an extensive time, 12 centuries of deliberation. There is evidence that even the (miaphysite) patriarch Na'amat Allah of the Syrian Orthodox Church of Antioch was a consultant for the Gregorian reform; see the post Common Easter date? (thread running 02/14/09-04/28/09) and the post that follows it.

I don't understand what you're saying here but would like to; please explain in more detail if possible.

I know such a solution has been floated by several sources but what is the source(s) for labeling it Rome's "standpoint."

I believe anyone favoring a fixed Sunday (in April usually) is either poorly informed or is willingly and knowingly abandoning the prescription of Nicaea I. They're just being practical we're told. This would make the rejection of I Nicaea's prescription complete in fact since the Julian calendar/paschalion, though purporting to follow the prescription, does not.

Practical people, some in high places, can do some dumb things like proposing a solution that does not eliminate -- actually encapsulates -- the point of contention: Let's all agree on the second Sunday of April.

OK, on what calendar?

I think we are all talking past each other. Yes, I know the formula Nicea used for its calculations. We could all agree to celebrate based on that formula but we don't. However, the Vernal Equinox does not occur on March 21 for all time as the council believed. In 2016 it will be March 20, but will be March 19 in Wichita, KS. It varies and the calendar reforms have made the range of difference greater in some years, less in others.

Nicea certainly could calculate a date, and I believe did so at the request of the emperor who wanted a common date for all in the empire to celebrate Easter. Well and good, in theory.

A couple of problems with that. The birth, death, and resurrection of Christ were not noteworthy events in the empire of the day and were likely not even noticed except by those close to Him. The empire at large would not have been aware of those events. Even Nicea had no clue as to when, for example, the resurrection actually occurred. In their defense, it is fact that the calculation of Easter is a matter of church discipline, not astronomical science. If we had evidence of when those events actually happened, perhaps we could all celebrate them on the next nearest Sunday. But we don't know and neither did Nicea. The council's formula was contrived and made up, as is every other theory of when Christ rose from the dead. The dispute rages and will continue, I suspect.

Now for something of significance. The National Confectioners Association has determined that October 28th is National Chocolate Day. However, and heresy is ever thus, Days of the Year, LTD. has decreed it occurs on July 7th. Heresy! New calendarist heretics who should be flogged and burned at the stake. Is outrage!!!

I wanted to thank you for providing the calendar. It's a keeper and I have forwarded it to interested others.

Days of the Year LTD actually are not heretical. They have simply made an important advance in the Theology of Chocolate! Both dates work well as National Chocolate Days, as do most other days of the year.

Days of the Year are new calendarist, sergianist, heretics. However, I would accept their date as preparation for the great feast in October. Consider it like an early Vespers. Perhaps sample all the chocolate to determine what brands to use in October. Works for me.

Yes, that is significant; it signifies you're not getting the point.

Nicaea-I knew the equinox was occurring on March 21 insofar that it had shifted from the original March 25. You give too little credit to those who followed the stars of the time. As I've said, the equinox itself is a definition and it shifts depending on one's meridian. Also it is not possible to follow the prescription of I-Nicaea, determined everywhere, and simultaneously have the same date (some 1 day = ~24 hour interval). I'm sure this was realized at the time of I-Nicaea. The prescription is giving a rule to be determined somewhere (as Aleppo does for Jerusalem), or in some consistent though even approximate manner, such that a Sunday is selected enabling all to observe Pascha at the same time, that is, on the same nominal day. The exact application of Nicaea-I's prescription everywhere is, was and always will be an over-determined requirement if the intent is to celebrate the feast everywhere within a 1-day time span. That is why a very good approximation, like the Gregorian calendar and its Paschalion is working as well as it does, and probably for some time still as well as any also arbitrary though more exact -- given the additional required specification(s) -- yearly astronomical determination.

Even if they did it would not have mattered in what they were trying to achieve. Quartodecimanism was rejected because it was deemed proper that Pascha be on a Sunday, but the Quartodeciman link to the Passover cerebration was certainly valid and to be retained as far as possible in some way.


The "church discipline," i.e the prescription of Nicaea_I, makes it a consideration of astronomical science to a considerable extent. And the "church discipline," in this matter was taken very seriously. How important, intrinsic or arbitrary is Sunday as the weekly Pascha?

Suppose we do know and so did Nicaea? So what? This is interesting information, but it is not the point. You make it seem like it's the end-all great solution. It is not. What you suggest is just another variation on the conceptually impoverished fixed Sunday in April "solution." It is necessary to get over, beyond, a simplistic, Hallmark card mentality of what a proper commemoration of a yearly, for instance, event entails, especially in this case where several important factors must be considered. Here it is necessary to not only think solar, the equinox that fixes us to a season and probably a calendar, but also lunar -- not just the sun but the moon. The Hebrew calendar is a lunar calendar, Passover a lunar event conditioned by a seasonal event, the equinox, a solar event.


"Contrived"? Is there a better solution that does justice to the yearly-solar, monthly-lunar and weekly-Sunday requirement? What is it? If you trust the Gospels then we know " when Christ rose from the dead" as fact not theory. He was raised on the first day of the week, Sunday -- the day Genesis tells us God began to create -- after the the first full moon after the vernal equinox. And that is what Nicaea_I prescribed we do every year by observing Easter/Pascha as they desired.

Easter will be celebrated in my church on March 27, 2016. Nicea, its formulations, the moon over someone's shoulder, and theories to the contrary change nothing. None of us get to decide when Easter occurs.

Although I don't care when anyone celebrates Easter, it does raise a question. I just read something by the Archbishop of Canterbury calling for a common date so all Christians can celebrate Easter together.

I don't mind, as I mentioned. However, I could see a common date for Catholics and Orthodox. But what would either body gain from celebrating with denominations that hold beliefs neither Catholics nor Orthodox would even consider Christian? I am not asking for the sake of argument, but would like to hear what others have to say.

It's a "man made" rule and not made by God but for God! What men have made can be changed. The church calendar included! But we all know that any common date will result in mass schisms in the East and not a few in the West with hard liners refusing to change and condemning those who change as heritics.

Amen!

True but a bit too dismissive for me in that simply saying "man made" can give the impression of arbitrary, concocted, contrived, etc., and all the other biases that men are prone to exhibit.

So in this context I ask again, how important, for instance, is Sunday as the Lord's day, the day that the Church gathers uniquely as the body of Christ in the eucharistic assembly? Acts tells us this was done as were other practices retained from Judaism. The God-made rule is, after all, to keep holy the Sabbath, the seventh day not the first (eight).

So we know the Church has reinterpreted in he light of Christ many elements and practices of the God-given directives of the law of Moses. Also, what is the authority, specifically as agreed upon by "all" concerning the prescription for determining the yearly Pascha, of an Ecumenical Council, here Nicaea_I? Certainly the directive on dating Pascha can be changed by the Church but should it be? As I've asked, what is the better solution, in particular a solution doing justice to the inclusiveness of the timing of Passover intertwined with the Resurrection?

In terms of depth and beauty the difference between the one's-as-good-as-another and the prescription of Nicaea_I is like the difference between prose and poetry.

So I can sing "most honored Pasch now dawned on us" any day of the week and year. But it seems especially worthy to sing it on a Sunday, the very day of the week when Christ was raised, and the Sunday, in particular, following the same essential -- God-given, Ex. 12:1-14 -- timing for the Passover, and that Passover, in particular, when Christ died and was raised.

Maybe it is a case of ECO, a disease for which there is no real treatment - Ecclesiastical Calendar Obsession. Victims are prone to mouth-foaming over calendar quirks and oddities. Someone should form a support group. LOL.

Everything that I have read is that Nicea prescribed the calculation from the equinox.

The calendar and tables came centuries later.

As such, neither the Gregorian or Julian calendars, nor any variants on them, are from Nicea or any other council.

The Julian calendar misses the Nicean prescription more often than not, the Gregorian misses periodically.

As such, my suggestion is to ignore them, and in this era of instantaneous communication, simply observe the dictates of the calendar, whether or not it coincides with either calendar.

No-one gives in, no-one gains or loses face; we just follow the dictates of the council.


hawk

Now you are using reason and logic, which will never get off the ground in ecclesiastical circles. That makes too much sense to ever be adopted.

This is so.

Correct.

It depends; I've not seen this demonstrated anywhere. It may be that for all years before the Gregorian calendar accumulates an error of one day, there is some place, some meridian where the calendar gives the correct date, that is, the correct timing for equinox-fullmoon-Sunday.

I presume you intended "dictates of the" calculation not "calendar." This makes sense except it can't be done simply as stated. And even if done as Aleppo (and others before that meeting) suggested and the day is determined at the chosen meridian, the next step after that observation is to give a date that everyone can locate on the calendar they use or like. But for that date/day on which everyone observes Pascha as Nicaea_I desired, not everyone will also have astronomically exact compliance with the prescription attributed to the Council.

Your logic and conclusion are flawless, it just can't be done as stated without other allowances. Aleppo's suggestion is one such valid result using the Jerusalem meridian.

You've also identified the real issue, the appearance of having to give-in and save face. But for those issues, any reasonable, rational person, knowing the approximations/assumption involved would look at the Aleppo tables and conclude that the Gregorian calendar paschalion is already working and working as well as Nicaea_I desired. But for the religious-calendar zealot even a face-saving solution like Aleppo's is not tolerable.

There are Catholic old calendar zealots not just Orthodox. I wonder if the anticipated pan-Orthodox Council ( link , and link ) will tackle this issue.

There are also Gregorian calendar zealots!

Again, my concern is only to have one common Easter. It is best to follow a flawed calendar together than for one group to go one way believing their calendar to be scientifically superior and so have such a division within the Church. A future Council could make the necessary changes or adaptations. The fact that we have two Easters today does speak to the fact of East-West separation. EC's who follow the old calendar can do so because when their ancestors came into union with Rome, that was an heritage that was seen to form part of their Eastern patrimony and so was left alone.

I'm not a defender of any calendar. In fact, in my family alone there are those who celebrate one or the other calendar - but most often they celebrate BOTH. Is that a good thing though? Does it not relegate, for example, the feast of the Nativity to something akin to a cultural tradition only? I believe so and I observe it to be so every year.

People who are on the old calendar in my community because of a strong cultural patriotism sit at home between December 25th and just after new year's and then insist on Christmas Eve on January 6th with the traditional dishes, koliada singing and the like. Whether they will attend Church in that time is another story - my friends will excuse themselves saying they must go to work etc. I once polled my religion class of more than 80 students, all of whom were on the old calendar, to ask how they celebrated the feast of the Nativity. Very few said they went to Church because mom and dad "had to go to work - they had no choice"

And that is when I tell them that, yes, they had a choice - the choice to celebrate Christmas on the new calendar and go to Church instead of using that time to go on skiing trips or even trips down south . . .

I've gotten into some serious trouble for those kind of comments, believe me . . .

But I think that is my responsibility as a religion teacher to talk about spiritual priorities and I'm going to do it again this Saturday.

And somehow Church services during Holy Week have been jettisoned while the visit to Church with the Easter basket all decked out is an absolute must . . .

That points to a real crisis in our Church, I would say. And the old calendar, including the different time for Easter in our Church, has led to a perennial excuse for not attending services because of one's work commitments.

But when, one year, the Easters were at the same time, I remember a friend's aging mother-in-law in Church for the Holy Thursday services asking me to contact her family to ask where they were as they had promised to be in Church (and to take her home afterwards).

The service was essentially over when I finally reached my pal who said he just couldn't get up out of bed. Yes, he is to be blamed but also the way the old calendar - and our lackadaisical attitude toward it - has trained many of my community to simply excuse themselves from the services while being content with cultural folkloric traditions.

I don't know the answer other than a wholesale acceptance of the mainstream calendar with the date of Pascha. That won't unite my community which is seriously divided over the issue. I am heartened by the fact that in Ukraine, the UGCC and the UOC-KP are now determined to educate people in the acceptance of the Gregorian calendar (a full 35% of ALL UGCC parishes in Ukraine now follow it with respect, at least, to the feast of the Nativity). In fact, there is a growing view there that the Julian calendar is the "Russian calendar."

What a terrible mess.

Alex

Who? Websites, documents, behavior? A criterion: Anyone who at least in principle could accept the Aleppo solution is NOT a zealot.

The calendar issue and Nicaea_I's prescription is not simply about scientific accuracy. Scientific accuracy is an important consideration, a step, a guidepost in the process of constructing a calendar that can be used in the way and to the end that Nicaea_I indicated. But why use a flawed calendar when one that works quit well is available, the flawed calendar being off 13 days and increasing in deviation from one of the standards, one of the key elements of the Council's prescription. Who says let's follow that broken clock rather than the one that keeps good time.

This is from the post that got me looking into the calendar issue. Note what it lists as determining factors for following the Julian paschalion: adherence to Nicaea_I and scientific accuracy.

Julian Calendar

Point c) is totally misinformed confusing the Julian day/date for the Julian calendar. But c) has scientific accuracy as a reason for following a paschalion. And a) gives that it follows Nicaea as "reason enough right there." But any observer of the night sky on Pascha will observe that it is the Gregorian NOT the Julian calendar/paschalion that follows Nicaea, the Julian only being in accord when it agrees with the Gregorian.

I most certainly disagree that someone following the Gregorian calendar cannot be a zealot. Your assumption of scientific correctness does not change the dynamic here.

If someone imposes the Gregorian calendar, as an example, to a people who use the Julian calendar and are opposed to it - that person imposing the Gregorian calendar, even if you can "prove" it is the more correct one, could be seen as a zealot in a sociological sense (and even worse). The issue of scientific correctness, as you put forward time and again within your "factual" paradigm is fine with natural science. It is much less so with theology and its related disciplines.

You appear to assume the same thing about Catholicism in general - that it is factually correct, but on the basis of other criteria. That is fine if you accept the a priori's of Catholic dogma. But it isn't if you don't.

Your criticism of Fr. Sergius Keleher (+memory eternal!) is without foundation.

I knew him personally and what you took out of a post of his from long ago does not do justice to his very comprehensive view of the Julian calendar in the life of the Church.

I find your attitude to be rather arrogant and while becoming for a scientist, quite not in keeping with the traditions of Catholic/Orthodox debate here on this forum.

In fact, for you, on this question by way of example, there is no debate. Either accept the Gregorian calendar or you are an unreasonable zealot.

That is offensive to Old Calendar Eastern Catholics and Orthodox.

Alex

Where did I say that? You are offended by your own deficient reading. Part of the problem you are having is an inability to engage what I've actually written and then process it accurately. It's called close reading, exegesis (by scripture scholars in particular), reading out of the text what is there and as opposed to eisegese, reading into the text what you want and what is not supported by text and context.

Give it a try. I invite everyone to do a close reading of what I actually wrote.
If you want I can provide some hints and other aids.

Also, the "scientific correctness" as I understand your use of the phrase is fact not "assumption." Do you really imagine that the civilized world, gradually since the 16th century, universally at the present, has decided to use a calendar that is not grounded in "scientific correctness"?

As I indicated by way of example and the actual post of Fr. Serge (of blessed memory), as he says, "scientific correctness" IS a factor. Again as Fr. Serge wrote:

Julian Calendar

Note, he advocates accuracy and correct calculation; he is wrong, of course, about his attributions to the Julian calendar. (NASA does NOT use the Julian calendar!!!)

I strive with God's grace to be a good and faithful Catholic and so I "accept the a priori's of Catholic dogma." So of course I write and shall continue to write (as permitted) from that perspective as I understand it, as should others from theirs. (I don't even know why you bring this up.) The calendar issue has nothing to do with dogma. It has to do with accepting and processing and implementing the prescription of Nicaea_I and acknowledging its authoritative status and adhering to the same.

I didn't criticize Fr. Serge but what he wrote. I believe he was a good priest, and a calendar zealot if ever there was one (In addition to his posts I've also heard him speak to the calendar issue.). Since you bring it up, I only excerpted from his numerous errors about the calendar what was most pertinent to my post. If you give me specifics on what you find I removed from his post that mislead or was biased I'll respond.

In that first part we agree: Yes, that is what you find. As for "traditions of Catholic/Orthodox debate here on this forum" you should review your prior post in the Will the first-ever Orthodox council occur this year? thread wherein you went completely bonkers.

Respectfully, I don't accept your assessment of how I've interpreted what you've written.

I'm not criticizing your commitment to and knowledge of science and scientific data - only your (mistaken) use of the term "zealot."

It is more than likely that I've misinterpreted what you intended here - interpretation and subjective viewpoints are always part and parcel of any presentation of factual material. At the same time, reading your assessment of what I've written, I know you have misinterpreted my intention here as well.

But my interpretation of your usage of the term "zealot" appears to me to imply that, using the current example here, such a one is a, shall we say, fanatical defender of something which is patently false and can be proven to be false by means of reason and science.

IF I have your meaning correctly here, then if someone is understood to be a "Catholic zealot," then the same standards of falsity are to be applied to what such a zealot is promoting, namely, Catholicism itself. I know that is not what you intended, but it does show, at least to me it does, that you've missed the mark in your usage of what is commonly understood by "zealot."

With respect to Fr. Keleher, I had long conversations with him about the Julian calendar when he was with us here in Toronto. I don't know why certain scientific disciplines continue to use the Julian calendar and some of my students in religion class who are into science have argued for its use in certain contexts. I've no doubt that the Gregorian calendar is much more correct in the way you've so copiously and painstakingly related and I am, in fact, in favour of adopting it, especially for my own Church, the UGCC.

However, wide circles within my Church and in others, continue to use the Julian calendar. My only point here is that it is not enough to argue for the scientific correctness of this or that Calendar, outside of other contexts which may have an even greater impact on how a community determines the calendar it will use.

For example, during the hey-day of the USSR, the Gregorian calendar was, at one point, going to be imposed over the Julian calendar.

Orthodox authorities, however, soon saw that the people simply rejected celebrating Christmas on the Gregorian Dec. 25th and churches were empty. I don't believe that the scientific arguments in favour of the accuracy of the Gregorian calendar had any effect. And that was because the people saw in the Julian calendar their "church calendar" irrespective of how closely it approximated the "secular calendar" in terms of scientific accuracy. The two notions were quite separate for them and for others today and for various reasons.

For the people in western Ukraine, the main reasons for their rejection of the Gregorian calendar was that it was associated with Soviet communism. Their churches were destroyed by the Soviets, their priests, deacons, bishops and monastics were martyred or sent to Siberia and now that same, I will repeat with them, godless force wished to impose a new calendar on them.

There was no question that anyone denied the validity of the new Gregorian calendar. They just saw it as having nothing to do with the way their church organized its liturgical like throughout the year. The only change calendar-wise that occurred and still continues for Julian calendar "zealots," as you said, is that New Year's day is now no longer really marked on January 14th as obtained previously.

And that occurred again within the dynamic of separate ecclesial/secular realms. New Year's day is now celebrated there on January 1st with January 14th being the feast of the Naming of our Lord, God and Saviour, Jesus Christ, together with that of the feasts of St Basil the Great and St Peter Mohyla of Kyiv (the "universal doctor" and the "Particular,Local Doctor" in the Kyivan tradition).

So the argument regarding the scientific accuracy of the Gregorian calendar can be made until one is blue in the face. It is not the only factor taken into account in how a given community determines its liturgical calendar for the inner life of its Particular Church.

Also, Latin Catholics living in countries where they are a minority have tended to adopt the old calendar Easter calculation of the Eastern Christians around them for the sake of unity. And we have not given that aspect sufficient attention, perhaps and unadvisedly because of our own "zeal" to override these considerations by concluding the "fact" of the correctness of the Gregorian calendar is not accepted by others only because of their willful blindness to the truth or other such positivistic arguments.

My own bias is in favour of my Church adopting the Gregorian calendar and that all Ukrainian Orthodox do so as well - a commission is being organized by all concerned to help educate the people NOT regarding the scientific correctness of the Gregorian calendar - that fact will change nothing in the minds of those who follow the Julian calendar - but in terms of how it can better relate our Church to western Catholicism while making an important step to severing a symbolic tie with Russian Orthodoxy.

Again, no one, and certainly I'm not, questioning your scientific understanding and expertise in this area. It is just that there is MORE to it by way of culture, tradition and politics which transcends that.

You were, at one point I believe, mocking my own critique of Phil Lawler - which is fair ball.

My own misgivings about his writings have more to do with what I perceive to be his own journalistic sloppiness in his use of terms such as "nationalistic" in describing the Orthodox churches and then somehow relating that to their inability to call an ecumenical council (as if the number of such councils somehow forms a standard for greater orthodoxy for any given Church).

In addition to my academic studies in sociology and cultural anthropology, I've spent a quarter of a century working in politics where I've had the opportunity to get to know many journalists. A good chunk of my job was to critique their articles attacking the politicians of my particular government etc., usually the left-leaning journalistic brand. I know that journalists tend to be sloppy in their terminology and sometimes deliberately so.

We all have our bias, but Mr. Lawler breaks a few of his own professional standards related to dispassionate writing when he refers to the Orthodox Churches as "nationalistic" as but one example (and there are others).

It matters not who his father is or how many years he has been reporting/writing or for whom. He simply shows a very anti-ecumenical bias against the Orthodox which is, in today's era of rapprochement, unacceptable and would be unacceptable by Rome. I'm sorry if there are those here, Tomassus included, who take umbrage at that. He also betrays a fundamental ignorance, if that is what it truly is, about "nationalism" and the 17 forms of it that have been identified by modern political scientists. How does he know that an entire Church is "nationalistic?" He and other Roman Catholic apologists will often, in my experience, use that unadvised term to somehow denigrate the Orthodox or else point to the fact of their not acknowledging the papacy as limiting their capacity for the development of doctrine, among other things. That is an assumption that Lawler and others of his ilk have not proven. And it is clear they've not really studied the conclusions of the Catholic-Orthodox ecumenical commissions over the years, nor do they appreciate the current viewpoints expressed by the Vatican with respect to Orthodox ecclesiological praxis.

With respect to what is or is not an ecumenical council, that is a subject which is the grist for the mill of Catholic-Orthodox commissions as well. Their discussions are well-advanced in that regard and their members, reading some of the comments here, would doubtless regard us as "johnny-come-latelies" to the entire ecumenical debate. I certainly don't deny the 21 ecumenical councils of the Catholic Church. But that doesn't mean a future, reunited Church, which is both East and West, cannot re-examine the issue. And that does NOT immediately imply that somehow the number of those councils will be reduced. Fr. John Meyendorff, for example, (+ memory eternal!) even went so far as to suggest that there is the possibility that what Rome has affirmed by way of its deposit of faith COULD be accepted by the East if it were re-presented to the East within the context of a reunion Council.

In addition, Rome COULD return to its recognition of the Photian Council, as it originally did recognize it before it altered its position. What many Orthodox refer to as the "Ninth Ecumenical Council" involving hesychasm could also be recognized by Rome, hypothetically, even as a valid Local Council.

The fact is that canons from Local Councils in the Orthodox Church can and do become universal canons, given their nature and purpose.

Reverend Father Deacon, if I have given you any offence by my earlier flippancy (a tragic character flaw in me, to be sure, which kept me from seeking ordination as a deacon myself . . .) or in any other way, I respectfully ask your forgiveness and pardon. Please overlook my childishness in that regard (but life is too short to get rid of one's childishness completely, I believe! ).

Alex

By your definition of zealot, a "fanatical defender of something which is patently false and can be proven to be false by means of reason and science," for instance, there cannot be a "Catholic zealot," since the tenets of the faith are not founded on "reason and science" but divine revelation.

The term I used was "calendar zealot."

That is indeed a clarification of your initial words:


You also raise this concern.
I've commented on this pastoral aspect in previous threads on the calendar. Did the people develop this attitude on their own or were they over the course of years, centuries, taught to reject? If pastoral concerns warrant it I have never said it's automatically unacceptable. Let them observe when they insist but tell them the truth even without all the science:

Dear people, you celebrate Pascha worthily and well but not when the Holy and Great Council of I_Nicaea desired. The way of I_Nicaea is followed instead by what you know as the civil calendar, that is, the calendar and paschal dating that the Pope of Rome gave some time ago. Like it or not, the Pope's calendar adheres to what the Council specified and yours does not. Also know that in following your beloved calendar you preclude, prevent the desire of the Council of I_Nicaea that all Christians observe Pashca together, on the same day, since it would be unfair for us to ask our fellow Christians, who diligently follow the Council's directive, to abandon it as we have done. Accept these word so that "Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” John 8:32.

First, for clarity, here is a better link to the post by Fr. Serge: Julian Calendar specifically a, b and c under

What he wrote so authoritatively was in a) wrong, in b) wrong and in c) wrong.

The reasons are:

a) The Julian usually does not get the timing of Pascha as specified by Nicaea_I. This can be demonstrated: observe the moon in the night sky and your local weatherman's announcement of spring for the two 2016 dates of Pascha.

b) The typicon works validly and correctly for for both calendars, they are just offset by, presently, 13 days.

c) The required precision of actual scientific data is far beyond any yearly calendar. Yearly calendars approximate in integer days (the rotation of the earth on its axis) the inherently non-integer, yearly revolution of the earth around the sun (as it is commonly modeled). I didn't stress this before but his comment that "... the Gregorian Paschalion...failed to take sidereal time adequately into account" is misleading and irrelevant. The desired purpose of a calendar is to best approximate the tropical (aka solar) year NOT the sidereal year.

What "scientific disciplines continue to use the Julian calendar" (i.e., for science not non-proleptic dating)? It's hard for me to imagine otherwise (but I'm all ears) then that as you say "some of my students in religion classs who are into science have argued for its use in certain contexts" may be headed for an F in their science class. What are you and they talking about?

Dear Father Deacon,

In that case, I don't know which scientific disciplines use the Julian calendar or whether you are (or are not) correct about the liturgical issues involved etc.

My knee-jerk reaction was to defend Fr. Keleher. If that is a vice, I'm sorry. We haven't had even one Orthodox Old Calendarist defend his or her position here with the same scientific (and other important) precisions that you have. Perhaps this will be remedied in the near future. Personally, I don't care which calendar is used - I've said that.

My only and over-arching concern is that which, as Fr. Deacon Richard noted above, is about ensuring that all Christians have one calendar. And indeed, my concern is to ensure that my Church, the UGCC, has one calendar. From a pastoral point of view, what is going on in my eparchy up here alone is . . . ridiculous.

Your point about defending the use of the Gregorian calendar even on the basis of the early ecumenical councils etc. would fall on deaf ears among the UGCC old calendarists - so we can forget about it. Remember, you belong to a Church that follows the Gregorian calendar - I don't believe you have any parishes that are with old calenar zealots (?).

The old calendar issue goes well beyond several pastoral points raised here and includes issues that do not, today, concern the BCC.

If you went into an old calendar parish of the UGCC saying what you wrote above . . . they would have you for after-Liturgy brunch . . .

And without salt . . . I know you temper your position with a pastoral perspective. But your pastoral perspective, shaped by your BCC experience, is woefully inadequate to deal with the cultural, political and other issues that the BCC is quite innocent of.

Alex

Let me say again, science does not use any calendar for scientific measurements. The only reason this issue has arisen is because of the false claim made about the Julian calendar by some of its more militant and misguided advocates. They wanted to use this alleged scientific accuracy to argue for the superiority and, therefore, proper use of the Julian over the Gregorian calendar on that basis. Knowing the truth and the falseness of their claim, however, they by their own argument should have then had to advocate the superiority of the Gregorian over the Julian (based on accurate science, not to do science) but such consistency and equitability could for some (most?, all?) not be mustered. What pretense.

As regards "liturgical issues," the typicon is the same for both calendars. What can the problem possibly be? (As I've said before the problem comes in mixing, observing fixed-date Gregorian feasts with the Julian paschalion.)

Defend Fr. Serge all you want; defending his incorrect assertions is another matter. There have been on this forum extensive (i.e. many words) defenses of the Julian calendar and paschalion involving science and otherwise. It was to balance and in some instance refute those claims that I began to write in response.

You should care though if, for instance, I_Nicaea and not having calendar-spring move into the summer matters. The error in the Julian calendar is certainly there but slow in accumulating, so one can get away with a laissez-faire attitude that simply dispenses with the incorrect timing. But in time, maybe even now, a Julian calendar die-hard farmer, for instance, is planting his crops by the Gregorian calendar March 21 spring, not the Julian, as a matter of practical necessity.

Again, this is the let's all follow the way we know to be incorrect so that we can then all be abandoning I_Necaea's directive together. This excuse is starting to sound more and more like a Neville Chamberlain, "peace for our time" solution.

So even the "ecumenical councils etc." don't matter and fall before "UGCC old calendarists"? If true this boarders on if it isn't already shear fanaticism. What has caused and nurtured this ... what should one call it?

I understand there is a pastoral problem. What, who caused it?

Why? What was untrue in what I said? Why can't such a parish discern the truth and then act in accordance with the truth? If this attitude is in the mind and soul of the people then the pastoral problem is more -- much more -- than just choice of a calendar.

My attitude is not really shaped by my BCC experience. I get what you're saying: a church has dug and now finds itself in a "cultural, political and other issues" hole. What put them there? Is propagating a falsehood about the calendar going to get them out? Those in the pit who just look around at themselves and the situation aren't going to find the a remedy for which one must look up, instead, to see the light.

Dear Fr. Deacon,

I suppose your issue is that you are a natural scientist and, after repeated attempts, continue to come back to the same positivistic a priori's that characterize your approach.

The "truth?" Are you kidding? Call old calendnarists fanatics all you like. They are not fanatics because, in fact, they do accept the Gregorian calendar as such, but believe, rightly or wrongly, that the Julian calendar is and should be the internal "Church calendar."

Your pastoral approach in this matter really, well, stinks. You have no pastoral approach worth a dam here. And I'm speaking as someone who wants the new calendar.

You are unable to see the "truth" of things which cannot be proven scientifically. That is the limitation of the natural science approach, the approach of positivism.

We are talking past each other. Whatever.

Alex

You don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand first day of spring, full moon, then the next Sunday is Pascha. Is the prescription of I_Nicaea also just some "positivistic a priori's"? What I keep coming back to is the wisdom of the Council's prescription and that those who claim they acknowledge and venerate that Council should do in deed what they say in words.

I'm not kidding. You must also stop making up what I say. I said there are "calendar zealots." And when I respond to your characterizations I often find I must begin with the words if true (vide infra).

As a beaver myself and on behalf of all beavers I resent your dismissive presumption. My pastoral approach is worth such a -- beaver -- dam: well-econstructed and functional and restraining the cataclysm of ineptitude.

Also, it is you who have stated that a segment of the UGCC would not care if its conviction about the calendar -- and where did they get that conviction?-- went against "early ecumenical councils etc." and words of the clergy in accord with that Council. If true then I'm not the one with a questionable "pastoral approach in this matter." I remind you of what you wrote and my response:



I'm amazed you have the gall to concluded something so foolish and then put it on a forum. I sing the Creed at every Divine Liturgy. So of course I 'see the "truth" of things which cannot be proven scientifically.' Unlike those you commiserate with about the calendar (as you describe them), I also see the truth in things that can be adequately demonstrated scientifically, a realm of the "things visible" as I also sing.

I understand what you say but simply disagreed mostly and respond accordingly.

The Julian calendar was created with the work of astronomers who did, in fact, observe the stars, seasons, etc. with their senses and calculated accordingly. They observed natural phenomena- granted, not from a positivist viewpoint but through the lens of their Platonic-Aristotelian cosmology. Natural phenomena can't lead us to contemplation of immaterial reality of we ignore them. The connection of Easter with the natural spring is a major symbolic conjunction and departing from that puts us out of touch with tradition. I think all Orthodox churches should do what the Church of Finland did and simply adopt the Gregorian calendar or some variant of it for all festal dates.

Dear Father Deacon,

I'm still trying to understand your pastoral approach and what you said about your theological faith is not about that at all. I'm taking this from a far simpler, mundane social science perspective.

But I've clearly offended you, made you upset at me, and have obviously revealed my woeful ignorance and incapacity to understand the "truth"

I believe we are both now making characterizations of each other's positions so I will excuse myself from this discussion on the grounds that it is inappropriate for me to argue or be too cute with an ordained clergyman.

Let me give an example of what I mean here. Our parish of St Demetrius is on the Gregorian calendar, but with an influx of immigrants from Ukraine who have become members and who are on the Julian calendar - the celebration of Julian calendar feasts have been introduced. That makes for an interesting liturgical life, to be sure. But everyone is happy and Father knows how to make and keep everyone happy.

The science behind any of that does not, and won't, enter the picture. And I too now celebrate both Christmases to keep everyone in my family happy. I wish we had only one, but we don't.

Keeping everyone together and happy as much as possible is more important than preaching to them about scientific truths - which preaching will fall on deaf ears anyway because the old calendarists regard the Julian calendar as the "church calendar" so discrepancies/inaccuracies don't disturb anyone nor is it an issue.

This is also what I mean by how your experience in the BCC has influenced, not your scientific understanding of the issue, but the pastoral/cultural context of it.

Perhaps this is a discussion to be better had over coffee rather than computers. I apologise for being too agressive or unadvised with my words - I do tend to be that way.

If you don't believe, just ask the Administrator, or Alice, or Bob/Theophan or Swan or Recluse or Michael Thomas ...

Feel free to let me have it as I won't come back here to read about it!

Alex

All may and should argue valid points with anyone, as did Job. I don't stick my nose in the chosen pastoral solution, it's not mine to do so and I'm not in the middle of it, and I'm fond of my nose. But I do question it from the outside as I try to be an objective observer. And so I ask -- it being raised and presented by others -- and continue to ask the same unanswered questions as to what caused the pastoral situation especially as described here wherein a parish is kept happy by observing two Christmases and Paschas each year, thus creating a microcosm of the very lack of unity that all say is the first priority. Lack of unity but a happy solution -- for such then Nicaea_I's (effective) dictum should just have been "Is everybody happy?"

Denigrating scientific truths is demeaning for religion which, in its proper way, is the guardian of all truth, divine and human. But the question of the calendar is not about scientific truths. Astronomy and celestial mechanics are just the tools, the proper tools for the calendar question, developed by the God-given human intellect. No apology is in order when using them to their proper end.

So I say this about the pastoral situation described and this whole approach of ignore the data, make unfounded claims about the Julian methodology, then readily dismiss those claims when they are found to apply to the Gregorian instead, insist on following the approach that is in error rather than the accurate one as the solution: THERE IS NO JULIAN CALENDAR GENE. There is always a choice, for some easy for some hard perhaps, but one must strive to chose wisely. Julian calendar-jingoism has been and is bred not born; that's the root of the pastoral problem.

Very true. The presumably intended "symbolic conjunction" is not only with the spring but also its (full) moon and the following Sunday -- i.e. the first day of the new creation -- and thus it being a conjunction with the historical Resurrection itself.

I wrote an article about this for the February issue of The New Star, the eparchial newspaper of the UGCC Eparchy of St. Nicholas in Chicago. There are some churches in that eparchy that celebrate according to both calendars. I don't know what it would take to reach common ground. Gregorian, Julian, revised Julian observances in the same eparchy are not promoting unity. Byzantine Catholics need to be unified before we can ever hope to obtain unity with our Orthodox counterparts. Lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi.

There is no unity, or so it seems to me. In addition, I fail to see the importance of celebrating Easter with neo-pagan churches that barely believe in it in the first place. This calendar obsession is neither the most significant, nor the only, decree or statement from Nicaea that is widely ignored today. We have much, much bigger problems than this.

Dear Dr. Henry P.,

I would love to read your article!

When the UOC-KP Patriarch was in Chicago and saw a UGCC parish (Sts Volodymyr and Olha) celebrating on the Old Calendar and then another on the New Calendar, he told the press that "I would never want this to happen in our Orthodox Church."

He also said he would be willing to move to the Gregorian calendar (tomorrow) but that a lot of Ukrainian Orthodox would be against it and this could cause a schism. He said in the days of the Soviet Union when December 25 was imposed, the churches were empty and people still followed the old calendar (save for the celebration of New Year's Day on January 1st).

The Assyrian Church of the East now has two patriarchates which are divided SOLELY on the basis of the calendar . . .

And to Charles' point that this is insignicant - I wish I could agree with him, but no.

All my life the Julian calendar was ingrained in me as the "Ukrainian calendar" and the badge of Ukrainian identity. My father insisted we take January 7, 8 and 9 off as the three days of the Nativity, then January 14th as New Year's Day and the Naming of Christ, then January 19th for the Theophany.

Even when the younger members of my family "force the issue" and try to move the celebrations to December 24th and 25th, the "pull" of habit and tradition leads to the fuller celebrations in January. As you know, the new year's dances called "Malankas" (in honour of St Melanie of Rome whose feast is celebrated on Dec. 31st/January 13th) are practically held every weekend in January following the feast of the Nativity.

Several have even told me, "Even if Ukraine moves to the new calendar, we will never!"

And one may argue, as ajk has so coherently done here, about the reasons why we should be on the Gregorian calendar. That will fall on deaf ears for the most part in my eparchy (the Julian calendar is even more dear to those of the UGCC in Quebec which is an RC province and so the conditions are recreated there that obtained in western Ukraine when it is under RC political control . . .).

Suffice it to say that this issue is most significant but for reasons that are not evident to those who don't acknowledge them as valid.

There is also another reason why the Julian calendar is even making a stronger comeback up here - and I don't mean the influx of new immigrants from Ukraine, although that is a factor certainly.

I have friends whose families adopted the Gregorian calendar years ago and now that their parents have reposed, they have moved over to old calendar parishes.

Why you may ask? It is, they say, for spiritual reasons. To celebrate the major feasts on the Old Calendar brings, they say, a greater spiritual depth to them. The commercialism of Christmas is gone by that time, they say. They have to make a real commitment to get off work to attend ALL the Church services, which they do and they also fast in preparation for the feasts, go to the Mystery of Confession etc.

They say the Old Calendar helps them live a life of true spiritual zeal - and I can't argue with them about that. They are zealous and since I've been associating with them, they are always inspecting me to make sure I'm fasting properly, including the Wednesday and Friday fasts .

In short, these UGCC die-hards remind me of the example of our Recluse here .

I can think of many worse things to befall me!

Alex

Not necessarily insignificant, but not our biggest problem. My issue with the whole calendar thing is as follows. There seems some kind of burning desire to celebrate a common date for Easter with ultra-liberal Protestant churches. Celebrate the risen Lord? I am not convinced some of those churches even worship the same God we worship.

If, on the other hand, Catholicism and Orthodoxy could agree on a common date, that would be fine. Both churches have sacraments, orders, and a core of doctrines that are similar. Celebrating Easter together makes much more sense between churches that agree on what Easter is.

OK Charles, you are right - as you always are!

Doesn't it get boring for you after awhile?

Alex

Too funny!

Here is a traditionalist Orthodox website with a whole series of articles defending the Julian calendar - should make for an interesting read all around. Perhaps Fr. Deacon ajk could have a look at a couple of these and give his estimation here:

http://orthodoxinfo.com/ecumenism/ea_calendar.aspx

Alex

My contribution may be totally irrelevant, but here goes...Why this burning desire to share the date of Pascha with a (Western) Church (or churches) whose observance of said feast is quite possibly the most anti-climactic thing I know of...in contradistinction to what any Eastern Orthodox or Catholic Church celebrates?
I probably have less at stake than any one here on this question, so I may be butting in, but at least try to see my view as an attempt at objectivity or an "outsider's opinion"

I agree. There has been a climate of "ecumania" for a number of years that defies any common or good sense. I know Christ said that they all may be one, but one what? Do we stop believing in the apostolic doctrines and creed so we can be more like alternate religions? We can be "one" at any time if we stop being what we are. It ain't worth it.

As I called it before: calendar-jingoism. What rules our liturgical life, religion or nationalism? I'm reminded here of this (true) story told (in a class of his I was taking and as I recall it) by an Armenian, himself, and theology professor. A priest noticed the devotion of a man who at the liturgy would always come forward to kiss the Gospel Book. The priest was edified by the man's devotion and when he had the opportunity, he commented to the man on his fervor for the Gospel. The man commented (snidely as the prof mimicked): I come forward to venerate the holy Armenian alphabet.

How exactly does this work? Is there a separate Julian calendar on the wall? If your father gave the dates as indicated he was transposing and using the Gregorian calendar. If these Gregorian values are the traditional dates ingrained and venerated, your father lucked out. The Julian calendar error usually gains a day every ~128 years and it seems it is tabulated at the turn of the century. It increased from 12 to 13 days in 1900. The year 2000, however, was a leap year for both calendars and so your father did not have to face the issue of going from a 13-day to a 14-day correction. Some Ukrainian father will face this problem, however, in 2100.

Opinions like this are valid and understandable but ignore the facts. In these calendar discussions there is always the reminder, the caveat, that unity is the primary goal, abandon what one must to achieve it. Why not unity by just following the proposed solution that all agree upon, that is the desired standard? Others see instead the sin of ecumenism (period), the false doctrine of pernicious syncretism, and also those who temper this stand in various ways. The neo-pagans are following us is a new one for me. Why, on their account should we abandon what is ours? Besides, take some consolation in:

Mark 9:38-40 Revised Standard Version (RSV)

38 John said to him, “Teacher, we saw a man casting out demons in your name,[a] and we forbade him, because he was not following us.” 39 But Jesus said, “Do not forbid him; for no one who does a mighty work in my name will be able soon after to speak evil of me. 40 For he that is not against us is for us.

This Gregorian calendar that was explicitly formulated to serve the Church's need but that has become the civil world's standard should be acknowledged and lauded as such; it also should be appreciated in its historical context: Though functioning as such behind the scenes, atheist, agnostic, heretic, secular-humanist, pagan etc. use a calendar with the Resurrection of Christ, Pascha, as its focus, foundation, and reason for being.

Me again. I don't know if American Greek Catholics or American members of many Orthodox jurisdictions appreciate the "moving of the goal posts" of the New Calendar has on countries and jurisdictions which actually observe the services of the Church and her fasts more completely. It ain't just Sundays and feast days for many Orthodox. I do not call into question the discipleship of the Greek Catholics or the Roman Catholic Church, but the Latin penchant for parsing things at their absolute minimum for efficacy is an unintended but inevitable outcome of the Unia. This tendency in the West is fully admitted by a late, venerable German liturgical scholar whose name escapes me. And this phenomenon happened in full force in churches following the Reformation...the Anglicans included.
I would not argue that the goal is to have the longest and most frequent services possible, but to question the provenance of these innovations and perhaps by their results determine the true spirit in which they were initiated.
I realise these are times when those who profess Christ will become in the minority in the West. Anything that boosts actual, credal unity is to be lauded, but is this achieved by merely "being on the same page"?

No, it isn't. Being on the same page is only worth what is written on that page. If it contains syncretism, then it is a wide and broad page leading to destruction.

Dear Father Deacon,

Your pastoral-cultural sensitivity to people's traditions really does stink - yes, I have the gall and don't feel so indignant because you are a deacon.

Next year, I'm going all-out on the Julian Calendar (lots of calendars that indicate the Julian feast days and I have two on the walls of my home).

And I'll do that with my friends whose spirituality as Old Calendarists is truly admirable.

I've given you a list of articles on the Julian calendar above so at least you can have some familiarity with why Orthodox and Eastern Catholics who follow it, do so with such devotion.

Alex

What I'm smelling in your Ukrainianism is the stench of pyletism:

Phyletism [en.wikipedia.org]


Alex, you need to work on your close-reading skills and not make unfounded characterizations of me. For the record this is what I wrote:



OK. I thought you wrote here, however, that you prefer the Gregorian calendar.

I never said it wasn't. If you would read it again, my mock-up pastoral statement characterizing my pastoral approach and sensitivities that you find so odious begins:
I have dealt with the material on that horrible site (at least about the calendar and ecumenism) in a prior calendar thread. The site is riddled with inaccuracies, fabrications and it seem to me invincible ignorance. I call it the Orthodox Un-Christian Mis-information Center. I don't put an Un- before the word Orthodox only because I can't speak for them, but they would be well advised to do so here.

Anyway, there are so many errors that it would take exhaustive writing to comment and correct. Give me specific points raised there, however, and I'll readily comment.

AJK,

OK, that is at least a response to the list of those articles - thank you. I would still like to see an articulate Julian Calendar Orthodox here to lay out the arguments - unfortunately there doesn't seem to be any at hand.

As for phyletism - where did you get that idea from? It is because you don't have the capacity to examine your scientific demagoguery and your inability to respect the cultural traditions of Ukrainians, Russians (oh, sorry - Swan says I'm supposed to be against all Russians - my apology) and others.

The fact that there are people, like my family and others, for whom the Julian Calendar was an important instrument of cultural maintenance (probably not any longer) is not "phyletism." Your quote shows that you prefer to point to something rather than to actually debate those with whom you do not agree. That is just bad form.

Let's not argue because I took what you said as being a slight not against myself, but against those I have always honoured in my family.

Alex

Curious choice of words, "demagoguery."

Who does that sound like?

I trust my grandfather, Dmytro who, after emigrating to the US from Galicia (Галичина) in 1902 and after its founding in 1908, was a life-long member of the Ukrainian Catholic Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, would want to take issue with you.

I withdraw my comments and apologize to Father Deacon for anything and everything I said that would have given him offense. I'll go to confession.

Alex

Interesting, while - in some places - not very edifying thread.

IMHO the best solution would be for both parts (Catholics and Orthodox) to adopt Milanković's reform fully, as the Serbian astronom had planned: together with his new Paschalion, which as I believe basically corresponds with the Aleppo proposal.

It would be (or at least could be) a move the Orthodox could "swallow". The concept was worked out by an Orthodox scientist, so it would be "the Orthodox response to the Pope's calendar", and the better calendar in fact. The Orthodox correcting the Pope with Pope's consent - it sounds not bad for Orthodox ears, I suppose.

However, since the Orthodox are far from achieving calendar unity among themselves, such a reform seems not very likely today. So maybe the compromise - "new" dates for fixed feasts, together with the old Paschalion - would be the best solution just for today?

BTW, for the UGCC in Poland the calendar issue is something to be resolved in the near future. The common Convent of our two eparchies (2014, October 2nd-4th) was the place of vivid calendar discussions. As a result, an official poll is being prepared. IMO the best solution for Poland - taking into account the mass immigration from Ukraine - is to adopt the Revised Julian Calendar as observed by some Orthodox Churches (our Mother Church of Constantinople included), while celebrating in the parishes where such a need would arise additional Nativity and Theophany Liturgies on, respective,
January 7th and 19th.

Dear Father Deacon,

To me, you sound like you have a very deep pastoral understanding.

I apologise for any and all things I said that were not edifying here and was reacting to how I perceived AJK's comments.

These are sensitive matters, as you well know.

The over-riding concern would be to one day have a single calendar with a single celebration of Pascha among the Catholic and Orthodox Churches (the others will follow, I'm sure).

Alex

It should be noted that the Aleppo approach is very neutral and general in that it does not rely on nor is it tied to a calendar. It does have to add the arbitrary factor of a fixed place followed by detailed astronomical calculations specific for each year. Nicaea_I didn't specify a meridian and even at the time of the Gregorian calendar reform detailed astronomical calculations specific for each year would have been overwhelming if even possible. Besides, a calendar and paschalion method does a similar job in a simpler and less specific though equally legitimate way.

Milankovic's calendar and Paschalion, as some others, also does the job. But there's a few hitches; some are rather technical and I will include them in a separate post. One immediate one is that the Milankovic calendar determines leap years different from the Gregorian. So even if the churches agree on it, they will have a calendar that can be in and out of sync with the presently accepted civil calendar, and that is the Gregorian. To get everyone in on the new Milankovic method, all the governments (because of international transportation, commerce, finances etc.) would in some form need to adopt it also.

I'll comment on the assertion that the Milankovic calendar is the "better calendar in fact" in my next post.

Overall, this is a fair appraisal but put this way, reading it, it sounds like such childish behavior. I say that not as a barb but a regrettable fact. My sympathies are with Catholic and Orthodox hierarchies, since there are Julian calendar stalwarts in both churches, but only to a point. My criticism is how the churches got there, when, where, why and how the people have been taught and conditioned and even brainwashed into believing in a calendar more than the present voice of the church itself. It's my story (in a prior post) of venerating the alphabet rather than the Gospel Book, in different guise. Churches that have created such a calendar creature need to examine their conscience, do penance where profitable, and correct it without delay or excuse.

Fixed feasts in the Gregorian or Milankovic calendar and Julian paschalion when it doesn't coincide with the Gregorian or Milankovic is a bad mix, a disruption, more than likely, in the inter-meshing of the two cycles -- very hard on the Typicon.

My remark was intented as a general one. Thanks for your kind words.

I have nothing against Aleppo proposal, believe me. In fact I was near or even just the one person to propagate it in Poland.



I am waiting for your post. I'd love to read about these "hitches".


Yes, but we (they) would have plenty of time, since in practice the first "day of incoherence" would occur in (after?) 2800.



I am waiting impatiently!


I am of opinion that if one wants to achieve a goal, one must be realistic. My approach is realistic, because I take into account the reality you have just described above. We have to deal with such people, we are not able to replace our counterparts into better ones...


...or to coerce them to penance.



The shortcomings of this solution are well known (lack of Kyriopascha, which is rare phenomenon iself, shorter Petrine Fast or even lack of it every nine years and so on), because this combination...is widely used in Orthodox world, known as Revised Julian Calendar. The RJC may lack many things, but it is observed by Churches/people and...both cope somehow.

Thank you Fr. Deacon Peter for all your comments and interest.

I make this a separate post because it's more technical and may be more detail than many-most-all care to read. Milanković's (Serbian Cyrillic: Миланковић) calendar raises some further questions. A common purpose of a calendar is to keep the seasons fixed or equivalently predict when the change of seasons occur in a reasonably accurate way. The Gregorian calendar does this as a result of its purpose of getting the vernal equinox fixed to the calendar date of 21-MARCH. In brief, the Council of Nicaea_I though letters (not Canons) relayed its directive about the uniform dating of Pascha; this directive was correctly interpreted to give a working formula. The Church of Alexandria and astronomical schools associated with it as a center of learning in that field were influential in the development of the details. From what I've read the 21-MARCH date for the equinox comes from Alexandria and was emphasized and respected by Pope Gregory as from the Council itself as stated in the Bull Inter Gravissimas [myweb.ecu.edu]

In general, the purpose of a calendar is to span the the proper kind of year by a number of non-fractional days. No calendar can do this simply; this is because the average time of a year divided by the average time of a day is not an integer, a whole number. Rather, it's a number with a fractional part. There are different kinds of years; a proper one must be chosen and used for the intended purpose. A sidereal year brings the earth (as it's usually modeled) back to the same place it started in is revolution about the sun, i.e. as seen against the stellar background. This doesn't keep the seasons fixed on the calendar. The mean tropical year keeps the seasons fixed, all four seasons treated equally based on equinoxes and solstices. This is what the Milanković calendar does. If you're building a general purpose seasonal calendar it's the mean tropical year that is the number to match. If, however, the purpose is to stabilize one event, the vernal equinox, then that is a slightly different number for the year, the vernal equinox year. The Gregorian calendar, as a church calendar with the focus on the vernal equinox and Pascha, as should any calendar claiming to be following Nicaea_I, would want to give first consideration to the vernal equinox year although the tropical year would work, generally, in principle.

So what do the numbers give for the different calendars and years? The numbers change slightly but these are representative to illustrate the concept. All mentioned years have 365 days but the fractional component is different. The fractional components are:

Mean Tropical Year: 0.242181 mean solar day        Vernal Equinox Year: 0.24237 mean solar day

The goal is to match this fractional part by using a leap year method so that (number of leap days included)/(number of years involved) best matches one of the two numbers above depending on a choice of mean tropical calendar or a vernal equinox calendar.

As example, the Julian calendar is the familiar (1 leap day)/(4 years) = 0.250 day/year. The difference with the true numbers above, just using a common 0.242 day value is a difference of just 0.250-0.242= 0.008 day/year. This may seem small and insignificant; how long, however, before the error amounts to 1 day? The answer using simple arithmetic is (1 day)/(125 years). At the time of Nicaea_I, AD 325, relative to Caesar's 46 BC 25-March equinox date (assuming that's when it actually occurred) the error is (46+325)(0.008)= 2.968 days = ~3 days. The actual correction that has come down to us and used in the Gregorian reform was 4 days relative to Caesar's 25-March equinox, thus giving the 21-March date for the equinox (apparently as established by the Alexandrian Church at the time it made the determination) used in the Gregorian reform. At the time of the Gregorian reform the error was 13 days from the 25-March date, thus the Pope's mandated 10 day correction to get to the desired 21-March equinox date.

So, here are some numbers to compare and make a choice. Which one is best for the desired kind of calendar? The best may not be the most practical for various reasons.

Julian                1/4 = 0.2500
Gregorian      97/400 = 0.2425
Milanković   109/450 = 0.242222...

So the Gregorian does better for the Vernal Equinox Year, the Milanković for the Mean Tropical Year.

For either year the Gregorian calendar will not reach a 1 day error until after the year 4750. If one leap-year day is removed from the Gregorian method in 3600 years its fraction after 9 of its 400 year cycle (9x97-1=872) becomes, 872/3600 or (dividing top & bottom by 8) the 109/450 of Milanković. If the mean tropical year is the standard both calendars have the same potential accuracy but the Milanković does it automatically and more elegantly but by a more involved leap year algorithm (i.e. prescription) every 450 years rather than the 3600 years of the Gregorian with a 1-day ad hoc correction. But would a switch really be worth it considering the small gain relative to the possible complications of everyone adopting a new calendar?

For the Vernal Equinox Year there is even a better value than the Gregorian. It seems it was know by Clavius, Pope Gregory's calendar expert, from (allegedly) the Persians (recall the Magi) through the Syrian Patriarch mentioned by me in a previous post. That values is

Persian 8/33 = 0.242424...

Why not use it? It seems to me Pope Gregory favored a simple leap-year formula correction that worked in conjunction with the already well-know and used 1-day-in-4-years method.

A side note: Apparently this 8/33 value was known also by Protestant England where some, in particular one John Dee, wanted to create a calendar based on it and thus better the Pope, as it seems some Orthodox would insist also be done; see the stuff here [orthodoxinfo.com] noted in a prior post. Not only that but they found the place on earth whereby the drift in the 21-March date of the equinox would be the least. Whether true or lore it is fascinating historical intrigue and gave rise to the concept (though called so such much later) of God's Meridian or God's Longitude. Where would that meridian be? Depending on how it's taken, it can cover parts of the Eastern and Central time zones of the US. At the time of the Gregorian calendar promulgation the English calendar proponents determined it to be on the average 77°W. As related (based on an at times flamboyant so I don't know how reliable source):

Just lore and legend? And with hindsight one can finesse the data to produce a coincidence. As it turns out, though, is there anything of particular note at 77° W?

[Linked Image]

When?

The pictures are from the U.S. Navy's "What the moon looks like now" online application:

What the moon looks like now [aa.usno.navy.mil]

They were taken at the end of the 14th and beginning of the 15th day of their respective lunar calendars, when, according to the approximation presupposed by both computi, the moon is just slightly past full and so should have a full, round appearance. The Gregorian picture was captured at 19:36 Central Time on August 28, 2015. The Julian picture was taken at 18:23 Central Time on September 1, 2015.

The link given produces an image of what the moon looks like now. I like the USNO cite but could not find a link there that gives an image of the moon for past dates. Please give that link if it's available.[OK, found it.]

What is the interpretation of this data in terms of calendar and paschalion and computus accuracy, and their correspondence to the observed occurrences?

The interpretation is obvious: The Gregorian approximation to the lunar phases is a good approximation. The Julian approximation is a bad approximation because it has accumulated an error of around 4 days.

Thanks, your point is noted, but the interpretation was not obvious for me. For one thing, what's the significance of the dates chosen for the images from the USNO site? Why August-September and not a March-April-May time fame that would include the ecclesiastical Paschal full moon dates?

The comparison can be done at any time. The Gregorian and Julian lunar calendars assign an age of the moon to every day of the year. Sunset tonight, February 19, 2016, began the 12th day of the Gregorian moon and the 8th day of the Julian moon. The two systems' lunar ages typically differ by 4 days, though sometimes by 5 days. So the Gregorian calendar predicts that the moon tonight has the appearance of a waxing gibbous moon and the Julian calendar predicts that she will appear as a first-quarter moon. A single glance at the sky shows that the Gregorian calendar is closer to the facts.

The schematic moon used by both calendars associates the full moon with the 14th day of the lunar month. The full moon is considered to occur on the 14th day, so that at the sunset beginning the 14th day the moon is considered to be a little short of full, and at the following sunset, ending the 14th day and beginning the 15th, the moon is considered to be just past full. I picked the day that was the 14th day of the lunar month for each calendar and captured the picture from the navy website at an hour that was near sunset ending the 14th day and beginning the 15th in the respective calendars. Because of both calendars' association of the full moon with the 14th day of the lunar month, both calendars predict a full, round moon rising at the sunset that begins the 15th day. The Navy website allows one to compare the visible moon to each calendar's prediction.

Indeed, a "single glance at the sky shows that the Gregorian calendar is closer to the facts."

Does the computus reckon and count the full moon day of the lunar month by its occurrence from sunset to sunset?

That's right. The lunar day begins at sunset. Today, Monday February 22 2016, for example, was the 14th of the lunar month in the Gregorian lunar calendar during the hours of daylight. But once the sun set at your location it became the 15th, and it will remain the 15th until sunset on Tuesday. If you like, it is the 15th of Christian Adar, though obviously not of Rabbinic Jewish II Adar, which is next month.

I think we posted this and talked about it last year, but this AFB by Father Andrew Damick provides some insight into the issue. He took a lot of heat from Orthodox traditionalists who thought he was pressing an 'agenda'. Sadly when it comes to religion, like politics these days, ill founded opinion usually trumps (no pun intended) facts. Anyway, Father Andrew addresses the critiques of his musings in italics in this revised version. It is worth a read. https://blogs.ancientfaith.com/road...ssover-and-other-orthodox-urban-legends/

Fr. Andrew speaks the truth. Then what happens? While he doesn't retract -- and needn't, he spoke correctly -- he clarifies.
Believing what he wrote, he should be advocating for change in practice. He should have a strong opinion even while following his bishop. On the basis of what he describes he should advocate for a change to the (Julian pashalion) "Orthodox practice." One counteracts the "800+ year old urban legend" that is correctly "chalk[ed] ... up to bad catechism" by forceful, good catechism not by just saying there it is folks, these are the real facts but I'm not advocating anything.

If ever there's a case of the tail wagging the dog it's this calendar issue where those who know better are stymied by the threats of reactionaries who practice ecclesiastical McCarthyism ( = "the practice of making accusations of subversion or treason without proper regard for evidence") to get their way.

In light of some truly disturbing and uninformed recent comments by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Pope on a fixed date for Pascha, advocates for the mandate of Nicaea_I need to be united. There's a lot of dismissing this calendar issue as simply man-made -- "not set by the Apostles" -- but I believe there is a lot more at stake here that especially the fixed-date advocates don't realize. As Fr. Andrew writes, the Church's practice

I do not so read the history. The bishops of Rome and Alexandria had been corresponding for years before Nicea in order to agree on the date of Easter, and they probably already had tables. Contemporary documents indicate that only in Syria did the practice continue of setting Easter according to the Jewish month of Nisan, rather than according to an independently-computed, Christian, Nisan. Independent computations were already in use almost everywhere else. The use of tables did not begin with bishop Theophilus.

The council, for its part, gave no special privileges to Alexandria. Most of the bishops were probably unaware that the Roman and Alexandrine tables sometimes disagreed with each other. Any that were aware of it appear to have expected any discrepancies to be worked out in practice, and this is what the history shows happening. From Athanasius's festal letters and the Aramaic index to them, and from a Latin document known as the Chronograph of 354, we find that, when there was a difference, sometimes Alexandria accepted Rome's date (346 and 349), sometimes Rome accepted Alexandria's date (330), on one occasion (333) they split the difference with a date that accorded with neither table as best we can reconstruct them, and sometimes, indeed (343), they had separate Easters. But we know that both cities already had tables. For the Latin West, some early 8-year Easter tables survive from the 3rd century. For Egypt, Eusebius tells us, or at least implies, that Alexandria was using a 19-year "cycle", which for practical purposes is no different from having tables.

Have you considered contacting Father privately? I suspect you and he would have an interesting discussion...and not in a negative way.

LOL! I was speaking with a friend last night who is Orthodox and is not overly thrilled at Julian Pascha falling in May. He jokingly said his Lenten schedule will be as follows:

March 13: Forgiveness Sunday
March 14-18: First Week of the Fast
March 18: Join New Calendar Parish
March 19: Begin Holy Week
March 20: Palm Sunday
March 25: Annunciation
March 27: Pascha
April 30: Re-join Old Calendar Parish for more ham and kielbasi

I had not but have followed your suggestion, writing to him through his parish website:



Thank you, DMD, for the suggestion.

Yes, Jewish/Biblical "evening and morning," but is that how the Gregorian (and for that matter even the Julian) computus counts the days of the moon to construct its algorithm, and then how it presents the results in the use of the various tables. That is, one can construct a table based on an evening-to-evening day but present the result transposed to a midnight-to-midnight day for application since that is how the intended users commonly reckon the day, as an actual calendar day.

This also raises a question about the exact astronomical calculations and how and whether or not it considers a day of the moon, in particular the first or the fourteenth. It needn't but is this a further departure from the ancient -- patristic -- understanding that evolved for the Pascha formula? Did the early church understand the sense of the 14th day as an inclusion, in a solely Christian interpretation and implementation, of the Passover prescription, e.g., Leviticus 23:5-6 New King James Version (NKJV):

5 On the fourteenth day of the first month at twilight is the Lord’s Passover. 6 And on the fifteenth day of the same month is the Feast of Unleavened Bread to the Lord; seven days you must eat unleavened bread.

Two commonly invoked Patristic texts [as quoted in the interesting and informative study by James Campbell, “The Paschalion: An Icon of Time,” St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly, Vol. 28 No. 4 (1984) pp. 245-262. See also the same at https://www.academia.edu/8246608/The_Paschalion_An_Icon_of_Time)]:
A Biblical 14th day, however, need not be invoked and is not explicitly for:

Sunday following the first full moon on or after the northern hemisphere vernal equinox.

[Here even a calendar is not necessary just the continuous counting of the seven days of the week.]

What is the time frame here of the day of the equinox and of a Sunday? The timing of the moon appears as an instant, not any kind of day. How did the WCC's Aleppo [Synodica V (Chambésy - Genève, Les Editions du Centre Orthodoxe, 1981) 133 - 149.] take into consideration the sense of the 14th day? The prescription above is a more modern expression that obscures -- ignores? -- the 14th day understood as only coincidentally the full of the moon but more so as the Biblical Passover, the Biblical day of the Passion to be followed by the 15th day, symbolically, on the 1st day of the week, Sunday, the day of the Resurrection.

Considering this difference for example:

Lunar conjunction [en.wikipedia.org]

In being astronomically exact, and not just correct by some applicable standard -- e.g. observing a new moon ascribed to not an instant but the time frame of a day, or to a definition and table of Ecclesiastical, Paschal full moons -- is an intended Biblical rhythm and symbolism abandoned and lost?

ajk, I'm not sure I understand your questions. I'll make a few comments that might (or might not) be pertinent to them.

The traditional computi are based on the average synodic month (present-day value 29.530589 days). They don't try to account for any motions of the moon other than the average motion. At least one of the corrections to the lunar motion, called the "evection", was known to the ancients, but I can't find any of the early writers on the Easter cycle who bothers with it. The age of the moon is rounded off to whole days. The moon assumes its age at sunset. Bede writes (De Temporum Ratione 43, Faith Wallis's translation):

In the early writers, the terms "fourteenth moon", "full moon", and "Passover" (when it does not refer to the Easter festival itself) are interchangeable. Origen, writing about the first Passover in Egypt (Peri Pascha 20, Robert J. Daly's translation):

Theophilus, bishop of Alexandria, writing to Emperor Theodosius ca. A.D. 480 (Prologus Theodosii 1, Norman Russel's translation):

Jerome (Homilies on the Psalms 5, translator unknown since I got the quote from an anthology)
Though I said that the age of the moon was rounded off to whole days and that "full moon" and "fourteenth day" were interchangeable terms, there is one qualification. The moment of opposition is considered to take place on the fourteenth day, nearer to the end of the day than to the beginning. So at the beginning of the fourteenth day, the moon is still not yet full, but everything that happens on the fifteenth day happens after the moment of opposition. Origen, in the passage quoted above, seems to count the opposition as taking place on the boundary between the 14th and 15th days. Theophilus also considers the moon not yet to be full at the beginning of the fourteenth day. Explaining why Easter Sunday cannot fall on the fourteenth of the moon, he writes:

Theophilus takes it for granted that the celebration of Easter Sunday will begin on Saturday night. He states that it is wrong to set Easter to the 14th if the 14th is a Sunday because the moon is not yet full on Saturday night at the beginning of the 14th day, implying that it is full sometime later in the 14th day.

The knowledge that the liturgical day begins at sunset is not necessarily transmitted in an Easter table. After all, the simplest Easter table is simply a list of 19 dates for the Passover or Paschal full moon (PFM), the 14th of Gregorian or Julian Nisan, for example:


But by some of the writers it is considered common knowledge that the liturgical day starts at sunset. Theophilus refers to this practice in one of the quotes given above. Bede, stating on the basis of the Genesis account that the scriptural day runs from sunrise to sunrise, goes on to say (De Temporum Ratione 5):

Since the 3rd- and 4th-century writers who developed the computus use only the average lunar motion, round off to whole days, and introduce an additional approximation by making the lunar age cyclic in the civil calendar, the Julian lunar, even in the days of its best accuracy, could not be exact. The Gregorian lunar calendar follows the same approach as the Julian more accurately, and because it uses the same approach--average lunation, whole days, cyclic in the civil calendar for 100-300 years at a time--it is necessarily approximate. The use of exact computations every year, whatever else might be said about it, would be a considerable break with tradition since it changes the whole approach to the lunar motion.

Oops. Theophilus's date should be 380, not 480.

Thanks for all the details. I'll have more comments but focusing on your last statement: What's your appraisal then of the WCC's Towards a Common Date for Easter [oikoumene.org] proposal?

The WCC proposal would work, and no one could say that we failed to observe the first full moon after the equinox, at least at the reference longitude.

On the other hand, the traditional approach almost always gets the same answer as exact calculations would. Years such as 2019, in which the Gregorian computus will overlook a full moon that occurs a few hours after the equinox, are the exception. One could argue that using exact computations is far beyond the point of diminishing returns in achieving the needed accuracy.

And as I noted, the WCC approach (which has much in common with Milankovic's proposal) would work for computing the Paschal full moon, but it would be a departure from the tradition of using a lunar almanac which assigns an age of the moon to every day of the year. Besides the Easter computation, the age of the moon was traditionally noted daily in the office of Prime, in which the next day's date and age of the moon were announced. In the Roman church, Prime has been abolished, but others elsewhere continue to use it. Maintaining a lunar almanac is not necessary for the computation of Easter, and those who sing Prime can always resort to the Old Farmer's Almanac; but it is a custom that does no harm. It might even be said to do good in reminding us of how "the heavens declare the glory of God" (Ps. 19.1 by the Hebrew count). So I don't see any need to scrap the custom.

That should read, "no one could say that we failed to observe the first Sunday after the first full moon after the equinox."

Yes, but is that compatible with the formulation using the 14th day of the moon? I'm not necessarily saying that the newer wording is wrong and that an evolution in the directive isn't possible only that it be done with an appreciation of the difference and the consequences. For instance:

Right, Feb. 22 2016 in this example comprises the 14th and 15th day of the lunar month. I presume the assignment to a calendar day as in the table below then would be:

Feb. 22 the 14th day
Feb. 23 the 15th day

Considering:

So for 2016 as an example, #3, the Gregorian PFM means that the 14th day of the moon, as determined by the Gregorian computus, is understood as from the evening of March 22 to the evening of March 23? If March 23 were a Sunday, Easter is the following Sunday, March 30.

Comments are common about the inaccuracy of the Gregorian computus. The criticisms are often biased themselves or incomplete in either the choice of meridian or not taking it as a consideration at all in making the comparison. The Gregorian computus, and I presume the Julian also, are internally consistent and in that sense correct based on the (idealized) model they employ. The Gregorian differs from the Julian in that it also corresponds, to within an accepted degree of accuracy, with what the earth, moon and sun are actually doing. The specification for that model is based of the fourteenth day of the moon (as in Inter Gravissimas [myweb.ecu.edu] ), not the full moon per se, and a lunar day as noted above. It seems the modern formulation does not properly reflect this. Besides having to specify a meridian for its determination -- not wrong but a necessary added feature -- in also prescinding from an explicit accounting for a lunar day, does it introduce a departure from the primitive understanding of the directive and desire of Nicaea_I as it had evolved up until the Gregorian reform? For instance, using the example of G.N.#3 above, using the WCC's approach, what is the result if the astronomical equinox has occurred and astronomical full moon is on the evening of March 22 and March 23 (as above) is a Sunday? Easter is March 23 (rather than March 30 as above for the computus)?

Does the Old Farmer's Almanac use the computus? Prime is still observed in some Latin (i.e western vs. eastern) Catholic monasteries.

Something I did not appreciate at first is that the Gregorian reform provides a complete calendar understood in the sense of of a solar and lunar accounting. We moderns take the moon for granted by comparison. As Inter Gravissimas [myweb.ecu.edu] notes, however:

Returning to the sense of a computus vs. "exact astronomical" determination, we should consider the compromises that we take for granted and readily accept. Any calendar of whole days must allow an error to accumulate that is then periodically corrected; our 12/24 hour clocks don't conform exactly with the Equation of time [en.wikipedia.org] , the lunar cycle is usefully and conveniently presented with a Tide clock [en.wikipedia.org] or Astronomical clock [en.wikipedia.org] (an even more) or the Moon Dial On Grandfather Clocks [theclockdepot.com] the last using an average based on the 15th day as the full moon:

If the first day of a lunar month of 29.5 days is taken to begin 24 hours after conjunction and the moon moves through its phases with a constant angular velocity, then opposition will occur 14.75 days after conjunction--on the 14th day about 6 hours before the beginning of the 15th day.

If the first day of the mean lunar month is taken as beginning with the mean conjunction, then of course the mean opposition will occur on the 15th day.

In the case of the Gregorian lunar calendar, Clavius made sure to start the lunar months a day or so after the mean conjunction in order to give the full moon a strong association with the 14th day of the lunar month. That he succeeded is shown by the following data:

So as ajk has been saying, the Gregorian computus implements the outlook of the 3rd-4th century Christian computistical writers very well.

Mockingbird presents a useful comparison. The results of a similar comparison for just the Paschal full moons is given in Gregorian Reform of the Calendar [casinapioiv.va] [Proceedings of the Vatican Conference to commemorate its 400th Anniversary, 1582-1982, Extra Series 3, Specola Vaticana, Vatican City, 1982, pp. xxv-323. Contents and Preface by Fr Coyne].

The following excerpts, (p 220-221) from the paper by A. Ziggelaar, S.J., in that Proceeding, augment some of the considerations in this thread. In the excerpts: Clavius, S.J., is the chief scientist of the reform committee; Ignatius is the Syrian (abdicated, called a former Nestorian in the paper and who I referred to in previous posts) Patriarch of Antioch; Professor T. Lederle is the same whose calculations were used by the WCC's Aleppo gathering; the Compendium is the initial detailed proposal by one Luigi Giglio that was chosen as the basis for the reform; the Explicatlo is the published detailed explanation of the calendar and computus by Clavius.

Contrary to what I had written in a prior post, exact astronomical calculations were considered, initially favored by Clavius but rejected in favor of keeping the traditional approach of using a computus. It is clear that the Gregorian reform's goal was to disturb the prior, traditional approach as little as possible and function in the same overall manner. It strove for continuity with the prior Metonic cycle formalism requiring, however, that an acceptable fidelity of the calendar and paschalion to the actual celestial events obtain.

So, science and tradition are harmonized; better to be late than too early, in line with patristic thought:


The new model strives to minimize "error":


The issue of how the lunar day should be reckoned and the question of how that impacts exact calculations such as the WCC's is noted along with a concern. Referring to the table (p 221):

That's right. The lunar day formally corresponds to the civil day whose hours of daylight will coincide with the lunar day's hours of daylight. Put another way, the lunar day begins 6 hours before the civil day.

Thanks to these postings I've come to have a greater appreciation for the first chapter of the Prophecy of Isaiah!

Have you? And what is that?

While awaiting an exegesis of Isaiah 1, what may seem an abstract discussion about this Calendar-Easter thread can be put in concrete, observable terms. According to the Astronomical Applications Department of the U.S. Naval Observatory [aa.usno.navy.mil] we on planet earth recently experienced the vernal, i.e. spring northern hemisphere equinox:The calendar date is no doubt that of the commonly used de facto international calendar. It's the one most of us have hanging on our walls. So spring began Sunday March 20, 2016 at 4:30AM UTC (roughly Greenwich, England). Across the globe that translates to as early and late as

Baker Island Sat, Mar 19, 2016 4:30 PM local time
Kiritimati Sun, Mar 20, 2016 6:30 PM local time

and for a well-know location

Washington DC Sun, Mar 20, 2016 12:30 AM local daylight saving time

The point is that if we trust this date the March equinox has taken place everywhere. These times are based on a modern definition: The Date of Easter [aa.usno.navy.mil]

Following the prescriptions of our predecessors in the church, early Canons, Nicaea_I and Patristic writings, this is the first requirement for determining the observance of the annual Pascha feast, what we will sing as the "feast of feasts" at Matins.

Next, according to the Patristic wording, we are to wait until the fourteenth day of the moon. The first day of the moon can mean the new (dark) moon or the first observable crescent, or making some observation and adjustment of a day; the lunar day in this context is from sunset to sunset or 6 pm to 6 pm. The fourteenth day is the fourteenth day, not the full moon, but it can be and has been so associated. Patristic writers are insistent that Pascha be after the (biblical) fourteenth day of the moon. (It is easier, I presume, to determine an on-off phenomenon like the first light of the moon than degrees of fullness, plus it allows 14 days for preparation.)

Using the USNO site, the astronomical New moon [en.wikipedia.org] --

--

was March 9, 2016 at 01:54 UTC. The full moon is 14.4215 days later on March 23, 2016 at 12:01 UTC. (The full range of local occurrences is +/- 12 hours of UTC and for adjustments for local time and time zone convention this could be as much as +/- 14 hours.)

The bottom line is that we are expecting to see a very full moon the evenings of Wednesday & Thursday, March 23 & 24 (go outside and take a look). Then according to the traditional prescription understood in any combination of the Patristic or modern wordings (today being March 22 11:37 AM EDT as I write) Pascha is to be this Sunday, March 27, 2016.

The date here is on that common civil calendar I mentioned above and is used for convenience. Using any calendar that preserves the 7-day biblical week, taking today as a reference, mark the above relative times for the -- actual, as given above -- equinox and full moon; the next Sunday, that is this coming Sunday on the chosen calendar by the above criteria, is Pascha according to the biblical/patristic/counciliar directive.

That would depend on the details of the implementation. If the implementation used a midnight-to-midnight day for assigning the date of the full moon, it would sometimes give a different assignment from what it would give if a 6PM-to-6PM day were used, for example.

Please re-read Isaiah 1 !!!

I have. What do YOU mean?

Try Isaiah 1:14! If the Lord God is tired of these ultimately useless astronomical conundrums, imagine the effect they have on a cranky old priest!
There already IS a common date for Pascha -- the one established at Nicea. Let's just get the best telescope man can create and observe the date as stipulated. Fr. Bob Taft, S.J., please give us more of your words of wisdom!

A problem in this and most discussions on the calendar and date of Pascha are the facile and uninformed comments that are casually thrown out in the midst of serious discussion. Don't be cranky, be informed. We don't require a Fr. Taft -- he is certainly welcome to the discussion -- we just need to study the issue as thoroughly as possible in its historical, scientific and theological facets. The acquisition of knowledge and understanding can get messy.

"There already IS a common date for Pascha -- the one established at Nicea." Everyone should hold to this but there are Pope, Patriarch and Archbishop who would fix it to make it simple and convenient for the world, for commerce and school calendars and business etc. For them the intrusion of the yearly observance of the Resurrection is to be fixed by, in effect, following the excerpt from Isaiah as though it were an absolute pronouncement. Of course that is not their motivation and a proper exegesis of Isaiah 1, putting the verse in context, reveals that he is addressing, rather, a certain class of people (four verses prior):

RSV Isaiah 1:10 Hear the word of the LORD, you rulers of Sodom! Give ear to the teaching of our God, you people of Gomorrah!

Jesus who observed the feast reckoned on the new moon of spring understood Isaiah 1 correctly and even celebrated the feast with fervor and anticipation:

RSV Luke 22:15 And he said to them, "I have earnestly desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer;

Our science, astronomy, and telescopes are already and for some time have been more than good enough. Some details in applying and specifying the prescription that has evolved based on the decision of Nicaea are still wanting, even in using precise yearly astronomical data. There's nothing wrong in relying on modern science but it is not the only legitimate solution that it is sometimes made out to be. The 16th c. calendar reformers considered detailed calculations and chose instead, as Pope Gregory XIII specified, a traditional computus that was in perfect accord with Nicaea_I, patristic thought and the evolution of the paschalion up to that time, retaining the familiar methodology and adapting it only as necessary to achieve the required accuracy needed for a functional calendar. The Gregorian calendar is a very good calendar which is why it is so widely used, an international standard. The Gregorian paschalion is a very good -- close to the best if not actually so -- computus, faithful to the method used since Nicaea_I. It is the already existing right solution. This year we have just experienced the actual equinox, the fourteenth day of the moon and then in accord with the accepted prescription, the Sunday just past that followed, as the feast of Pascha.

So I do not agree that "the Lord God is tired of these ultimately useless astronomical conundrums." After all, He created them and us, His "rational sheep," to figure it out.

Can you provide a link to the thread you refer to?

I have worked as an astrophysicist, and I never needed the Julian calendar, or any other, for my computations on interstellar molecules. I used the Gregorian calendar to make sure I got to meetings on time.

For some long-distance computations involving dates both before and after the change-over to the Gregorian calendar, it can be convenient to do the computations entirely in the Julian calendar, or entirely in the Gregorian proleptic calendar, and convert as needed at the end. Often this will mean using the Julian calendar since that was the contemporary calendar for much of early history, or because historians have already synchronized many useful ancient dates into the Julian proleptic calendar. But this has nothing to do with which calendar is a better approximation to the Spring equinox tropical year, or with which calendar has more accurate lunar tables.

People often confuse the "Julian Calendar" with the "Julian Date", which has several different meanings.

Some branches of science use the "Julian Day" to have a single count of the days since the creation of the world, using 12h Jan 1, 4713 BC as the starting point.

Others use it as a simplified way to count the days, using January 1 as day 1 (i.e., 2016-001) and December 31 as day 366 (2016-366). But this is more properly called the "Ordinal Date".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_day
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordinal_date

Quite a history there. I recall but did not document that NASA's alleged use of the Julian Calendar was noted by an Orthodox bishop whose writing appeared on the calendar related page of what I refer to as the Unorthodox Unchristian Misinformation Center ( link [orthodoxinfo.com] ). It is no longer there, being perhaps too misinformed even for that site's taste -- or maybe I found it on a different site.

The canard has quite an interesting history on this forum. It is a study of the inability to communicate, persuade, reason and comprehend when the result, e.g.
has already been decided. In chronological order:

1 link
2 link
3 link
4 link
5 link
6 link
7 link
8 link
9 link
10 link
11 link
12 link
13 link
14 link
15 link
16 link
17 link
18 link
19 link
20 link
21 link

As I understand, the beginning of the Julian period was not the supposed date of the creation of the world, but the day on which, according to Scaliger's calculations, the 28-year solar cycle, the 19-year lunar cycle, and the 15-year cycle of the indiction all had a simultaneous beginning.

It is true that the 28-year solar cycle presupposes a Julian year of 365.25 days. It is also true that, together with the Julian day count, some astronomical computations use the Julian century of 36525 days as a time-unit. But still this has nothing to do with the accuracy of the Julian calendar. The Julian calendar predicted an equinox on April 3rd. The Gregorian calendar predicted it on March 21. It was on March 20 UT. The Gregorian approximation was closer to the exact result. The Gregorian calendar predicts a full moon between sunset April 20 and sunset April 21 this month. The Julian calendar predicts a full moon between sunset April 25 and sunset April 26. Exact computations predict the full moon at 5:24 UT on April 22. The Gregorian approximation is closer to the exact result.

An example of the use of the Julian calendar in astronomical computations is Simon Newcomb's "On the recurrence of Solar Eclipses, with tables of Eclipses from B.C. 700 to A.D. 2300", published in Astronomical Papers prepared for the use of the American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac, Washington, 1882, pp. 1-56.. Newcomb's tables are in the Julian calendar presumably as a matter of convenience. The user of the tables thereby avoids the discontinuity at the Julian-to-Gregorian changeover. Certainly it has nothing to do with the accuracy of the Julian paschalion. If we used the Julian lunar tables we would never predict eclipses accurately.

Today is the 14th if Nisan ("passover") in the Julian lunar calendar.

Here is a recent article on the topic of the Julian computus:

https://publicorthodoxy.org/2016/04/25/some-common-misperceptions-about-the-date-of-paschaeaster/

On an earlier thread here, Azarius wrote:


The average lunar drift is roughly one day in 300 years. The exact value rises and falls. In terms of days per year this is slower than the solar drift in the Julian calendar, but in proportion to the length of the full period, solar year or synodic lunar month, the lunar drift is faster. The present-day discrepancy is a little more than 4 days, so in about a thousand years, Julian Easter will always fall in the last week of the moons phases, rather than in the third week where is ought to be.

In the same post, Azarius also linked to this page, [staff.science.uu.nl] which compared the Julian Easter date in late antiquity and the early middle ages to the date of 15 Nisan that would have been computed on the modern-day Rabbinic calendar. The difficulty with this is that the traditional date of A.D. 359 for the promulgation of the Rabbinic calendar is almost certainly wrong. Some of the rules (such as the 19-year intercalation cycle, or the fixed lengths of the months from Adar to Tishri) that later became part of the Rabbinic calendar may date to that time, but the detailed mathematical work on the Rabbinic calendar did not begin until the 700s, and the details did not reach their present-day form until the 800s, according to Sacha Stern's reconstruction of the history. So only the last of the dates shown in the table, 743 and 783, can be asserted with much confidence, though all of the dates remain possible dates for 15 Nisan that might have been arrived at by means other than the modern-day computation.

Julian and Gregorian Easter are on the same date this year, but Julian and Gregorian Passover (14 Nisan) are different as always.

The Gregorian Passover (14 Nisan / Paschal full moon) this year is on April 11.
The Julian Passover this year is on April 15.

For comparison:

The Rabbinic Jewish Calendar's 14 Nisan is on April 10.
The Samaritan Calendar's 14 Nisan is also on April 10.
The astronomical full moon is on April 11 (Universal time)

I thought it about the time of year for the annual "battle of the calendars" to occur. If not a battle, at least the annual upsurge in interest in the two dating systems. I have decided to take the easy way out - are you listening Alice? I will have two chocolate bunnies this year to celebrate the two calendars.

Whenever I read the broadsides on the dating of Pascha, I think of Isaiah's opening salvo: "Your new moons and sabbaths and great day I cannot endure. Fasting and holidays as well as your new moons and your feasts my soul hates! For who asked these things from your hands?

And as usual we all have a good chuckle as nothing concrete happens and some of us sneak off to celebrate Pascha twice because just once a year is really not enough and in the end it would be sad to just condemn us to one date.

Which two? Four calendars were mentioned and five relevant dates. Yes relevant dates for those who care. Simply reporting accurate, disinterested information should be appreciated by anyone who desires to be properly informed.

The internet is a medium with incredible potential -- and actuality -- for the irrelevant and the trivial, so it's refreshing to get some data of substance. For those interested in a serious discussion, a very relevant question is, what do the numbers, the dates imply?

I have a sense of humor but I'm not laughing about this calendar issue. Though Christianity has survived without a common date for Pascha, it is generally agreed by all that the Fathers of Nicaea I desired such a common celebration of the "feast of feasts," even against occasions of being able to eat two "chocolate bunnies."

This off-the-cuff-quoting-of-scripture methodology was regrettable the first time around but very disappointing to find it just repeated here again. The prior exchange is in a few posts around this time last year: post by Economos Roman V. Russo and reply by ajk.

So last year I found it regrettable, this year reprehensible. Consider taking a course in scriptural exegesis.

Let those with ears hear, those with tongues proclaim, and those with tight underwear, loosen up! ;-) Unfortunately, I am restricted to the calorie count in one chocolate bunny although secretly lusting after two. All the contention about calendars which has, btw, become ludicrous in the extreme, could be exactly what some make fun of. East and West have dug themselves into trenches and would rather die than make any changes. Nicea certainly meant well, but could not predict future happenings. Quite a bit has happened since that would throw the good council into conniptions. Were the good fathers transported into this time, calendars would be the least of their worries. Perhaps chocolate bunnies for all would help.

Yes indeed, a continued discussion of "chocolate bunnies" is the serious consideration advanced by those who consider themselves in the know or, don't want to care or don't know enough about the issue to care. I do not think the calendar issue is ludicrous at all nor do I think the present wisdom is the equal to the ancient understanding of nature's witness to the rhythm of our faith that the Fathers appreciated. Anyone who does think so would be considered foolish if the issue were commerce or travel or timetables or banking or farming etc. The secular world is wise or maybe just practical enough to realize the worth of a properly functioning calendar, the irony here being that it was provided them by the Catholic Church.

So, those who don't know or don't care then, be so, but also be considerate enough to refrain from trivializing a discussion held to be serious and worthwhile by others.

I find all the calendar angst interesting, when not peculiar. The argument usually goes, "I want to celebrate Easter with the other Christians at the same time." This assumes, of course, that the other Christians have any interest or desire to celebrate Easter with you. As for any precision in those calendars, no one knows when Easter actually occurred and never will. Those dates are all made up. It could be celebrated in October just as easily and it wouldn't make much difference. Commerce, banking, and travel timetables reflect far more precision than Easter dating.

I can see how someone could feel this way. Consider in an analogous sense, however, liturgical vestments, texts and appointments. Why not either duplicate the conditions of ca. AD 33 or use contemporary clothing, electric lights rather than candles etc.. It is also missing the thrust of what I hold is the Church's sense of history. For instance, there is a movement seeking the "historical Jesus" but from what I'd say is the Church's view, that movement has coopted the term historical -- what the movement seeks is not the historical Jesus but the chronological Jesus -- a newspaper-account or history-book Jesus, not the Gospel Jesus.. It is archeology not the Church's history which is paradosis (παράδοσις; 1Cor 11:2,11:23,15:3; and the Divine Liturgy's τῇ νυκτὶ ᾗ παρεδίδοτο, μᾶλλον δὲ ἑαυτὸν παρεδίδου ὑπὲρ τῆς τοῦ κόσμου ζωῆς, on the night He was handed over or rather when He handed Himself over for the life of the world), tradition, the handing on of what has been received. It is through paradosis that the ancient events are made present for each generation of Christians. It is the liturgical today (Gk:σήμερον; L: hodie) that we often sing that says this so directly.

The chronology of most events of history or personal recurring events are merely a convenient repetition linked to a calendar date. But there is nothing exact about it as referenced to the actual event. Over the course of an exact calendar year the earth does not return to the same place in its orbit plus the exact moment or day of one's birth is adjusted, given interposed leap years and leap centuries, to the specified calendar date.

While scripture and especially the Gospels -- Jesus was a person in history -- are concerned with dates, the purpose is not to achieve a chronologically exact birthday-like yearly observation. So for the Church's purpose not knowing the actual date is not that important since it can still achieve the handing-on and making present for today by the (most likely somewhat arbitrary) chosen date. The important factor is that it is presented as the liturgical today.

If there is any event in the life of Jesus that could be determined and fixed to a a birthday-like calendar date it is probably the Resurrection. But that's not likely to work if it has to be a Sunday; the sequence of days is unbroken for all practical, and theological purposes back to Genesis and "In the beginning...the first day." It also has to align with the prescription of the celebration of Passover given in scripture (Exo 12:18, Lev 23:5, Num 9:3, Num 28:16f). But achieving this date, while interesting, is not to the Church's purpose.

After all, as accepted by (as far as I know) all Christians today, it must be a Sunday. This was what was foremost in the determination made at the time of Nicaea I and as against the Quortodecimians. So right there a birthday-like same calendar date reckoning is out. So what about a fixed Sunday close to the time. Popes and even the present Pope have considered this with some inclination: practical and pragmatic but woefully uninspired, pedestrian and diminishing the cosmic -- astronomically literal and mystical -- relevance, the relevance of the created universe, to the Resurrection. This is not said here as hyperbole or rhetoric.

I have come to appreciate that the prescription that has come down to us from the time of Nicaea I is brilliant, and is the best way of achieving the true remembrance, the re-presentation, the sense of the liturgical today for our -- Christians -- yearly observance of Pascha. Since no fixed dating could achieve the customary purpose, Nicaea's prescription keeps the desired, and deemed essential, Sunday observance and, showing great insight, fixes it in proper sequence with the earth's cosmic rhythm AS HAPPENED AT THE TIME OF THE PASSION AND RESURRECTION OF JESUS. It is not the repetition of a fixed calendar dating but of our, Mankind's, inherent submission under the two great lights that God created to rule the day and night (Gen 1:15-19). And so, even in the proleptic sense, everyone -- from the beginning and to the end of the ages -- that passes through the sun achieving the equinox (spring) and the moon achieving its fullness and the weekly sequence of Sunday -- the first day of the old and new creation -- passes into and through the Resurrection.

That's why I consider the calendar issue so important. We give up so much to the ignorance and shallowness of the age -- not this too.

So, according to Nicea I, when is Pascha? Do the Orthodox Old Calendarists have it right?

I would be happy if you established an AJK Easter date. If you could get enough groups to agree, we could all celebrate that day happily and sincerely.

The issue with Nicea is that they were trying to establish events and chronology for a figure not even well known in his own time, Christ was a very minor historical figure in a small and not prominent region of the empire. And they did all this several centuries after the fact. They had few if any records, their science was primitive and often incorrect, and their conclusions were no better than any other group making a guess based on similarly limited knowledge.. More recent saints are documented and recorded so that we know factual information on their lives and activities. Not so with Jesus. I think we all believe Christ died and rose from the dead. It is nearly impossible to determine date and time. We also really have no idea when he was actually born. All this is why I don't take calendars too seriously.

That is disingenuous since everything you have written indicates you wouldn't. I don't have to do so, it's already been done. That should be obvious to anyone following this and prior threads on the topic, even if disagreeing. Those disagreeing are the ones needing to come up with a calendar since it is they who are at odds with the established one. It's known as the Gregorian calendar, aka the civil calendar as in

link [en.wikipedia.org]

I'm not sure where such pronouncements come from. You have either failed to read or comprehend what I've written. That's your choice or limitation but it renders any further fruitful dialog on this topic ineffectual.

The Council of Nicaea I did did not give a full prescription; there is no such extant document. From letters and other documents, however, the prescription agreed upon by most if not all is that, foremost, Pascha is to be celebrated on a Sunday and not the 14th of Nisan. Christians should not base their determination on any Jewish method. In today's terminology Pascha is the Sunday following the 14th day of the Paschal (northern hemisphere spring) moon. The Paschal moon is that which occurs on or immediately after the vernal equinox which at the time of Nicaea I was March 21. The Gregorian reform adjusted the calendar so that the equinox would again fall on March 21 -- the Julian calendar was off 10-11 days in 1582; it's now off 13 days -- and leap centuries were implemented to keep the equinox stabilized around that date.

While doing this with scientific precision is possible today, the intent of the prescription does not demand that. A model that gets the basic sequence right does the job. This was needed in times past so that tables, a general method, could be fashioned and distributed so that the determinations could be done locally.

The method that used a model is called a Paschalion of which two are in use: Julian and Gregorian, each implying a calendar. The calendar is required for aligning its March 21 with the equinox. Except for that, just knowing the day of the week, however, is sufficient, and in fact the scientific method does not require a calendar but it does require that the place of observation of equinox and moon be specified. It is interesting that it and the primitive method's approach are basically the same, differing only in the degree of precision. The idea is that one just observes nature. So pick a place on earth. When spring is approaching, start looking for a new moon. The new moon is an off/on event that is easier to determine than whether the moon is full or not, and to know if the moon is full requires that its waning is observed and then it's too late. So, observe the new moon as day one, count to the 14th day of the moon -- presumed to be the full moon; if not so scientifically that's ok, it's close enough. Has spring occurred or is this the first day of spring? If no, wait for the next moon. If yes, the NEXT Sunday is Pascha.

The basic sense is that at Pascha spring has just occurred and a fairly full moon is in the sky and it's Sunday. Past posts have shown pictures indicating how miserably off the Julian Paschalion is some years in matching those conditions, whereas the Gregorian is right on.

Most often no. For now and the future, Old Calendar dates are in accord with Nicaea only when they agree with the Gregorian. See the Aleppo conferences calculations [oikoumene.org]showing the comparison for one particular set of conditions, the meridian passing throught the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. An occasional miss by a Paschalion does not mean it's "wrong" since in another place of observation it may be right. Many or most misses, however, indicates a defect as demonstrated by the Julian predictions.

Those who observe according to the Julian Paschalion celebrate Pascha piously, devoutly and well, but most often do not do so on a Sunday that adheres to the prescription deriving for Nicaea I.

For what it is worth, I fully support and accept the Gregorian calendar and its date for Easter. However, I maintain the men of Nicea were churchmen and politicians, not men of science. Their system works as well as any determination could when made 300 years after the fact, and isn't worth haggling over. I will be celebrating Easter next Sunday with no concerns for calendar disputes. No disrespect to the Julian celebrants, since their Easter will be just as blessed as my Gregorian Easter.

I agree and even so when the Julian and Gregorian Easter do not coincide.

Churchmen for sure and polticians hopefully in the ideal sense of serving and having concern for the polis, the city, and that both of God and Man. Some most likely were men of the science of their day as we are of ours. That science in many respects, mathematics and astronomy for instance, was not benighted. The problem with the calendar and choosing a way for dating Pascha was appreciated long before it was fixed by the Gregorian reform. When science had caught up to the task, that is in the 16th century, it was not the case of having to correct what Nicaea proposed but of properly applying it.

I really want to understand your point here. The haggle at the time of Nicaea was with the Quartodecimians. Was that a necessary haggle, that is, was it only proper and correct that we observe the yearly commemoration of Pascha on a Sunday given a theology that holds that every Sunday in particular is a commemoration of the Resurrection? Or is it equally valid that Easter should be observed on any day of the week, for instance, the 14th of Nisan.

What other "system" do you have in mind? Given all that's been discussed, I don't see how "300 years after the fact" is in any way relevant. In your eyes, what was the deficiency caused by the 300 year lapse? What did the Council Fathers not know that they needed to know to make the best pronouncement?

To summarize then, 2 questions to help me understand your position:

1. Should Easter be only on a Sunday?

2a. if yes, what information, historical or otherwise, is needed to best determine what Sunday that is?
2b. If no, what best determines the day of the year to observe Easter?

As I read the sources, this is not the case. The controversy at Nicea was not between Sunday-observers and weekday-observers, but between two schools of Sunday observance: "Jewish calendarists", or traditionalists, located in Syria, who wanted to locate Easter on the Sunday in the week of Unleavened Bread as calculated by their Jewish neighbors; and "Independent calendarists" or innovators, located everywhere else, who wanted to locate Easter on the Sunday in the week of Unleavened Bread as calculated independently by Christians.

A good point although I'd say it may not have been the case, the former understanding of the controversy as being with the Quartodecimians still having some, though it appears diminished, bearing. Those being, or being termed, Quartodecimians were still around (according to a secondary source) and in contention with Chrysostom (c. 349 – 407).

So, better, a "haggle at the time of Nicaea was with the Quartodecimians." In the context, however, my focus (bold) , is the "haggle at the time of Nicaea" not just the Council. I'm referring to the 300 years as noted:
What is it about the 300 year gap that has relevance? My questions were addressed specifically to byzanTN because he made the point but I'm asking in general, from scratch, to the forum: What is it that we need to know to reach the most informed prescription, the best decision, on when Pascha should be celebrated, and given that information, what is the best way -- method, date, day of the week, etc. -- to designate the annual event?

As a side point, if the initial Quartodecimian controversy were in fact all but settled, and the Council was actually just deciding against a Sunday in accord with the Jewish reckoning of Passsover, then the Old Calendarist's insistence and others who apply their ad hoc logic, that "of course we must celebrate after the Jews, that's the right order of course," are even more specifically wrong by invoking a rule that is directly in opposition to the Council's.

The elephant in the discussion is that with the adoption of the Gregorian calendar the seven day Sunday cycle was broken.

When that calendar was adopted in England and its North American colonies eleven days were cut.

Had the conversion occurred at a multiple of seven days the weekly cycle would have remained intact.

No it wasn't.

You're right. The only things the council explicitly declared were unanimity and independence of the Jewish calendar. Those who insist that the Julian computus has some built-in mathematical dependence on the Rabbinic calendar are ignoring one of the council's best-documented decisions. Then there is also the matter that the Rabbinic calendar did not even exist at the time of the Council.

Indeed. The elephant in these discussions is the assumed error(s) that must be present, of course, in the Gregorian reform. The corrections, whenever they occur, are done by the calendar conforming to the uninterrupted progression of the days of the week. For instance in the original correction, Thursday, 4 October 1582 was followed by Friday, 15 October 1582, with ten days dropped. The date shifts keeping the progression of the days. A (biblically influenced) calendar is a construction overlaying what can be considered the intrinsic 7-day cycle of Genesis.

That the conversion to the Gregorian calendar was done without breaking the weekly cycle is also demonstrated by observation: a Sunday on the Julian calendar is also a Sunday on the Gregorian.

Again, to all, what about the questions?

Here are some of my thoughts which may still miss some subtleties. I have no problem with the perpetual tables -- the Julian and Gregorian -- that are good enough-- only the Gregorian. Consider instead precise astronomical calculations as was done at the Aleppo meeting for specific conditions (equinox and after the full moon at Jerusalem). It seems the intent voiced by the Fathers was that Pascha be after the full moon. In accordance with scripture and the need to be able to observe a lunar event that gives sufficient time to prepare, however, it is the new moon and not the full moon that is the determining event. It is then sufficient to count to the 14th day of the moon after which Pascha is the next Sunday. For this approach, how are the days of the moon counted, evening-to-evening or midnight-to-midnight? Since as in the Gregorian reform it was important to fix March 21 to the equinox, why not choose the place for determination as the one with the least deviation of the equinox from a given calendar date (in this case March 21)? If the calculations I've seen are correct, that meridian (coincidentally) passes over the US Capitol.

This presumes the approach of Nicaea but again there are others. What are the data, information, facts that are needed about the death and resurrection of Christ that might allow a more informed way of designating Easter/Pascha?

Scholar Sacha Stern has pointed out that the word "Quartodeciman" is not reliably attested until after the Council of Nicea. It appears in a chapter heading in the surviving manuscript of a work attributed to Hippolytus, but chapter headings might well be later than the text itself. Therefore to call the 2nd-century practice of Polycrates "quartodeciman" is anachronistic.

He has also pointed out that there is no evidence of continuous observance of the Nisan-14 practice from Polycrates's time to the later 4th century, and has proposed that the late 4th-century quartodeciman practice was a protest, cribbed out of Eusebius's history, against heavy-handed enforcement of the Nicene decision, rather than a continuation of Polycrates's practice.

However that may be, it is not self-evident that the Nisan-14 practice of Polycrates is older than the Sunday practice. In Eusebius's account, both are old and traditional by the time the controversy arises in the late 2nd century. Indeed, the Nisan-14 practice looks somewhat contrived. Eusebius and Polycrates are both clear that the Asians ended their fast on the 14th of Nisan, not on the 15th. This suggests that they ended their fast during the hours of daylight on the 14th, not waiting for sunset. This is not a continuation of any traditional Jewish practice that I know of. Indeed, if the "fast of the firstborn" was practiced as early as the 2nd century, the Nisan-14 practice of Polycrates might well have been a Christian retort to the fast of the firstborn.

The Sunday practice, on the other hand, looks like something that Christians could have arrived at easily. Sunday was a Christian holiday from the very beginning. There is nothing inconsistent about Christians singling out the one Sunday a year that falls within the week of Unleavened Bread for special esteem.

Terms come into use and then are routinely applied retroactively, ex postfacto, It is good to know when such terms actually are documented. So, for example, the United States declared its independence 4-JUL-1776, although the designation United States was enacted 9-SEP-1776, and our earliest fellow Christians are Peter, James, John, etc., although "in Antioch the disciples were for the first time called Christians." (Act 11:26 RSV)

The impression I have gotten is that the two practices were parallel traditions each claiming apostolic connections. Sunday for the weekly observance also has, "On the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread." (Act 20:7 RSV) The extension to the annual observance seems straightforward yet, there is:

link [en.wikipedia.org]

History is important and should continue to inform us ... even as it continues to be worked out,

I have some familiarity with those texts. The texts presuppose a link between the death and resurrection of Jesus, on the one hand, and the two Jewish observances of Passover and Unleavened Bread on the other. But I am aware of nothing in them that can be construed as a rejection of the Sunday practice.

Since the texts as we now have them are in the context of an already well-established Sunday observance of the annual Pascha, they would not be understood as a rejection of that tradition, nor are they. The weekly commemoration of Sunday as the Lord's Day, the day of the Resurrection, seems unambiguous and accepted as such given the Gospels' chronology, that the burial was hasty because of the impending Sabbath:
The annual commemoration, the methodology for reckoning it, is and has been witnessed by differing customs, including non-Sunday observance. In the context of a forum post that deemed the ~300 year gap wanting in sufficient detail to come up with an unequivocal solution, I put forth the questions, what is it that needs to be known and, if known, what would be the verdict.

The generations of (early) Christians who so practiced would, and did, disagree with that assessment.

Then there are those today who would scrap the present spring-moon-Sunday approach as contrived or simply arbitrary. How should the chronology of the passion and resurrection of Jesus be mapped onto a subsequent yearly observance, a commemoration of the events, by His Church? What are the priorities, what is the relevant theology? What is the eschatological focus and is it just for today, does it change with the needs of the times, or is there rather a core tradition that required discernment and reception? ... that still requires discernment and reception, acceptance?

Forgive the intrusion. Here's something to consider: the Julian Calendar has a built in correction to get it more astronomically accurate called "the leap year". Leap years can be added or subtracted to suit the needs of the time (or astronomical calculation) without massaging schism. The introduction of the New Calendar into the Orthodox Church has caused painful divisions and separated Orthodox Christians. Revising the Paschalion would be a sin against the unity of the Church as it would cause further acrimony and, perhaps, insurmountable divisions. If one is interested in promoting Christian unity, at very least one should consider returning to the Paschalion of Nicea as a show of good faith which could encourage dialogue.

The built in correction is Caesar's leap year and it is not an adequate correction. A proper method where " [l]eap years can be added or subtracted to suit the needs of the time (or astronomical calculation)" has already been worked out over 400 years ago and has become the common calendar for most of the world; it is the Gregorian calendar.

What is the "New Calendar"? Who is culpable for the divisions, those who correct or those who oppose? According to an old catechism, there are six sins against the Holy Spirit:

1 Presumption
2 Despair
3 Resisting the known truth
4 Envy of another's spiritual good
5 Obstinacy in sin
6 Final impenitence

Old-calendar zealots should seriously consider number 3. The rational arguments against the Julian Paschalion are astronomical in the fullest sense of the word.


There is no single, unambiguous "Paschalion of Nicea."

1. By adding or subtracting leap years as necessary, astronomical corrections can be made accurately without schism. The New Calendar is not the Gregorian Calendar, which was anathemized by three local synods of ecumenical character in the Orthodox Church, but, rather, the "Meletian Calendar," created by a Serbian mathematician, which is supposed to be more accurate and astronomically precise than the Gregorian Calendar. The calculations of either are easily and more practically (in terms of the needs of the faithful) corrected by the omission or addition of leap years: and this won't cause schism but will achieve astronomical accuracy. The opposite choice of ham-handed imposition of a calendar which time travels is hard to account for at best: to wit, where did ten days go when the Gregorian Calendar was adopted? Where did thirteen days go when the New Calendar was adopted? Did we time travel in the seventeenth and twentieth century? No. So this artificial silliness could have been more smoothly done by omission of leap years ten or thirteen times. Without causing divisions amongst Christians.

2. Those people who have broken with the common celebration of feasts, broken with the historical Church and the majority of the Church today, are responsible for the divisions and not 85% of World Orthodoxy (which follows the calendar and Paschalion established at Nicea). The Church historically would have called them renegades and innovators, not held those who maintain liturgical unity with the historical church and 85% of the Church today (the Catholic reality of the Church) accountable. 85% of the Orthodox world does live at the fringes - it is neither "Old Calendarist zealot" nor "New Calendarist innovator". It is simply faithful and Orthodox. No, it is not disobedient or a sin to refuse to place the Church's discipline at the whim of a constantly revising, SECULAR science: it is proper stewardship, fidelity, and obedience to the Church. Secular science also teaches us that men evolved from apes, that there is no such thing as a cold fire, that the dead cannot rise again. The Church teaches otherwise. Faithful Orthodox Christians give obedience to the Church's discipline.

3. The Paschalion established at Nicea as received by the Orthodox Catholic Church and transmitted by her unto our day is the Paschalion Nicea obliges all Christians who wish unity with the Church to observe. It anathemizes those who don't or would celebrate Pascha on another day. For Orthodox Christians this is sacrosanct. Those bodies which are not in Communion with our Church are encouraged to celebrate Pascha with us as a sign that there is good faith and actual intent to reestablish unity. Such an act would help further dialogue.

This proposal of "adding or subtracting leap years" (that is, omitting the leap day) is an implicit acknowledgment that the Julian calendar is erroneous. The method would take 13 x 4 years = 52 years to accomplish but is functionally the same kind of "time travel" as the 10 and 13 day corrections, though less obvious (no Feb. 29) and done over a longer period, 52 years. As to where did the 10 or 13 days go, that's easy: they went to the same place as the omitted 10 or 13 leap days, only all at once.

Overall, I can only repeat the comments in my last post, a fortiori.

Your last comments were addressed, rebutted and set aside.

Since leap years exist in both the Gregorian and Meletian calendars, by your logic they are just as inaccurate. It isn't time travel to omit 29, February which already occurs only in order to correct the inaccuracy of ALL THREE calendars mentioned. It is simply using (or not using) the leap year as it was intended: to bring the calendar up to date.

While the supposed 54 years of adjustment to correct the calendar seems difficult for some, it is a natural transition which avoids schism and talk of "Christmases in July" 50000 years from now by preserving the Calendar adopted at Nicea. It preserves the liturgical Communion of the churches with the historical Church (the Catholic reality of the Church Militant) and avoids the pitfalls of being condemned for introducing schismatic innovations. It also allows local churches an irenic time of transition which will prevent unnecessary scandals and divisions. Those factors all in themselves warrant the gradual transition as being a better solution than what has been done with its ridiculous time travel and schismatic methodology.

Hardly. The Gregorian and Meletian leap year algorithm is accurate, the Julian is not. The three calendars use three different leap year methods; that's why they are three different calendars.

Based on the tenor of your posts in this thread, I must conclude that you do not have sufficient skills on this issue to be discussing it.

It is the same thing I used to believe as an Old Calendar Zealot.

Calendars are just that...calendars. Christ's Church has the authority to change the liturgical calendar if it sees fit to do so. The local Orthodox Churches who implemented the calendar reform did a pretty poor job of doing it and sadly it caused division and in some places, it lead to violence.


And since the Catholic Church continues to celebrate Pascha on the Sunday following the first full moon (14 Nisan) after the vernal equinox it is fully in compliance with Nicea. It just happens to do so on the scientifically more accurate Gregorian (named after a Pope of Rome) calendar. And yet because there seems to be an issue the Church allows some of the Eastern Catholic Churches to use the Old Calendar if they wish. There are more important things to worry about than what calendar one uses.

Since the moderators have pointed out to me that it is inappropriate to answer personal attacks against myself which contain such flourishes as "you lack the necessary skills to discuss this topic" and "Old Calendarist zealot," I am afraid that open dialogue on this topic which would illuminate and perhaps clarify the errors of Calendar reform zeal is not possible. There seems to only be one point of view here which may be voiced. I will leave it at that.

I remind all posters that personal attacks are never appropriate. Please make sure that your posts stick to the topic under discussion and do not descend to personal attack. We are Christians, and should post with charity at all times.

I was referring to myself an OId Calendar Zealot, which at one time I was. Some of the things you were saying reminded me of my own thinking at one time. Sorry if that offended you.

I think the Church of Christ can change its liturgical calendar if she wishes so. She has that authority.

There has been a whole lot of dialogue on this topic, very detailed and at times excruciating, over the course of at least 10 years. Just the content of this thread in its entirety is an example of such dialogue. But you have to read it.

The words in quotes are close to what I've written but are not properly quotes of what I wrote and, consequently, do not adequately reflect my position.

My comments did not reject your proposal, so why set them aside?

If the old calendar folks accept this gradual fix over ~ 52 years, I'm all for it. There was no "Calendar adopted at Nicea" but the proposal to gradually correct the Julian calendar to bring it in line with what is attributed to Nicea is on the mark. One then continues to correct the Julian Paschalion as needed to kept the computus stabilized to what is accepted by all as the proper determination of Pascha. As stated:

That (and the moon phases) fixes the defective Julian Paschalion. The result then after the ~ 52 years is basically the Gregorian or Meletian calendar and paschalion or the methodology proposed at Aleppo.

So the old calendar adherents can believe that they've preserved their Julian Paschalion against the perpetrators of schism etc., but they will have managed to end up at basically the same place and accepting the same necessary adjustments, but in an ad hoc fashion, that were accomplished ~400 years ago by Pope Gregory's reform.

So what is one to conclude?: The "schismatic innovation" is acceptable as long as it's done over a sufficiently long period of time and it's still called the Julian calendar.

The fact you write this in an echo chamber where your erroneous, Calendar Reform propaganda goes unchallenged just emphasizes that your views cannot stand scrutiny.

I think I missed the part where the liturgical calendar became a dogma of the faith. Seriously, if the Church of Christ can't reform its own liturgical calendar what authority does she have then? The liturgical calendar serves the Church and not the other way around.

I think if I am allowed to answer your Calendar Reform propaganda freely your responses won't be as casual.

There was not a single "calendar adopted at NIcea." There was a methodology. If it had been properly preserved, the lunar tables would agree with the visible moon--which they do not do.
[Linked Image]

I have no bone to pick in the calendar debate except to say that it is a scandal that Christians cannot agree on a common date for Pascha. Please, please hierarchs, forget the polemics. Rome pontificates on so many things like the environment amd walls etc. Why can't Pope FRANCIS I simply pronounce that on such and such a date the Latin Church will switch to the Orthododox computation of Pascha. The failure to do so can't be for a theological reason since the Roman Catholics in Egypt and Greece already follow the Orthodox computation.

All is correct if everyone just accepts the Julian computation that is wrong more often than right and getting worse. The polemics I hear are from the Old Calendar zealots, and those who believe them, who can only repeat this mantra instead of just looking up in the sky. If they even bother to look they refuse to see.

Why use a methodology, the Julian computus, that -- demonstrably -- now is NOT in accord with the accepted Nicaea standard?

As an analogy, I'm reminded of an account I read as a kid, in a book about mathematics, about a state legislator who introduced a bill to make pi (ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter) be exactly 3 rather than the irrational (meaning it can't be expressed as a ratio of whole numbers) number 3.14159.... The author remarked that would have turned all their circles into hexagons. Those using the Gregorian computus circular wheels are, as it were, here invited to use the Julian's hexagonal wheels as the desired solution. While they seem ok with the bumpy ride on six-sided tires, I'll decline the invitation in favor of mine that are round.

Again, I have no bone to pick other than that ths unity of Christ's Church should be before all else. If the "correctness" of the Roman calculation is so important than why: 1) Does the roman computation allow Pascha before the eight days of the Jewish Passover iscomplete - one of the conciliar requiremens, and 2) Why then allow the Latin dioceses in Greece and Egypt, etc. follow the Orthodox computation? In additon, Lastly, may I point out that there are Eastern Catholics who follow the complete Julian calendar and others, like the Romanian Greek-Catholics who follow the revised Julian.
Sitting high on a throne of mathematical "correctness" doesn't answer the scandal that this causes, especially in the Midde East and Africa..

There is no such requirement. The computus, whether Julian or Gregorian, is self-consistent and contains no built-in dependence on the Rabbinic Jewish calendar. Indeed, it is part of the Nicene decision that the computus must not depend in any way on Jewish computations.

Eusebius says otherwise in his history of the Church and he was a contemporary to the decision. ... He isn't alone.

This topic is one sided because there is only one position allowed to be heard here. That is unfortunate. So I would discourage people who disagree with the calendar reform crowd from engaging this discussion. Only echos are allowed here.

"If any Bishop, or Presbyter, or Deacon celebrate the holy day of Easter before the vernal equinox with the Jews, let him be deposed." -Apostolic Canons. Reminder, as a liturgist let me again point out that Passover is an eight day festival not one day. To quote an eminent Eastern Catholic theologian and liturgist, "it is liturgically bizarre to celebrate the Passover of the New Law when the Passover of the Old Law is yet to be completed." Nor does the Gregorian "Easter" computation meet the requirements for the computaton of Pascha as evinced by the teaching of St. John Chrysostom. The statement that: "it is part of the Nicene decision that the computus must not depend in any way on Jewish computations" is deceptive and misleading, as most patristic scholars would point out.

Again, the argumntative nature of ths thread is itself the problem. Standing loudly and pontificating on an "issue" merely because it is perceived as the pro-Roman position is exactly why the Holy Churches of God are in the predicament they are in.

Who is the "eminent Eastern Catholic theologian and liturgist," and what is the reference for his quoted words?

Again, please be specific -- a reference or link.

How so is it "deceptive and misleading"? Who are the "patristic scholars"?

Does any of this matter when you have been shown clearly wrong and your position rebuffed as divisive disinformation?

"Who is the "eminent Eastern Catholic theologian and liturgist," and what is the reference for his quoted words?"

Is Father Robert Taft SJ,eminent enough for you? Reference? Dinner conversation.

It does matter. As for " clearly wrong and your position rebuffed as divisive disinformation" see the link I provide below.



Father Robert's scholarship is rightly respected, and you have a direct quote from him from a "[d]inner conversation," As that quote stands, not knowing the complete context, he is quite misinformed. So in this instance he is, in fact, "eminent enough" for me, eminently wrong. As presented, he has a different prescription for Pascha than Nicaea.

About the "eight day festival not one day" and "liturgically bizarre to celebrate the Passover of the New Law when the Passover of the Old Law is yet to be completed" consider:Link=> No, Pascha does not have to be after Passover (and other Orthodox urban legends) [blogs.ancientfaith.com]

Another worthwhile discussion is
Link=> Some Common Misperceptions about the Date of Pascha/Easter [publicorthodoxy.org].

In contrast, here is an example of the problem, pontifications from those with authority who misinform with gusto.
Link=> Christian Pascha after the Hebrew Passover is an "Orthodox Urban Legend"? [oodegr.com].
He recites the words but apparently has not a clue of what they actually say. Others then take up such arguments, and the fiction becomes fact.

Well, if you see ALL the Patristic sources and the canonists as wrong where you know better, your arguments just boil down to you wanting to be right beyond the actuality of the historical, factual record. That is a singular reality. St. Vincent of Lerins or even Francis de Sales dealt with that unCatholic mythology. So your links can't undo clear, historical fact. They discredit themselves as unserious by trying to do so.

So what difference does any of your rejoinder make when primary sources and people contradict you, your hallowed, biased links and the earnestness you have placed into divisive calendar reform rhetoric and insincere polemics?

The point of all local churches celebrating the feasts on the same day was not astronomical correctness nor full moons nor the authority of one local church over another, but rather affirming the Catholic consciousness of the Church in liturgical unity with all times, places and faces. (Even on the science aspect of your polemic - despite the clearly irreconcilable canonical, liturgical and Patristic shortcomings of the calendar reform rhetoric - your position is problematic at best and more often than not disinformative.) The fact that partisans of your side resort to calling people who disagree with your radical positions "Old Calendarists" (even when they are members of officially New Calendar local churches) illustrates just how unbalanced calendar reform propaganda is.

Let's be frank - if this were an open forum where I could freely present information, I would have settled this argument for you a month ago. I have dealt with the disinformation you put forward in Orthodox circles and have always illustrated the shortsightedness of your side. Calendar reforms which promote disunity violate the spirit of Nicea which established a common calendar for all the churches so that a Catholic unity in worship and anemnesis would be observed universally by all people, of all places and all times. Surely, Fr. Taft has even underscored this point to a greater or lesser degree in his liturgical work.

Truth is, it doesn't matter that you are a calendar reform zealot ready to brand everyone who doesn't go along with you a schismatic making an ersatz cudgel out of science which is actually not as germane to this discussion as unity is. (Your use of science is not especially strong either.) Rome will decide for you. It would more than willingly embrace a common Paschalion with the Orthodox, return to the use of Prosphora instead of azymes or even omit the filioque universally with papal documents statements stating "through the Son" was the meaning all along: all the Orthodox must do is bend the knee, accept papal magisterium and the reformed spirit of Vatican II and validate the liberal rule of the Roman Catholic church. Rome would gladly exchange what it believes are "Orthodox cosmetics" for a final Lyons/Florence/Brest. It would even offer up its Eastern Catholic communities "and return them to their mother churches (read Moscow and Antioch) to rectify mistakes of the past." The problem is ecclesiologically, canonically and even theologically, the unionists in the Orthodox Church are a slim minority and thus such a scheme of a new paradigm of Greek Catholicism in Union with Rome has no chance of success. Rome knows this. So these rabbit holes are tossed out there as distractions as sly worded statements are put together by closed door, secretive commissions to try and sway as many as possible to increase the Orthodox minority supporting union and cast it as "reasonable." Those who espouse reunion by stressing the oneness of Faith in ecclesiological, theological, canonical teaching and liturgical temperance, however, are the not so silent majority which the liberals and conservatives in Rome can't fully reach: they need to be worked around.

So, honestly, Mr. Protopappas is correct that unity would be promoted between the Orthodox Catholic Church and the Roman Catholic church by the Vatican universally adopting the Orthodox Paschalion in place since Nicea. It would be a step in the right direction and a good idea. While insisting on disunity and upheaval in the Orthodox Church where Orthodox Catholics simply "submit" will only declare all the unionists' rhetoric of the last fifty years stillborn, another failed attempt at union. He rather adroitly addressed and rebutted your position as factually wrong, divisive and precisely a stumbling block to reconciliation. The fact you use the unmeasured rhetoric of epithets using perjoratives like "Old Calendarist" and "Orthodox mythology" to insist that the world is flat and Orthodox Catholics must accept that and submit precisely proves Mr. Protopappas' point of why the Vatican should return to the Paschalion used by the Orthodox Catholic Church.

Protopappas76,

Could you provide the actual number of the canon you referenced from the Apostolic Canons.


Thanks

I asked for a reference for the specific sources; don't know who they are so could not have said they're wrong. Still don't know.

I've written very favorably of St. Vincent, even in posts on this forum. Our mission has liturgy at a RC parish dedicated to St. Francis de Sales so I also have a bond with him.


The links are Orthodox sources, well-written, balanced and knowledgeable. I've not been shown any documented primary source that refutes the understanding and interpretation of Nicaea that I've presented. The polemics from me are quite sincere and contain well-documented facts.

Actually, patristic sources, Sts. Ambrose and Chrysostom specifically, were very keen on the moon. Astronomical correctness here does not necessarily entail a mathematically and physically accurate model, that is a calendar system, but just the correct observation of nature, the natural phenomena of sun and moon. It is the natural phenomena that constrain the calendar. The Julian calendar minions have it the other way, that the calendar trumps nature. It is a simple test, observation as shown for instance in the moon images provided in a recent post, that demonstrate the unacceptable and unwarranted departure of the Julian computus from reality.

My science is sound (credentials, experience and all that).

Isn't that what they are, "Old Calendarists"? I felt a response to your post was in order but shall limit it to this extent
.

You simply won't appreciate any answer which either shows you are factually wrong or actually off base. Such an attitude does not promote any reasonable understanding of any given topic. It only strengthens Mr. Protoppas' point that your emphasis is divisive, is founded on less than stellar argumentation, should be abandoned by the Vatican if Rome wants unity (or to at least to promote unity) with the Orthodox Catholic Church.

No, the point of a common Paschalion and liturgical calendar for the entire Church was to promote common anamnesis, liturgical unity throughout all times, places, amongst all the faithful: that is the liturgically Catholic witness of the Church. Appeals to astronomical computations or redacted lunar observances were always secondary to unity.

No, just because someone promotes radical and divisive calendar reform propaganda in the name of "science" or some official institution doesn't give that person the license to slur those who disagree with his divisive posturing. "Old Calendarist" has a very specific, derisive meaning with the implied meaning of schismatic: Old Calendarists have a set ecclesiology and propaganda which does not include everyone who regards calendar reform zealotry as unwarranted and a needless and divisive distraction (Actually most people who disagree with you either on the Old or New Calendar by over 90% would never be considered "Old Calendarists"). Using slurs only diminishes your position and underscores its divisive nature.

If it is still necessary to follow the prescription of Nicaea, this unity can only be achieved by accepting the Gregorian reform or an equivalent. Unity under the Julian computus is an abandonment of Nicaea's position.

They go together. If they did not, Quartodecimanism or a fixed Sunday celebration would be a solution.

The Gregorian reform used God-given knowledge to reform the calendar to conform to the Council of Nicaea's prescription to achieve unity.

In your head then but not in mine where Old Calendarist = one who follows the old calendar, the Julian Calendar.

For me this describes, in part, the Old Calendar Zealot who has put the Julian calendar above the Church and promotes it (the calendar) as a cause in itself.

The problem is your entire argument is "according to you" with its slurs, its own "facts," its canonical liberties and its entire "science". Blatently so when it ignores history, patristics, the holy canons, common sense principles of reconcilation to then insist on submission to you, epithets and ultimatums as your bonus. Then you redouble your demands feverishly using abusive, highly redacted, half baked "science" which does not at all support your point and even delegitimizes it in how it ignores the Church's Catholic consciousness and anemnesis. Thank you for illustrating just exactly what I have been talking about. Mr. Protoppas I am sure is happy you have reinforced his position by your divisive calendar reform zealotry and insistence on slurs and straw men.

So with that our conversation is over: you have made our point. There is nothing more to express. Be well.

If you want that unity and adherence to Nicaea then accept the Gregorian reform or the Aleppo proposal or equivalent. Of course we have a bone to pick; that's what we're doing here. Some of the bones are:

As already shown in previous posts (you have to read them and the links provided) there is no such requirement and the Julian computus itself violates the stated requirement. You Julian calendar folks are so adamant that you don't bother to simply check the actual facts where the Julian computus itself doesn't even meet the incorrect requirement intended to disqualify the."Roman calculation."

Because the Latins here are less diligent for the truth than the Orthodox are zealous in their insistence on following an erroneous calendar.

The required mathematical correctness here is the true servant of what the Council of Nicaea desired and mandated.

As a priest who taught Liturgy (including the "calendar issue" on the seminary and graduate level, I find that the toxix temper pf this supposed dialogue in some cases illustrates my point. Christian charoty and the unity of the Church of Christ is infinitely more important than mathematical and astronomical compuations. "Father that they may be one..." is not a simple statement, it is the essence of the Church. "One bread and one cup at one holy table" obviously by extension means one paschalion. As a priest who has served Christians predominently from the Holy Land, let me simply point out the scandal this kind of "useless calendar argumentation is" to the suffering people of the Middle East.
I am not promoting the Julian calendar, I am not promoting the Revised Julian calendar, nor am I attacking the Gregorian calendar. Rather, I am urging an end to the quibbling and endless argumentation that the Apostle Paul warns us against. Every time I stand at the Holy Table and serve the Divine Liturgy I am struck by the awesome reality that is our call that, through the all-encompassing power of the Holy Spirit, the nature of things changes. Bread and wine become the Body and Blood of the Living God and we ourselves are called to change. Pride of correctness give lie to the" humility which is te key t all the virtues."
The Church is not about calendars and popes, or even dogmatic formulation - as important as they might be - it is about the unity of one faith in the love of one God. Promoting this calendar or that calendar is not what we should be promoting from our own castle-like citadels (even those with their own telescopes and astronomical tables.) Rather we should be calling out and pleading to heaven together with the Christ who loves us: "Father that WE may be one..."

Eusebius of Caesarea, On the Celebration of Easter; De sollemnitate Paschali (2010)
Angelo Mai, Novae Patrum Bibliotheca 4 (1847), pp.209-216 (De sollemnitate paschali)

... 8. When, however, the emperor most beloved of God was presiding in the midst of the holy Synod,[38] and the question of the Pascha was brought forward, there was said all that was said. And three [fourths] of the bishops of the whole world had the advantage in numbers as they strove against those of the East: The peoples of the North, the South, and the Occident together, being fortified by their harmony, pulled in the opposite direction from those of the Orient, who were defending their ancient custom. But at the end of the discussion, the Orientals yielded, and thus there came to be a single festival of Christ—and thus they stood apart from the killers of the Lord, and were joined to those who hold the same doctrine.[39] For nature draws like to like. And if someone were to say that it is written, "On the first day of [the festival] of Unleavened Bread the disciples approached the Savior and said to him, 'Where do you want us to make preparations for you to eat the Pascha?'—and he sent them to such-and-such a man, bidding them to say, 'I am celebrating the Pascha at your house'"[40]—I will answer that this is not a command, but a historical account of an event that took place at the time of the Savior's passion. It is one thing to recount the ancient event, and quite another to make a law and to leave behind commands for posterity.
9. But furthermore, the Savior did notcelebrate the Pascha along with the Jews at the time of his passion. For when they were sacrificing the lamb, at that time he himself was conducting his own Pascha with his disciples. They [i.e., the Jews] were doing this[41] on the Preparation day on which the Savior suffered; for this reason, they did not enter the praetorium, but instead Pilate came out to them. But he [i.e., Jesus] a full day earlier, on the fifth day of the week, was reclining at table with his disciples, and as he ate with them he said, "I have very much desired to eat this Pascha with you."[42] Do you see how the Savior did not eat the Paschaalong with the Jews? Because this was a new custom, and one foreign to the customary Jewish ways, it was necessary for him to institute it by saying, "I have very much desired to eat this Pascha with you before I suffer." The one set of practices, being now ancient and indeed antiquated—the [Pascha] which he used to eat along with the Jews—was notdesirable; but the new mystery of his new covenant, which he imparted to his disciples, was desirable to him, quite rightly so. Since many prophets and righteous ones before him desired to see the mysteries of the new covenant, and since the Word himself, who thirsted at all times for the general salvation, was passing down a mystery by which all people would celebrate the festival, he professed that this was desirable to him. The Pascha of Moses was not suitable for all the nations of all time—of course not, when the Law had stipulated that it be celebrated in a single place, namely Jerusalem.[43] And so it was not desirable. But the Savior's mystery of the new covenant is suitable for all people, and so it was naturally desirable to him.

10. But he himself, before he suffered, ate the Pascha and celebrated the festival with his disciples, not with the Jews. But when had celebrated the festival at evening, the chief priests came upon him with the traitor and laid their hands on him; for they were not eating the Pascha [that] evening, otherwise they would not have busied themselves with him. And then, having seized him, they led him off to the house of Caiaphas, where, after spending the night, they gathered together and conducted the preliminary inquiry. Then, after that, they arose and led him, in company with the crowd, to Pilate; and at that point, the Scripture says that they did not enter the praetorium, so that they would not become defiled[44] (so they thought) by coming in under a pagan roof, and would eat the Paschaat evening with their purity intact—those most foul ones—who strained out a gnat but swallowed a camel;[45] those who had become defiled already in soul and body by their bloodthirstiness against the Savior feared to come in under [Pilate's] roof! They, on the one hand, on that very day of the passion, ate the Pascha that was injurious to their own souls, and asked for the Savior's blood—not on their own behalf, but to their own detriment; our Savior, on the other hand, not then, but the day before, reclined at table with his disciples and conducted the festival that was desirable to himself.

11. Do you see how from that time, he [i.e., Jesus] was separating himself from them and moving away from the Jews' bloodthirstiness, but was joining himself with his disciples, celebrating the desirable festival together with them? So then, we too ought to eat the Pascha with Christ, while purifying our minds from all leaven of evil and wickedness, and taking our fill of the unleavened bread of truth and sincerity, and having within ourselves, in our souls, the "Jew in secret"[46] and the true circumcision, and anointing the doorposts of our minds with the blood of the Lamb who was sacrificed for us, to ward off our destroyer. And we do this not only at a single time of the whole year, but every week. Let our "Preparation" be fasting,[47] the symbol of mourning, on behalf of our former sins, and for the sake of remembering the Savior's passion.

12. I assert that the Jews have gone astray from the truth, ever since they plotted against the Truth itself and drove away from themselves the Word of Life. And the Scriptures of the holy Gospels present this fact clearly. For they testify that the Lord ate the Pascha on the first day of Unleavened Bread; but they did not eat the Pascha that was customary for them on the day on which, as Luke says, "the Pascha had to be sacrificed,"[48] but instead on the following day, which was the second day of Unleavened Bread and the fifteenth day of the lunar month, on which, when our Savior was being judged by Pilate, they did not enter the praetorium—and consequently, they did not eat it on the first day of Unleavened Bread, on which it had to be sacrificed, in accordance with the Law. For in that case they themselves too would have been celebrating the Pascha along with the Savior; instead, they were blinded by their own wickedness from that very time, concurrently with their plot against the Savior, and they wandered from all truth. We, on the other hand, conduct the same mysteries [as Christ did] all through the year: On every day before the Sabbath we carry out a remembrance of the Savior's passion through a fast that the Apostles first engaged in at the time when the bridegroom had been taken away from them; and every Lord's day we are made alive by the consecrated body of the same Savior, and are sealed in our souls by his precious blood. ...



[38] I.e., Constantine at the Council of Nicaea.



http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/eusebius_on_easter.htm

1) If any bishop, or presbyter, or deacon celebrates the holy day of Easter before the vernal equinox with the Jews, let him be deposed.

(Canon 7, Council of Nicea, 325 A.D.)

2) Whosoever shall presume to set aside the decree of the holy and great Synod which was assembled at Nicea in the presence of the pious Emperor Constantine, beloved of God, concerning the holy and salutary feast of Easter; if they shall obstinately persist in opposing what was rightly ordained, let them be excommunicated and cast out of the Church; this is said concerning the laity. But if anyone of those who preside in the Church, whether he be bishop, presbyter or deacon, shall presume, after this decree, to exercise his own private judgment to the subversion of the people and to the disturbance of the churches, but observing Easter at the same time with the Jews, the holy Synod decrees that he shall thenceforth be an alien from the Church...

(Canon 1, Council of Antioch, 341 A.D.)

3) If any bishop, presbyter, or deacon shall celebrate the holy day of Easter before the vernal equinox with the Jews, let him be deposed.

(Seventh Apostolic Canon)

The First Ecumenical Synod and the Feast of Pascha

Archimandrite Sergius

...In two of his epistles, St. Athanasios touches on the matter of the celebration of Pascha. In a letter to the Bishops of Africa (Chapter 2), he writes:

“The Synod of Nicaea was convened on account of the heresy of Arius and because of the issue of Pascha. Because the Christians in Syria, Cilicia, and Mesopotamia were not in concord, at the same time (t“ kair“) that the Jews celebrated their Passover, they celebrated...[the Christian Pascha]...,
too” (Migne, Patrologia Graeca, Vol. XXVI, col. 1029). In his letter “On the Synods in Ariminum and Seleucia” (Chapter 5), the Saint comments: “The Synod in Nicaea was held not without manifest reason, but out of good reason and urgent need; for the Christians of Syria, Cilicia, and Mesopotamia were erring with regard to the holy days and celebrated the Pascha with the Jews (metå t«n ÉIouda¤vn §po¤oun tÚ Pãsxa)” (ibid., col. 688). It is evident from the context, here, that “metå t«n ÉIouda¤vn,” with the Jews, means precisely what the Church has always taught; the expression refers to
nothing other than a common celebration with the Jews at one and the same moment in time (t“ kair“).

Moreover, it is this very temporal concelebration which invited reproach and which was one of the reasons for the convocation of a synod in Nicaea. ...

***

St. Ambrose of Milan (circa 339-97), in an epistle written to the Bishops of the district of Emilia in 386, observes, in response to a question from
them regarding the lateness of Pascha in the coming year (387): “The determination of the Feast of Pascha according to the teaching of Holy Scripture and the Holy Tradition of the Fathers who assembled at the Synod in Nicaea requires not a little wisdom. Aside from other marvelous rules of Faith, the Holy Fathers, with the aid of eminently experienced men appointed to determine the aforementioned Feast Day, produced a calculation for its date of nineteen years’ duration and established a cycle of sorts that became a mod-
el for ensuing years. This cycle they called the “nonus decennial,” its goal being...the sacrifice of the Resurrection of Christ at all places on the same
night” (Epistle XXIII, Chap. 1, Migne, Patrologia Latina, Vol. XVI, col. 1070). The basic rule for the calculation of Pascha is set forth by St. Ambrose in the eleventh chapter of the same epistle: “We must observe a rule, such that the fourteenth moon [i.e., the fourteenth day of the month of Nisan, the Jewish Passover] be not set on the day of the Resurrection, but on the day of
the passion of Christ, or on another preceding day, since the celebration of the Resurrection is celebrated on Sunday.” Further on, he justifies the rule in question by reference to the Feast of Pascha in 373 and 377, which fell on late dates: “Thus, in 373, when the fourteenth moon [that is, the Jewish
Passover—author’s note] fell on March 24, we celebrated Pascha on March 31. Likewise in 377, when the fourteenth moon fell on April 9 (Sunday), the
Pascha of the Lord was celebrated on the following Sunday, April 16.”

In essence, St. Ambrose confirms the correctness of the basic condition set by the “Alexandrian Paschalion” and universally accepted by the Synod in Nicaea: that the Pascha of Christ must never coincide with the Jewish Passover and that it must not only follow the Jewish Passover, but be celebrated on Sunday, at that.

In view of this clear statement by St. Ambrose in support of the nineteen-year Paschal cycle devised by the Holy Fathers at Nicaea, it is difficult to understand why Archbishop Peter, who also cites the foregoing passage from St. Ambrose’s twenty-third epistle, who acknowledges that the Saint "thought in this way,” and who even admits that “the Alexandrian cycle was
used in Milan and in the Churches administered by that city,” nonetheless later writes, wholly inconsistently, that “the idea that the nineteen-year long
Alexandrian cycle was confessed by the Fathers in Nicaea was only bit by bit
introduced” (ibid., p. 75).

* * *

Another important source that confirms the basic rules for the calculation of Pascha is the collection of the Paschal Epistles of the Patriarchs of Alexandria, which were promulgated at the beginning of each year and in
which the date for the next Pascha was announced. A great number of such Paschal Epistles have been preserved in the works of St. Athanasios the
Great (in the period from 329 to 335) and in those of St. Cyril of Alexandria (during the years 414-442). Practically all of these epistles uphold the canon-
ical proscription against celebrating Pascha “simultaneously with the Jews” and their Passover, since not a single of the Paschal dates listed coincides with the date of the Jewish Passover.

Archbishop Peter (OCA) is absolutely unjustified in his claim that in “the fourth century, after Nicaea, the Christian Pascha and the Jewish Passover coincided several times” (ibid., p. 79). In support of this false assertion, he cites the French scientist V. Grumel, who, in his essay “The Problem of the Date of Pascha in the Third and Fourth Centuries” (Journal of Byzantine Research, Vol. VIII, pp. 165-166), uses a table of Paschal and Passover dates, published by Swartz, for the nineteen consecutive years between 328 and 346. Only two of the dates in Swartz’s list are, in fact, Sundays, namely, 329 and 333. With regard to the first of these dates, 329, St. Athanasios designates April 6 as the date of Pascha, not March 30, as does Swartz. With respect to the year 333, St. Athanasios writes that the date of Pascha was moved back, in order to avoid its coinciding with the anniversary celebration of Rome. Again, aside from the two years mentioned, none of the dates in the table used by Archbishop Peter falls on a Sunday.

Therefore, the “Paschal” dates on which he bases his arguments are fictitious!

* * *

The late date of Pascha in 387 prompted St. John Chrysostomos, while he was still a Presbyter in Antioch, to deliver three sermons “Against the
Jews” in the autumn of 386. Out of ignorance, many Christians in that city celebrated Pascha simultaneously with the Jewish Passover. On this account, they began Great Lent earlier than the correctly appointed time. In order to correct them, St. John Chrysostomos invokes the decree issued by the Synod in Nicaea in this regard: “More than three hundred Fathers, assembled in the land of Bythinia (at Nicaea), decreed this [that is, that Pascha must not be
celebrated simultaneously with the Jewish Passover—author’s note], and you dishonor them in this way. You convict them either of ignorance, as if they were unaware of what they were appointing, or of cowardice, as if they knew the truth, but only by pretense, and betrayed it. This is the implication, if you do not respect their decree. Great wisdom and manliness are evidenced in all of the Acts of the Synod.... Beware, then, of what you do, for you are bringing accusation against a great many wise and manly Fathers. If Christ
is found among the two or three [St. Matthew 18:20], all the more was He found among the more than three hundred, when they determined and established all of these things. Furthermore, you accuse not only them, but the whole ecumene, for it approved their decree. Do you consider the Jews more intelligent than the Fathers who were assembled from every part of the inhabited world?” (Third Sermon Against the Jews, Migne, Patrologia Graeca, Vol. XLVIII, col. 865).

How forceful, indeed, are the words that St. John Chrysostomos uses to chastise the Christian “Judaizers,” and this not only for celebrating Pascha si- multaneously with the Jewish Passover, but for “fasting with the Jews”—an infraction, incidentally, also explicitly forbidden by the seventieth Apostolic
Canon: “Whosoever fasts with the Jews or celebrates with them...should be excommunicated!” Yet Archbishop Peter, when quoting St. John Chrysosto-
mos’ homily on this specific issue (“To Those Who Fast Before it is Time”), maintains his silence with regard to the Christian “Judaizers,” and, indeed, at the very beginning of his article even notes that “...in these discussions, provoked by the peculiar Paschal practice of the Orientals, no one accused them
of being ‘Judaizers’” [emphasis mine]!

* * *

St. Epiphanios of Cyprus, a contemporary of St. John Chrysostomos, though a Jew by origin, denounces the Audiani, a heretical sect which flourished in his day, because they “wish to celebrate Pascha together with the Jews; that is, they essay to prove that Pascha should supposedly be celebrated at the same time that the Jews prepare their unleavened bread” (Adversus LXXX Haereses, Chap. 70, Migne, Patrologia Graeca, Vol. XLII, col. 360).

He argues that God revealed the truth of this matter to us “through two great acts, wrought by the pious and Ever-Blessed Emperor Constantine, who: 1) convened the Œcumenical Synod that established the Symbol of the Faith, composed in Nicaea and confirmed by the signatures of the Bishops gathered there; and 2) clarified, with their aid and for the sake of Christian unity, the issue of the dating of Pascha..., which was accomplished when the Bishops, gathered from everywhere, examined the issue in detail and unanimously decreed that Pascha should be celebrated in accordance with their ordinances.”

St. Epiphanios places particular emphasis on the ordinance concerning the prohibition of the concelebration of Pascha with the Jewish Passover:

“The Holy Church of God...takes into consideration, not only the fourteenth day [of the month of Nisan], but the week—the cyclical repetition of a series of seven days—, as well.... The Church considers not only the fourteenth lunar day, but also the movement of the sun, so as to prevent the celebrations of two Paschas in the same year.... For, though we give attention to the fourteenth day, we pass beyond the equinox and then, further, assign the celebration of Pascha to God’s holy day, that is, to Sunday” (ibid., Chap. 50, Migne, Patrologia Graeca, Vol. XLI, col. 888).

St. Epiphanios continues: “Much could be said about how perfectly well the Fathers, or, more precisely, God Himself, through them, fixed for the Church the correct and true celebration of this loftiest and most holy Feast, such that it might be celebrated after the equinox and that we not celebrate Pascha on the fourteenth day [that is, not celebrate Pascha together with the jews on their Passover—author’s note]”!

* * *

Among the many Fathers who deal with the Paschalion, we should also mention St. Cyril of Alexandria, who wrote the following in an epistle to St. Leo, the Orthodox Pope of Rome: “Let us carefully examine what the Synod in Nicaea decreed with regard to the calculation of the fourteen moons of each month of the nineteen-year [Paschal] cycle; for at every [ensuing] synod, it has been decreed that no Church may do anything at odds with the resolution agreed upon at the Synod of Nicaea about Pascha” (Migne, Patrologia Latina, Vol. LIV, cols. 604-605).

The immediate successor of St. Cyril, the Holy Martyr St. Proterios (who was cruelly killed by the Non-Chalcedonians in 457), addresses the issue of the late date for Pascha in the year 455. He points out that, since in that year the Jewish Passover happened to fall on Sunday, April 17, Christ’s Pascha should be moved to the following Sunday, April 24, “in keeping with what our Fathers did” (Migne, Patrologia Latina, Vol. XLIV, col. 1089).

St. Proterios means by “our Fathers,” here, the Holy Fathers of the Synod at Nicaea, about whom he later says: “When our most blessed Holy Fathers fixed the inviolable nineteen-year cycle [of the Paschalion], they established this very calculation not in accordance with the present-day ignorant and inane devices of the Jews or according to the spurious wisdom of the Gentiles; the Holy Fathers were, rather, guided by the Grace of the Holy Spirit and carefully took into account the fourteen Paschal moons in the course of the aforementioned cycle of nineteen years” (ibid., col. 1091).

* * *

Some centuries later, St. Maximos the Confessor (†662) perfected the nineteen-year Paschal cycle by multiplying nineteen by twenty-eight (the period after which a specific calendar date returns to the same day of the week, that is, to a Sunday). His amplification of the Paschal cycle is known as the Great Indiction, a repetitive cycle of five hundred thirty-two years (that is, 19×28, which=532) comprising the dates for Pascha for each individual year.

In Chapter 14 of his noteworthy work, A Short Clarification of the Redeeming Pascha of Christ our Lord (Migne, Patrologia Graeca, Vol. XIX, col. 1232),1 St. Maximos likewise notes: “We who are, by Grace, vouchsafed to keep the Pascha of Christ, our Lord, with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth [I Corinthians 5:8], allow one day to elapse [in order to celebrate Pascha] when March 21 falls on a Saturday and that Saturday is the fourteenth day of the moon. If April 18 happens to fall on a Sunday, and that Sunday is, according to the Jewish calendar, the fourteenth day of the lunar month, then we allow seven days to elapse before celebrating Pascha. This is because, within the thirty-five days between March 22 and April 25, the redeeming day of Pascha is appointed to be celebrated, according to the canons, not before the former date or after the latter, by virtue of Church
rules and the tradition concerning these dates.”

The Alexandrian Paschalion abides by these same dates to this day, as well as the absolutely clear pro-
scription, in St. Maximos’ comments, against the celebration of Pascha on the same day as the Jewish Passover.

* * *

firecsyn.pdf

OK, you can quote. What's your point?

Quibbling belies the point - the love of Christ and the unity of the Holy Churches of God is infinitely more important than the constant counting of the proverbial angels residing on the pinhead of our prejudices. There are arguments for and against everyone of the calendars, but NONE of them are so important that they should be the source and cause of disunity and lack of charty so often evidenced. We pray for the unity of the Holy Churches of God in the Divine Liturgy.
As Eastern Catholics, as those Orthodox Christian Churches of the East in communion with the Orthodox Churches of the West, let's not forget that our very raison d'etre is the struggle for unity. Let's not destroy and blow away that vision with the "petty squabbles of ancient perceived injuries" that have so often burdened the earnest and loving dialogue that should be our first concern. "Father, that they may be one..." is neither an argument for papal ultramontanism nor for a failure to understand the important role of Peter in the Church.

It is the kind of imperious argumenation so often evinced here that that has plagued our relationship with our sister and even "mother", Churches. The devil makes use of us in dividing His Body. God help us and keep us from standing on old hurts and old divisive arguments that were based based on conditions far different than our own. As illustrious a person as HH Benedict XVI clearly stated that our understanding of these issues must indeed evolve if we are to proclaim Christ to the nations (and he even included the Petrine office). Look around, while we quibble about calendars, the gleefull divisiveness of the evil one runs rampant. Pride destroys, humility builds.

Astronomy's Relevance to the worship and calendar of the Orthodox Catholic Church is at best secondary (viz. Calendar Reform Zeal Not According To Knowledge)

+++

The Holy Prophet Isaiah, for example, says (47:13-14), “Let now the ... the star-gazers ... stand up, and save thee from these things that shall come upon thee. Behold, they shall be as stubble; the fire shall burn them; they shall not deliver themselves from the power of the flame…”

The Holy Prophet Jeremiah writes: “Thus saith the Lord, Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them. For the customs of the people are vain…”

In Book of Daniel (2:27-28), we read: “Daniel said, the Secret which the kind hath demanded cannot the wise men ... the soothsayers, show unto the king; but there is a God in heaven that revealeth secrets.”

In his Epistle to the Galatians, St. Paul, finding that even some who had become Christians were holding to their former practices and ideas, pagan teachings they were taught: “But now, after ye have known God, or rather are known of God, how turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements (the Greek word means ‘rudiments of religion’, such as astrology or even pagan science, astronomy) whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage? Ye observe days and months and times, and years. I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labor in vain.” (4: 9-11)

St. Gregory the Theologian (Oration XXXIX, v) speaks of “…the Chaldean astronomy ... comparing our lives with the movements of the heavenly bodies, which cannot even know what they are themselves, or what they shall be.”

St. John of Damascus (The Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, Book II, Chap. vii) writes: “Now the Greeks (the pagans) declare that all our affairs are controlled by the rising and setting and collision of the stars, the sun and moon (and the signs of the zodiac) ... But we hold that we get from them signs of rain and drought, cold and heat, moisture and dryness, and of various winds, and so forth, but no sign whatsoever as to our actions. For we have been created with free will by our Creator and we are masters over our own actions. ... Reason, indeed, is granted to us solely that we might take counsel, and therefore all reason implies freedom of will.”

St. Gregory the Great, POPE OF ROME, writes, "Man was not made for the stars, but rather the stars for man; and if a star can be called the ruler of man, then man must be considered the slave of his own servants".

Again, unity and unity. So accept the Gregorian reform for the sake of unity then. As for calendar issues being not "so important," consider this sentiment of the early church:

They took calendar/pashchalion issue seriously enough.


Yes, I've already noted it in another concurrent thread:

Blind zealotry.

Archimandrite Sergius returns. I seem to recall his writings from an old forum thread on the calendar. While he has some valid material, his method of weaving together disparate concepts and then reading into them his bias amounts to a sophisticated slight-of-hand. His as the Church has always held assurances are unsubstantiated platitude. His essay is best characterized as well-intentioned fraud

Here is the LINK [orthodoxinfo.com] to his essay.

As to the 532 year cycle attributed to St. Maximos, please provide some reference. He is not mentioned in this assessment:
LINK [en.wikipedia.org]


The repeated " against the celebration of Pascha on the same day as the Jewish Passover" misconception is like being served baloney during the Great Fast. It has been debunked by several legitimate sources. A good Orthodox journal article written this year by an Orthodox deacon who is also a scientist (a perspective I share) is Historical, Canonical, Mathematical and Astronomical Aspects of the Paschalion Question [orthodox-theology.com] . As he notes [emphasis added], the Julian paschalion itself did not satisfy this invented criterion.

Direct quotes from the Fathers and blunt facts won't even satisfy calendar reform zealots. They live in their own world. Their real church is themselves, neither Orthodox nor Catholic. Such attitudes are unworthy of serious consideration: they end up hammering demands to cathedral doors.

The Orthodox Church’s Reaction to the Gregorian Calendar

The Orthodox Church has placed Herself in firm opposition to the Gregorian calendar. Three local councils, held in Constantinople (1583, 1587, and 1593), condemned the Gregorian calendar as uncanonical, declaring:

Whosoever does not follow the customs of the Church which the Seven Holy Ecumenical Councils have decreed, and the Holy Pascha and calendar which they have enacted well for us to follow, but wants to follow the newly invented Paschalia and the new calendar of the atheist astronomers of the Pope; and, opposing the Councils, wishes to overthrow and destroy the doctrines and customs of the Church, which we have inherited from our Fathers – let such have the anathema and let him be outside the Church and the Assembly of the Faithful. (From the Council of Constantinople, 1583)

{The decisions of the Synods of 1583, 1587, 1593 were all declared prior to the Brest Union [Annulled by the Treaty of Hadiach] (1596), the Uzhgorod Union (1642 - 1646), the Galician Unions (1692 - 1700). As such, their canonical decisions were received as binding when the dioceses which proclaimed these unions were received. Rome accepted the decisions of these councils as binding on these diocese as a condition of union.}

The source of the quotes I provided was primarily Patrologia Graeca, where Archimandrite Sergius and the canonical and Patristic witness provided in other posts dealt with and refuted the contentions of divisive and clearly fraudulent calendar reform rhetoric as opposed to the facts and existing in another realm of dialogue.

This argument is settled, and the side of calendar reform zealotry cast itself in a poor, divisive and unreasonable light with clearly erroneous historical contentions, blatent disregard for the holy canons and the consensus patrum, outright slurs and bigotry, historical inaccuracy, refusal to come to terms with the reality of the situation, scientific redactions so biased as to be propaganda (which are only secondary in appreciating the Catholic concept of liturgy in its anemnesis). Moreover, the positions taken up by the side of calendar reform zealotry have been answered by the Orthodox Catholic Church with anathemas, with penalties of laicization, excommunication. There isn't a legitimate dialogue to be had here with the other side.

As I wrote earlier before being censored: the Church Calendar, the Julian Calendar, has a built in mechanism for self-correction: the leap year. Omitting leap years where the entire Church agrees to do so unanimously 13 times (which could even be declared retroactively done if all Orthodox Catholic local churches agree to it) will both avoid schism and division and astronomically restore the accuracy of the Julian Calendar. Without division. Without denunciations of ecumenism, innovation, modernism, renovationism. Without schism. It will make the Julian Paschalion accurate according to the lunar cycle without any doubts. With no meddling with such things as the Apostles' Fast. With continued liturgical unity and anemnesis with the historical Church through all times, places and amongst all peoples. When the astronomical computations for the Revised Julian Calendar are affirmed after the Julian Calendar is restored to accuracy, it will actually be more accurate than the Gregorian Reform (anathemized by the Orthodox Catholic Church), an inferior computation which will eventually fall behind it.

The difference in my methodology as opposed to that of the calendar reform zealots is that my proposal maintains the Catholic unity of the Church, avoids division and schism and avoids falling under anathemas. Its approach is Catholic. Its approach and implementation is more reasonable, legitimate. It is done in a spirit of love, not coercion.

In regard to the Paschalion, the Nicene Formula would be preserved avoiding Nicea's anathemas, anathemas which prohibit celebration of Pascha coinciding with the Jewish Passover. This Paschalion would be a non-negotiable item in regard to Roman Catholic reunion with the Orthodox Catholic Church and the standard for celebration of Pascha for all of Christendom.

Finally, the red herring here accompanied with accusations of "Old Calendarism" was that I asserted the Church could not correct the calendar. Clearly, that is not the case. My emphasis has been conciliarity to bring it about to avoid anathemas and schisms. To reconcile those divided because of the scandalous and sinful ways some carried out calendar reforms. In the approach I put forward I believe I accomplish calendar correction while maintaining the liturgical unity/anemnesis of the Church for all times, places, amongst all peoples, honoring the intent of the Nicene adoption of the Julian Calendar and its mandated, universal Paschalion. I stand by this type of unifying calendar correction while rejecting the schemes of the calendar reform zealots as incompatible with the Catholic, liturgical witness of the Church, where these schemes act in rebellion from the Church's canonical authority, rupture the Catholic liturgical unity/anemnesis of the Church, and flirt with schism.

You have described yourself quite well. You quote the Fathers and then misinterpret even misrepresent what they say. Deacon Erekle in his article in the International Journal of Orthodox Theology -- I provided the link -- treats the most pertinent of your Patristic quotes giving the proper meaning. You have perhaps forgotten that you first posted in this thread advocating and acknowledging the need for reform of the Julian calendar and what that implies:

Your leap year fix is only part of the needed correction (moon phases are also in error in the Julian system) and a complete and elegant correction has already been accomplished over 400 years ago by the Gregorian reform. Deacon Erekle also discusses this. If the Julian computus is so good and sacrosanct then why are you wanting to correct it as your post indicates?

So you do recall. " ...13 times (which could even be declared retroactively." This is no more than the equivalent of the Gregorian reform done today (13 rather than just 10 days omitted, and you still need to correct for the moon error which the Gregorian reform also did). IT IS THE SAME TIME TRAVEL THAT YOU DENOUNCED. What you want is for "all Orthodox Catholic local churches " to reinvent the Gregorian calendar so they can declare the reform to be theirs and not be the one that was anathematized.

I emphasize something called catholicity and fidelity/obedience to the Church without (Protestant) Reformation. The Revised Julian Calendar's computation is more accurate than the anathemized and obsolete Gregorian Calendar. Its computations would be the basis of the Julian Calendar going forward, where the correction would also correct the Paschalion by simply being in fidelity to the Nicean formulation. Without division. Without coercion. Without anathemas. Without schism. Preserving the Catholic identity of liturgical unity and anemnesis, unlike the divisive and condemned prescriptions Calendar Reformed zealots offer. My approach relies on the peaceful Orthodox and Catholic way of doing things. My method doesn't rely on nailing radical demands to cathedral doors. It also reconciles groups abused and alienated by the contrived, ham handed, divisive, violent and repressive means Calendar Reformed zealots used in the past to persecute them.

All in all, I leave reform to Protestants. I advance renewal in the spirit of love and reconciliation in fidelity to the Church, using the existing means the Church ordained over a millennium ago to reinforce catholicity. That's what makes my approach Orthodox and Catholic as opposed to the condemned Protestant and Renovationist (Judaizing) approach of the Calendar Reformed zealots. My approach solves the problems they caused, undoes the condemnations they earned, and accomplishes correction in fidelity and catholicity. Without rebellion. Without condemnation. Without schism.

That Deacon's (The Calendar Reformed zealot approach in general) position has been addressed, illustrated as being anti-Patristic, proven to.bear anathemas and condemnations, advocating innovation, being disobedient to the Holy Canons, flirting with schism. That makes it unacceptable, unOrthodox, in defiance of Catholicity. In and of itself, despite its clearly fraudulent and deceptive character, such a rebellious character labels it as Reformed methodology analogous to nailing radical demands to cathedral doors. Thus, it is illegitimate and unworthy of further consideration.

Fidelity to the Church, to the Holy Fathers and to the Holy Canons in their expression of the Mind of the Church, the Mind of CHRIST, is the requisite condition of legitimacy in the Orthodox Catholic Church. It is the only way to be Orthodox and Catholic. Such methodology is authentic, faithful, Orthodox and Catholic. Anyone who floats fraud and Reformation by having to dispute the meaning of the word "is", revising the statements of the Fathers and the Holy Canons to state they meant the opposite of what historical fact and practice clearly illustrates they did, while using contrived, FRAUDULENT, and erroneous revisionist fictions in open rebellion to the Church's discipline and unity advances schism bareheadedly as a deceiver, as one of a different spirit than that which rules the Church. For the SPIRIT of Truth has no place for deception, does not operate by fraud and expression of lies and godless half-truths. Such Reformed propaganda, infidelity, is unworthy of the Church, is alien to her identity, and constitutes rebellion, schism. It rightly receives a loud "Anaxios!" when confronted by the Church's Catholic consciousness.

The anathemas demonstrate how wrong a church can be. Deacon Erekle discusses this. It is good that you have brought it up because it is in discussing it that Deacon Erekle gives one of the clearest endorsements of the validity of the Gregorian reform and that reform's fidelity to the practice of "the early Church," and contrary to the assertions of Archimandrite Sergius.

[emphasis added] Historical, Canonical, Mathematical and Astronomical Aspects of the Paschalion Question [orthodox-theology.com] p 144

No it will not. Just removing the 13 days will correct for the equinox. Corrections for the moon's phase are also needed.

This is yet another problem that the Orthodox have created for themselves and is independent of the Gregorian reform.

The so-called inferior calculation is the overall international standard. The increase in accuracy is minor, of no tangible significance, and may be yet just another smokescreen given variations in the tropical year over the several thousands of years involved and, as I've pointed out, the revised "Orthodox" calendar not itself being based on the vernal equinox tropical year but the average tropical year. I'll find the post where I gave the numbers if you're interested. This improved calendar is really just a face-saving device for official Orthodoxy.

The Calendar Reformed zealots simply refuse to deal with reality and fact, arguing for a collision course to anathemas, excommunication, schism, all founded on rebellion and fraudulent sources contending with the meaning of the word "is".

They even commit treason against their feigned adherence to science when it doesn't suit their purposes to coddle an obsolete, anathemized, four hundred year old computation which is not as astronomically accurate as the Revised Julian computation, a computation offered in correction to Church's Calendar in fidelity. Going so far as to malign the canonical pronouncements of the Orthodox Catholic Church, ignoring the necessity for obedience and fidelity, even ignoring the fact that these pronouncements were accepted by their dioceses before they left the Orthodox Catholic Church, these pronouncements Rome bound them in discipline to as a condition of their union with her.

No interest is to be found for unity in Catholic liturgical witness/anemnesis of all times, places, of all peoples, the guiding principle of Nicea's adoption of the Julian Calendar and its universal Paschalion. There is a fever to disobey, to deceive, to tear down, to flaunt being condemned by the Church. All in a desperation to sin against the Church's unity. Even when canonical methods are there and have always been there to effectuate a calendar correction. They even go so far as to say that their Reformation, founded on fraud and deception at war with historical fact, anathemized and under certain threat of excommunication is a fulfillment of the very canonical order it overthrows.. where a deacon trafficking in inaccurate and fraudulently sourced material knows more than the Church, than her Canons, than the Fathers. Yet he knows so much more that he has to base the onus of his Reformed Calendar zealotry on lies?! If one doesn't accept his fraud and clearly and factually illustrates how it is a blatent untruth, one is greeted with slurs and epithets. And to this the Orthodox Catholic Church must submit... No, it is not worthy. Such reasoning and rebellion is alien to the Orthodox and Catholic nature of the Church and an affront to GOD.

To wit, it is best that the Orthodox Catholic Church maintain one, liturgical witness/anemnesis, where all local churches return to the calendar established by Nicea for the Church to reaffirm their unity and uproot the schisms and divisions divisive and Reformed Calendar zealotry caused. Thereafter, in oneness of mind they may choose in the HOLY SPIRIT to correct the Julian Calendar, the Church's Calendar. Or not. The principle consideration and necessity being unity, not adherence to the "canons" of godIess astronomy.

If Rome truly seeks reconciliation with the Orthodox Catholic Church, restoration of the Nicean Paschalion - as the Orthodox Catholic Church has observed it since she adopted it at the Council of Nicea - would do well to show that Rome is serious and capable of pursuing reunion with the Orthodox Catholic Church. Continuance of Reformed Calendar zealotry and bigoted posturing will only set the process back and eventually sabotage it. Sooner rather than later. The canonical order of the Orthodox Catholic Church and Reformed Calendar zealotry are mutually exclusive: the former acting in love and fidelity, the latter acting in fraud and rebellion.

Not really more accurate since there's more to it than just leap year corrections. Basically, "the Gregorian does better for the Vernal Equinox Year, the Milanković for the Mean Tropical Year." I've crunched some numbers and explained the nuances here: LINK.

As for the Gregorian calendar being "obsolete" you have to explain its ubiquitous use:
LINK

So most of the world stands against your assessment of it being "obsolete."

At the time the Gregorian Calendar was introduced, the West and Russia, "most of the world", used the Julian Calendar. Protestant Europe rejected the Gregorian Reform until the eighteenth century. So ubiquity today means nothing other than the better variant hasn't been adopted. And the better variant is simply a corrected and updated Julian Calendar which doesn't bare anathemas and doesn't divide.

As far as amateur and less than unbiased computations of the Revised Julian Calendar vs. the anathemized Gregorian Reform, the mathematician behind the Revised Julian Calendar years before its introduction calculated its accuracy and the date the Gregorian Calendar would fall behind it. His work was peer reviewed and his figures regarding the greater accuracy of his calendar were verified by other credentialed mathematicians. So it is easy to discount agendized and less than honest, uncredentialed, non peer reviewed "computations". It seems Reformed Calendar zealots are even at war with mathematics to advance their divisive agenda. Is cant mean is for them to be right: their whole presentation continually manages to underscore a less than balanced, irrational zeal to stoke division.

The Revised Julian computation is ten times more accurate than the anathemized, obsolete, less precise Gregorian Reform:

...
The Revised Julian Calendar
This Revised Julian calendar uses even more complex rules to determine when to add a leap day. With an error of only about two seconds per year (or one day in 31,250 years), it is roughly 10 times more accurate than today's Gregorian calendar and one of the most accurate calendar systems ever devised. ...

+++


The Issue of calendar correction boils down to omitting leap years...

...Too Many Leap Years
The reason the Julian Calendar had to be replaced was the formula it used to calculate leap years. The Julian formula produced a leap year every four years, which is too many. The Gregorian Calendar uses a much more accurate rule for calculating leap years. ...

[Therefore, the leap year approach I advocate with the Revised Julian computations afterwards factored into the Julian correction will produce a more accurate calendar than the anathemized and obsolete and less precise Gregorian Reform. Without rebellion. Without anathemas. Without division. Without schism.]

https://www.timeanddate.com/calendar/julian-gregorian-switch.html

You are free to demonstrate that my calculation is wrong. You have not addressed the mean vs, vernal (northern hemisphere) equinox tropical year distinction. My calculation does.

Revised Julian calendar [en.wikipedia.org]

So the new calendar:

1. has aligned itself with the anathemized Gregorian Calendar
2. "time traveled" (as you termed it) for 13 days
3. chose the mean tropical year basis rather than the (Gregorian's, more associated with Pascha's) vernal equinox tropical year
4. doesn't have a tabulated paschalion/computus (like the Julian and Gregorian) but direct astronomical, scientific calculation

Using that direct astronomical, scientific calculation, in 2019 the new calendar that you advocate has Easter/Pascha as 24 March WELL BEFORE Jewish Passover on 20 April.

At this point, Reformed Calendar zealotry grasps at straws trying to flee disgrace. Being discredited, they seek some glimmer of a chance at redeeming their divisive and fraudulent propaganda. But at this juncture, only those choosing to ignore facts, historical and canonical reality are the only ones who are susceptible to this would be movement for Reformation. Everyone else sees it for the fraudulent, divisive and condemned sham it is.

I don't have to prove anything mathematically because the Revised Julian Calendar is peer reviewed as ten times more accurate than the anathemized and schismatic Gregorian Calendar: so it takes peer review of credentialed mathematicians to have any computations to the contrary taken seriously. MIT has some excellent mathematicians - perhaps they have time for new math computations saying they have been wrong for over a century. The jury isn't out on the Revised Julian computation, and amateur zealots at war with mathematics have a steep hill to climb to be taken seriously, especially when the mathematics of the Revised Julian Calendar is established and accepted as ten times more accurate than the anathemized Gregorian Reform. But of course, some do advocate a "new math".

I never advocated the 1923 - 1924 reform: I am opposed to it. It was uncanonical and carried out in a divisive and inappropriate manner. No, it specifically was not the Gregorian Reform because it was designed to avoid the anathemas of that less accurate calendar. If it time traveled, it did so as a hackneyed calendar reform ham handedly implemented.

But its revision of the Julian Calendar is viewed by peers as one of the most accurate of all calendars. Peers, people who are credentialed mathematicians and not new math hobbyists trying to prove 1 + 1 = 3. I accept the decades of credentialed mathematicians assessing the Revised Julian computation as superior, vastly more mathematically accurate. And so does almost everyone else.

My advocacy is for synodal correction of the Julian Calendar using its built in mechanism of leap years to restore the Church Calendar's accuracy. My approach does so without falling under anathemas and actually reconciles separated groups instead of provoking further divisions. After such a correction, I advocate the Revised Julian computation as a corrective to the Church's Julian Calendar for posterity's sake. Moreover, my advocacy is limited to conciliarity, where if unanimous agreement cannot be reached to bring such a correction about, I am patently opposed to it for unity's sake. It really isn't necessary, but what is absolutely necessary is unity in liturgical witness/anemnesis.

The Nicean Paschalion calls for Pascha to be celebrated after Passover, even if it's the following week: that has been the practice over 1600 years now without any absurd and fraudulent Reformed Calendar zealotry, distortion in any way ever being proven to have a miniscule of veracity.

When I advocate retroactive correction of the Church Calendar, I do so responsibly: February 29 is really an optional day. A conciliar decision could indeed state 29, February was erroneously observed 13 times distorting the real date and thus the correction simply would be instating the actual date. No time travel. No schism. No anathemas. No Reformed Calendar zealotry. And the Church remains liturgically united with all peoples of all places throughout all times remaining Orthodox and Catholic in its liturgical witness/anemnesis.

Unfortunately, the Reformed Calendar zealot crowd is in love with its rebellion and anachronistic talking points to the point of demanding schism and irrational thinking in the place of conciliarity and the Mind of the Church. So they clutch at anything for an inch of ground in a debate they lost. In the end, the only thing they have left is indictment for their preaching of rebellion, their frauds, their less than faithful and Reformed mindset attempting to part the Robe of CHRIST and sunder Church unity.

Nope. It's the truth. Antioch Canon 1 and Apostolic Canon 7 require the church to ignore Jewish computations and do their own computations in such a way that the festival is always after the Spring equinox.

You offer words, I have given the math and facts. The Revised Julian Calendar leap year rule gives a closer approximation to the mean tropical year. That should have been included in the "peer reviewed" article so that it would not be applied without understanding as you are doing. If the desire is to stabilize the vernal equinox date, my calculation in the link I provided indicates the Gregorian rule is better and the 8/33 "Persian" value the best.The math for approximating the fractional part of the year is simple rational arithmetic. Show me how the math I provided is wrong. I think you can't because you don't know the concept so can't appreciate the implications of the math. What you know and have demonstrated in your posts are conflicting and incomplete concepts and claims for calendar reform, and delusional rhetoric, viz.:

BTW, if direct astronomical calculation is used to determine the day of the Pascha celebration as in the 1923 Orthodox synod, any calendar or no calendar will do, just need to agree on the current day of the week (and we do). Putting it another way, the Revised Julian Calendar differs from the Gregorian reform in that the Gregorian calendar is linked to its paschalion, a method to determine Pascha using the calendar rather than astronomical calculation or observation. So really, the Gregorian Calendar is more a revised Julian calendar than the Revised Julian Calendar.

So, once you apply your "synodal correction of the Julian Calendar using its built in mechanism of leap years," how do you determine the date of the paschal full moon?


Also, the comparison of the Milanković/Revised Julian Calendar to the Gregorian as to accuracy or precision is misleading since they have different objectives and the time duration involved is so long that the numbers can change.

LINK [en.wikipedia.org]

LINK [en.wikipedia.org]

Reformation has yet again been shown to be at odds with the Catholic Truth of the Church. At this point Reformed Calendar propaganda is in total damage control. Its entire argument has collapsed.

Let's recap one last time how:

1). The Revised Julian Calendar is peer reviewed. While neither it nor the Gregorian Calendar are absolutely precise, the calculations behind the Revised Julian Calendar are far more accurate, ten times more accurate than the anathemized and obsolete Gregorian Calendar. I have a linked source above explaining that and the essence of how calendars become inaccurate: too many leap years.

2). The mathematicians at MIT I am sure are waiting for credentialed papers showing how they have been wrong in validating the math behind the Revised Julian Calendar and assessing it as far more accurate than the obsolete Gregorian Reform. A Nobel Prize might be in order to the paper which can show how internationally credentialed mathematicians have been wrong for over a century. Perhaps they need to be made aware of the revolutionary proofs offered by uncredentialed, "new math" hobbyists.

3). The Lunar Calendar is an ancient calendar whose reckoning goes back centuries before CHRIST. Its inclusion in the Nicene determination was not an absolute straight jacket which dictated the Church's submission to mathematics. The Church has done fine using the Nicene formula and uniting all local churches in the celebration of Pascha after the Jewish Passover: that is the point of the Nicene Canon. The Church will continue to do so, preserving Catholic unity/anemnesis, using the same Nicene formula if it chooses to unanimously adopt correction of the Nicene, Church calendar. Because the Calendar's function is not mathematical or astronomical precision but unity of all local churches in celebrating Pascha and the Feasts. Catholicity in liturgical witness/anemnesis.

4). Only a Reformed Calendar zealot keeps on insisting that the Church's unity should or even can be sacrificed for an anathemized, divisive and inaccurate calendar reform. It isn't about astronomical or mathematical absolute precision. The anathemized calendar the Reformed crowd here advocates is less precise, less accurate. It isn't about lunar cycles. The Church has preserved unity with its implementation of the Nicene formula, where lunar cycles are used as a guidepost, uniting all local churches of all times, of all peoples in all places. So "science" being beat to death by Reformed Calendar zealotry is a heavily redacted smokescreen trying to camouflage rebellion against the Church's unity, an inconsistently voiced excuse for Reformation.

Reformed Calendar zealotry has even resorted to fraud where some sourced material of their camp does things like tries to cast direct Patristic quotes and canons as stating the opposite of what they do, despite the historical record. Anyone who is at war with the meaning of the word "is" is being dishonest. They dispute the historical, Patristic, Canonical record as non-existent. When contradicted, they state it really means the opposite of what it says. When conclusively corrected that it indeed says what it says, they pelt the people presenting the information with slurs and epithets trying to remove the record from the conversation to flee it. This clearly exposes their deceptions and fraud. They even submit sourced material trying to state the Church concurrently celebrated Pascha with the Jewish Passover in the Post Nicene period yet the dates provided in their sourced materials turn out not to be Sundays! While the historical and canonical record from that period clearly and harshly condemns such concelebration and even makes note of instances where renegades from the Nicene Canon where harshly censured.

Can one thus take such untruthful and unhinged propaganda seriously? No, it is unworthy. A pack of lies cannot be the basis for a calendar correction. It most certainly cannot be a basis for unity or reunion. For the HOLY SPIRIT WHO abides in the Orthodox Catholic Church is a SPIRIT of Truth and not falsehood.

5). The principle reason behind the Nicene Paschalion and the Church Calendar is Catholic unity in the bond of love in liturgical witness/anemnesis, where the Church of all times, all peoples, all places celebrates the Feasts and commemorates the Saints on the same day. Any calendar reform which breaches that unity is necessarily divisive and schismatic. Moreover, no calendar correction, no matter what the astronomical circumstances which may arise, can ever stand above that unity. Even if the Church declines to correct the Church Calendar. Sinning against that unity is parting the Robe of CHRIST and engaging in schism.

6). The Reformed Calendar zealotry position flaunts its divisiveness, its defiance of the Holy Canons and of the Holy Fathers, its falling under myriad anathemas, its spawning of divisions and schisms. The path of disobedience and condemnation is never a valid path for faithful Orthodox Catholic Christians. Just as infidelity is betrayal of CHRIST's Church.

7). The correction of the Julian Calendar I put forward reconciles, rather than divides. It obeys and honors the Fathers and the Councils. It reinforces the Nicene Canon and is faithful to the Canons of the Church. It ends up being more scientifically precise.

The side of Reformation has no legitimacy to its presentation. It has not only lost its argument for calendar reform, it has disgraced and stigmatized itself in doing so due to its alloy with schism, its outright fraud and dishonesties, its redacted and inconsistent abuse of science. With its unqualified, hubritic presumptions upon credentialed expertise of over a century. Deception is not a legitimate means of correcting secondary things like the precision of the Church Calendar. Never. Most especially when such flagrant fraud assaults the Catholic unity of the Church.

I'm still here and unfazed.

Excellent, I get the last word.

Your linked source is hardly an in-dept treatment and contains a number of questionable claims. It has some very confidently expressed opinion but just that, opinion, wanting further proof. It just parrots the "ten times more accurate" statement, as do you, without consideration of its applicability, especially to the determination of Pascha. That fixation reminds me of the fast-food establishments advertising over 5 billion sold. You'd think, that good it must be filet mignon, when its just referring to hamburger.

What MIT validation? Who's uncredentialed?

Very wrong about the Canon. And again, Patristic sources are very keen on the moon.

It's meaningless precision if there's no answer for determining the moon's phase. Your leap year fix is a hollow solution if you can't explain how it gets the moon phase right.

Shameless impiety. Reformed zealots are only satisfied when they strip the altars and toss icons into pyres. When they burn the last relics and desecrate the last altars. Neo Iconoclasts in our time.

Past this point engaging their disproven fraud and propaganda only lends their quashed rebellion legitimacy. It is argument for argument's sake granting them an audience for their infidelity. It is not worthy. Since Reformed Calendar zealotry has had the legitimacy of its position here deconstructed, engaging that side further gives it credibility it has forfeited by the rebellious, dishonest and schismatic nature of its presentation. Anyone who has seen the case presented and appreciated the sources put forward can see that Reformed Calendar zealotry is nothing but a shameless parting of the Robe of CHRIST, schism.

There is nothing legitimate left of the agenda of Reformed Calendar propaganda. It is nihilistic hubris at this point. Let us who wish to remain faithful, Catholic and Orthodox reject such impiety. Let us turn away from the deceits and rebellions of those unfaithful to the Church and turn our worship and prayers to a Catholic liturgical unity/anemnesis.

As ajk has noted, Archimandrite Sergius fails to interpret the patristic sources correctly.

St. Athanasius states that the traditional method for setting Easter was practiced in Syria.

We know what this traditional method was from a Syrian source, known to scholars by the Latin Title "Didascalia Apostolorum".

Didascalia Apostolorum chapter 21: "Therefore ye, when the people [i.e. Jewish folk] keep the Passover, fast and study to complete your vigil in the midst of their [i.e. the Jewish calendar's] unleavened bread."

In other words, "celebrating with the Jews" originally meant finding out when the Jewish month of Nisan would fall, and setting Easter to the third Sunday of that lunar month.

The council of Nicea agreed that the month of Nisan would be calculated independently by Christians. Easter, in other words, would be the third Sunday in Christian Nisan, without regard for whether Christian Nisan coincided with Jewish Nisan. The Jewish month of Nisan, in other words, would be completely ignored.

The independent Christian computations defined the month of Nisan as that lunar month whose full moon fell "when the sun is in [the zodiac sign of] Aries" as Josephus described it in the first century. The zodiac sign of Aries, then as now, began with the Spring equinox, and lasted for about 30 days after. The 3rd century Egyptian fathers chose 29 days so that there would be no more than one full moon within the period.

So when the fathers state that Easter should not fall on the 14th day of the lunar month, they mean the Christian lunar month, not the Jewish lunar month.

But our Jewish neighbors' 14th of Nisan, calculated according to the Rabbinic Jewish calendar, never falls on Sunday anyhow. Easter Sunday never coincides with Rabbinic Passover, in the Julian or Gregorian calendars.

The day that our almanacs and pocket calendars call "Passover" is not Passover strictly so-called, but the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the 15th of Nisan. Easter was never forbidden to fall on the 15th of the month by the Alexandrian computus. Indeed, Bede thought that the ideal case would be one in which Easter always fell on the 15th of Christian Nisan. And in accordance with Nicea, whether the Christian 15th of Nisan was also the Jewish 15th of Nisan was to be ignored altogether.

I have provided Patristic quotes and quotes of the Holy Canons addressing in this thread. There is also the historic practice of the Orthodox Catholic Church. So there isn't much more to say here other than this point has been answered.

Moreover, Archimandrite Sergius' material deals with the fraudulent take of Reformed Calendar zealotry and exposes the outright fraud in certain sourced data. His quotes are directly from Patrologia Graeca. So if he is wrong, then the Fathers and Nicea is wrong for Reformed Calendar zealotry to be right.

No, it hasn't.

Fallacious. Not one of the cited works holds that Easter may not coincide with the 15th of Nisan in the modern-day Rabbinic Jewish calendar. They cannot, because the modern-day Rabbinic Jewish calendar did not exist when those works were written.

More desperate attempts to save a Reformed Calendar Agenda which was exposed for its outright fraud.

The following table for 2019 shows how absurd the Julian Paschalion is.

Astronomical full moon 2019: April 19
Gregorian 14 Nisan: April 18
Samaritan 14 Nisan: April 18
Rabbinic 14 Nisan: April 19
Julian 14 Nisan: April 23

Right, even though, and also especially, since it's only one week off. This highlights the lunar error since only one of the two, 18-19 vs. 23 can be factual and, coming close together, can be verified in a one week time frame -- look up at the sky and you can see for yourself. When the solar error dominates, the equinox is missed, and the difference is around a month, it's possible that the moon phase could be correct (though of course it's not the "vernal" moon).

Old Calendar zealots have the Church, especially the Orthodox, in a bind with fears of schism. There are those right up to the present Pope who (I would hope they are poorly informed.) may think the best solution is to scrap the Paschalion/computus for a fixed Sunday, thereby abandoning the link to Scripture, tradition, the historical moment and the grand celestial and unique yearly event of the two great lights aligned with the first day of creation and the eighth day, the day of Resurrection: the baby gets thrown out with the bathwater for the sake of (I would say false) unity and practicality. The scientific, "full astronomical" approach has its inherent problems and it is more a possible face-saving device for the Orthodox via Milanković-sans-computus, and therein, though well-intentioned, its deficiency: it's a necessarily over-specified computational overkill that radically reinterprets the canon.

Given the computational power of even our personal computers, it would be interesting to redo the Gregorian reform using the abundant data available today, e.g. Jet Propulsion Laboratory Development Ephemeris [en.wikipedia.org]. One could produce a, for instance least-squares, error solution covering spans of years incrementally increasing to check the stability and wanted accuracy, using various leap year rules -- say the top three, Persian, Milanković, Gregorian -- or a floating one that readjusts after an accumulated error that exceeds 0.5 day. My hunch is that when all the trade-offs are taken into account, for a solar-lunar calendar with computus, the Gregorian reform (It probably could be tweaked a bit.) would be the choice.

I think it was you, or some other Forum wit, who posted images of the Gregorian full moon and the Julian full moon. In any event, I'd enjoy seeing it again for I feel it illustrates perfectly, and rather humorously, the whole ridiculous conundrum.

AS I recall it was Mockingbird but here is one look: Compare a full moon on APR 18-19 giving Pascha on the APR 21 versus the Julian full moon on APR 23 giving Pascha on APR 28.



While the full moon is understood as the resultant indicator and so used in the astronomical method, it is a departure from the primitive prescription of Scripture and as attributed to Nicaea. It is the new moon that is the determinator, and then mark the fourteenth day of the moon. This is practical for two reasons: It's more difficult to determine fullness and if missed the event is past whereas the new moon is on off-on observation for which there are then 14 days exactly provided to prepare for the feast. The computus was a required sophistication that allowed the extended preparation time needed by the 40 days Great Fast.

All these values agree to within a day except for the Julian value. This Astronomical full moon in April, however, is not the Astronomical vernal full moon which occurred (Jerusalem) 21-MAR-2019. This is an example where the modern scientific calculation is at odds with traditional methods. Except for the Julian, the traditional methods in this example are legitimate predictors, as is the astronomical, when each is evaluated according to its methodology and actual correspondence with sun and moon events.

This year, 2019, is also the one and only year where the Gregorian and astronomical disagree in the 25 example-years (see table) compared in the WCC-Aleppo document Towards a Common Date for Easter [oikoumene.org]. Entries in the right-most column are the 17 in 25 years where the Julian does not agree with the Astronomical and Gregorian.
(source [en.wikipedia.org])

Of special note is 2013 where Julian Easter was 5-MAY missing not only the actual 31-MAR date based on the 27-MAR full moon, but also not getting the Sunday 21-APR-2013 date following the 19-APR-2013 full moon, thereby missing, by an additional 2 weeks, a second chance to get something right. This Julian approach that has lost all factual correspondence with nature and thus the Scriptural events of Passover and Passion, and the rule accepted as evolving from the first council of Nicaea, is the one being considered by Pope Francis since at least 2015. This Julian paschalion is to be used, I presume, with a fixed civil (i.e. Gregorian) calendar thus also ensuring the debacle encountered with the same approach using the Orthodox Revised Julian Calendar.

This " brilliant solution" [catholicworldreport.com] when realized permits the Orthodox "Historian Pavel Kuznekov" to conclude that "Catholics of the Holy Land changed directly over to our Orthodox Paschalia, returning to the tradition they had departed from in the sixteenth century—admitting by this that the main task in creating the Gregorian calendar is recognized as not having been satisfactorily completed." (link [orthochristian.com]).

I did not find the news in English, only in Portuguese: https://www.vaticannews.va/pt/igrej...odoxa-unificacao-datas-natal-pascoa.html

Translation:

"The Orthodox Coptic Church, at least for the time being, will not take any decision on the proposal - supported by Patriarch Tawadros II - to find a single date for the great liturgical feasts of Christmas and Easter, currently celebrated on different days by various Churches and communities of the baptized throughout the world."

"Contrary to what was previously announced by Tawadros II himself, the last assembly of the Holy Synod of the Coptic Orthodox Church, concluded in the past at the monastery of Anba Bishoy (Wadi el-Natrun region), did not address the issue."

"During a trip to Germany in May, Tawadros informed the press that members of the synod of the Coptic Orthodox Church in their imminent Assembly would pronounce on whether to allow the Coptic communities scattered in Western countries to celebrate the liturgical solemnity of Christmas on the 25th of December, in concomitance with the Christmas liturgies celebrated at that date by the great majority of the Churches and Christian communities present in the West. The statements of the patriarch received comments, even controversial, expressed mainly through social media."

"In view of the Assembly of the Holy Synod - reports the Egyptian media - the Coptic bishop Aghaton of the Maghagha prepared a dossier to document that the insistence on re-uniting the dates of celebration of the Christian holidays in the different Churches could cause divisions and contrasts also of order doctrine in the Coptic Orthodox Church."

"According to some of the positions presented in the dossier, the question of the dates for the celebration of Christian solemnities can not be dissociated from the study of the causes that caused the division and still prevent the full communion of Coptic Christians with those baptized from other ecclesial communities. The idea of uniting the dates of the solemn liturgical celebrations is therefore considered to be "untimely" before full doctrinal and sacramental communion with other Churches is reached."

"But according to some exponents of the Coptic hierarchy, now also the dates of the great feasts are part of the tradition followed by the Fathers themselves, and the Coptic Church is called above all to preserve what it received as an inheritance from its Fathers and their Saints."

"Even though, it is argued in the memo, some might see in the unification of the dates of the liturgical festivities an outward sign of unity, whereas in reality the authentic and complete doctrinal communion among the Churches has not yet been restored."

"The Sacred Council would not object if the feast of Easter were assigned to a particular Sunday of the Gregorian Calendar, provided that those whom it may concern, especially the brethren who are not in communion with the Apostolic See, give their assent."

http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_..._19631204_sacrosanctum-concilium_en.html

Francis' concern to adopt a common date is not "new", at least since the Second Vatican Council. Now, I think that does not mean we have to adopt the Julian calendar date.

I posted above a news, everything indicates that the Coptic Church retreated in the dialogue, because the Copts were going towards the Gregorian calendar and this generated internal resistance to defend the "orthodoxy".

Here it is

[Linked Image]

This year's Passovers:

Astronomical full moon: April 16 2022
Rabbinic 14 Nisan: April 15 2022
Samaritan 14 Nisan: April 14 2022
Gregorian 14 Nisan: April 16 2022
Julian 14 Nisan: April 20 2022

Each of these, except for the Astronomical, retain to varying degree the sense of the lunar month. In a concurrent thread, TOWARDS A COMMON DATE OF EASTER: REMAINING FAITHFUL TO NICAEA, I proffered that the recent (1920s to present) initiatives for achieving a common date for Pascha have been advanced by the Orthodox. These proposals, directly using astronomical data and not dependent on a calendar, i.e. the astronomical approach, are valid but a significant departure from the traditional reckoning methodology. The timeline that I have is that late 16th c. Orthodox synods anathematized the Gregorian reform and then the 20th c. has the Orthodox advancing an Orthodox (Milanković) "Revised Julian Calendar" and astronomical calculations by "Orthodox astronomers" instead of a traditional (lunar-month based) computus.

What, if anything, concerning the dating of Pascha happened within Orthodoxy in the 400+ years in between?

Father Andrew Stephen Damick has posted a revised version of his refutation of the Zonaras Proviso:

https://blogs.ancientfaith.com/asd/...ssover-and-other-orthodox-urban-legends/

In the context of my previous remarks about Father's position in this thread: I am (again) sympathetic but don't understand, and likewise I understand but am not sympathetic. I respect obedience but, as the Akathist has it (χαῖρε, αὐλὴ λογικῶν προβάτων.), we are not just sheep but "rational sheep."

Regarding his argument that Passover is from the 14th to the 21st day of the moon, so " Passover is more than one day," I disagree based on my reading of the texts of scripture (see Re: TOWARDS A COMMON DATE OF EASTER: REMAINING FAITHFUL TO NICAEA), and not the interpretations and later (Rabbinic?) accommodations and conflation of Passover and Feast of Unleavens. So he effectively uses a (legitimate for Jews) conflated Passover-Unleavens 6-7 day time period to refute the Zonaras Proviso, which only obtains because of an accumulated residual (i.e. error) in the Julian Calendar -- presently 13 days, ~7 days at the time of Zonaras -- so that when that error increases with advancing centuries to the point where the 7 day "Passover" time period is itself superseded by the ever increasing error, the (erroneous) Zonaras Proviso will become applicable.

Putting it another way, though the Zonaras Proviso may be refuted now by "Passover is more than one day," the irony is that as the error becomes larger, the Proviso, if it were true, would eventually be applicable.(There is a significant drift in the Hebrew calendar too but it is less than the drift in the Julian.) Refuting peripherals of an inherently faulty premise in this way can appear to give it legitimacy.

The Nicaean Norm developed against various connections with Jewish Passover or its method of determination: The Jews often had it wrong; Christians could look to scripture directly and determine Pascha with a Christian interpretation. Christian and Jew have the common OT prototype but only Christians know the archetype:

RSV Luke 24:26 Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?" 27 And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.

So, we Christian know best but should our date conflict with a Jewish determination of Passover, for whatever incorrect reason, then Pascha must be moved. If it is that important then why not skip the work and just have Pascha on the Sunday following Passover? But that's the position of the (so-called) Protopaschites, who were the ones whose views were most likely targeted at Nicaea. So the Zonaras Proviso is a veiled form of Protopaschitism (if that's even a word).

And it seems Zonaras had help and may be rehabilitated (some) The Zonaras Proviso [orthodoxwiki.org] and may have had a predecessor, Aristenus [orthodoxwiki.org].

Father Andrew discusses two possible forms of the Zonaras Proviso. One form is the proposition that all seven (eight in the diaspora) days of the Rabbinic Jewish Feast of Unleavened Bread must be over before Julian Easter can occur. He refutes this by pointing out that Julian Easter often falls during the Rabbinic days of Unleavened Bread. The other form of the Zonaras Proviso that Father Andrew refutes is the proposition that only the first day of Rabbinic Unleavened Bread (the 15th of Nisan) must be over before Julian Easter can occur. He refutes this by pointing out that in some years, Julian Easter is a week after Gregorian Easter even when Gregorian Easter is after the 15th of Nisan in the Rabbinic calendar. So the difference between Julian and Gregorian Easter (he argues) must be due to some cause other than the Zonaras Proviso.

Strictly speaking, the Nicene decision only forbids using the Jewish calendar that was used in the 3rd and 4th centuries, which sometimes placed the Paschal full moon before the Spring equinox. The decision is silent on the modern-day Rabbinic calendar, which did not exist at the time of the Council. If the Orthodox were to adopt the Rabbinic calendar and set their Pascha to the Sunday of Unleavened Bread, as the traditionalists at Nicea did, Pascha would always be after Nisan 15 except in the rare cases where Nisan 15 falls on a Sunday (as it did in 1981).

But adopting the Rabbinic calendar would still contravene Nicea. The Alexandrian computists, following Josephus, insisted that the Paschal full moon must occur when the sun is in the zodiac sign of Aries--the first full moon on or after the equinox. Due to a slight solar drift in the Rabbinic calendar, it places the Paschal full moon on the second full moon after the equinox in three years out of every nineteen. These are years 3, 11, and 14 in the Western Christian cycle, respectively 19, 8, and 11 in the Jewish cycle. To be consistent with the Alexandrian computus that was in use at the time of Nicea, a computus must allow Easter sometimes to come before Rabbinic 15 Nisan.

Those previous remarks were in this post Re: Calendar-Easter. While offering some critique both then and now, I commend Fr. Andrew for an informative article. His disclaimers at the end of the article are a vignette of the vox populorum response and issues facing TOWARDS A COMMON DATE OF EASTER: REMAINING FAITHFUL TO NICAEA.

The Resurrection itself would violate this form; see Re: TOWARDS A COMMON DATE OF EASTER: REMAINING FAITHFUL TO NICAEA, Unleavens 3 -- a reductio ad absurdum.

Thus the one week difference this year, 2022. An extreme case is 2013 considering "...the earliest Passover currently falls on 26 March (as in AM 5773 / 2013 CE)" Implications for Jewish ritual [en.wikipedia.org]; and from Aleppo:

Your table has Julian Easter on 20 May in 2025. This is wrong. Julian 14 Nisan in year 12 (2025) is on 16 April. Julian Easter that year will be on 20 April.

This is the table from the Aleppo proposal, Towards a Common Date for Easter [oikoumene.org], World Council of Churches / Middle East Council of Churches Consultation, Aleppo, Syria, March 5 - 10, 1997. The irony of the typo is that 2025 is a focus for calendar awareness in relation to the anniversary of the Council of Nicaea: TOWARDS A COMMON DATE OF EASTER: REMAINING FAITHFUL TO NICAEA. I did note the incorrect date in that thread, Post #421435, and more recently in The Church Calendar: Theology and Technology [academia.edu].

Looks like I got it wrong. Julian 14 Nisan in year 12 is April 17 Gregorian, not April 16.

Right, for 2025 the Golden Number (Metonic Cycle) is 12 with: Julian Calendar date of the New Moon = March 22; Luna 14 = April 4 (J) = April 17 (G).

Wikipedia has a very unusual section, poorly written and referenced (and polemical), for the Golden number (time) [en.wikipedia.org], section Modern-day use of the golden number ("The prospect of Whitby" - ??????).

Christ is in our midst!!

We only need one thread dealing with this topic. Currently it runs in this section--Town Hall--and in Faith and Theology. Should these two be combined?

Bob
Moderator

See my reply in TOWARDS A COMMON DATE OF EASTER: REMAINING FAITHFUL TO NICAEA.

Got it.

Had it been in use, the modern-day Rabbinic calendar's 15 Nisan (the first day of Unleavened Bread) would have coincided with Julian Easter Sunday in the years

370
496
499
519
523
536
543
563
570
590
594
614
743

This proves that the Julian Paschalion was not designed to make Easter Sunday fall later than the first day of Unleavened Bread in the modern-day Rabbinic calendar.

Now in fact the modern-day Rabbinic calendar was not in use in any of the years listed except perhaps the last one. But in all of the years listed, Easter Sunday remains a plausible date for the first day of Jewish Unleavened Bread. Indeed in the years

370
499
519

any Jewish community that set the first day of its lunar months on the 6PM-to-6PM day of the mean conjunction would have had the first day of Unleavened Bread on Easter Sunday.

These are some relevant scripture and other considerations that pertain to the calendar issue. Both Scripture and usage raise the issue of the relationship between the 14th and the15th “of the moon,” and the Passover and Feast of Unleavens. Conflation and confusion and complexity are coupled with a lack of specificity or agreed upon terminology. What counts as the first day of unleavens? Aviv/Nisan 15 but consider just these scriptures in a standard translation. They become even more intricate – but perhaps in a more literal rendering, sometimes clearer -- in their Hebrew, and NT and LXX Greek nuances.

Using the RSV translation for now.

14th and 15th distinguished.
Leviticus 23:5 In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month in the evening, is the LORD's passover.
Leviticus 23:6 And on the fifteenth day of the same month is the feast of unleavened bread to the LORD; seven days you shall eat unleavened bread.

Basically a repeat of Leviticus.

Numbers 28:16 "On the fourteenth day of the first month is the LORD's passover.
Numbers 28:17 And on the fifteenth day of this month is a feast; seven days shall unleavened bread be eaten.

The prototype verses.

Exodus 12:1 The LORD said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt,
Exodus 12:2 "This month shall be for you the beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year for you.
Exodus 12:3 Tell all the congregation of Israel that on the tenth day of this month they shall take every man a lamb according to their fathers' houses, a lamb for a household
Exodus 12:6 and you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month, when the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill their lambs in the evening.
Exodus 12:7 Then they shall take some of the blood, and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat them.
Exodus 12:8 They shall eat the flesh that night, roasted; with unleavened bread and bitter herbs they shall eat it.
Exodus 12:11 In this manner you shall eat it: your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and you shall eat it in haste. It is the LORD's Passover
Exodus 12:13 The blood shall be a sign for you, upon the houses where you are; and when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague shall fall upon you to destroy you, when I smite the land of Egypt.
Exodus 12:14 "This day shall be for you a memorial day, and you shall keep it as a feast to the LORD; throughout your generations you shall observe it as an ordinance for ever

Then in the next verse, rather abruptly:

Exodus 12:15 Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread; on the first day you shall put away leaven out of your houses, for if any one eats what is leavened, from the first day until the seventh day, that person shall be cut off from Israel.

The first/head/chief moon/month is also identified and the evening of the first day.

Deuteronomy 16:1 "Observe the month of Abib, and keep the passover to the LORD your God; for in the month of Abib the LORD your God brought you out of Egypt by night
Deuteronomy 16:2 And you shall offer the passover sacrifice to the LORD your God, from the flock or the herd, at the place which the LORD will choose, to make his name dwell there.
Deuteronomy 16:3 You shall eat no leavened bread with it; seven days you shall eat it with unleavened bread, the bread of affliction -- for you came out of the land of Egypt in hurried flight -- that all the days of your life you may remember the day when you came out of the land of Egypt.
Deuteronomy 16:4 No leaven shall be seen with you in all your territory for seven days; nor shall any of the flesh which you sacrifice on the evening of the first day remain all night until morning.

A (later) example of wording outside the Torah.

Ezekiel 45:21 "In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month, you shall celebrate the feast of the passover, and for seven days unleavened bread shall be eaten

From the NT

Luke 22:1 Now the feast of Unleavened Bread drew near, which is called the Passover.
Luke 22:7 Then came the day of Unleavened Bread, on which the passover lamb had to be sacrificed.
Luke 22:8 So Jesus sent Peter and John, saying, "Go and prepare the passover for us, that we may eat it."
Luke 22:15 And he said to them, "I have earnestly desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer;

Matthew 26:17 Now on the first day of Unleavened Bread the disciples came to Jesus, saying, "Where will you have us prepare for you to eat the passover?"

Mark 14:12 And on the first day of Unleavened Bread, when they sacrificed the passover lamb, his disciples said to him, "Where will you have us go and prepare for you to eat the passover?"

NAB Note for Mark 14:12: The first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread•••the Passover lamb: a less precise designation of the day for sacrificing the Passover lamb as evidenced by some rabbinical literature. For a more exact designation, see note on Mar 14:1. It was actually Nisan 14.

NAB Note for Mark 14:1 It was now two days before the Passover and the feast of Unleavened Bread.: The Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread: the connection between the two festivals is reflected in Exo 12:3-20; 34:18; Lev 23:4-8; Num 9:2-14; 28:16-17; Deu 16:1-8. The Passover commemorated the redemption from slavery and the departure of the Israelites from Egypt by night. It began at sundown after the Passover lamb was sacrificed in the temple in the afternoon of the fourteenth day of the month of Nisan. With the Passover supper on the same evening was associated the eating of unleavened bread. The latter was continued through Nisan 21, a reminder of the affliction of the Israelites and of the haste surrounding their departure.

A number of issues and questions can be and have been raised:

Is an annual “Christian Passover” (primarily, essentially) a commemoration of the passion, the death and Passover sacrifice vs the resurrection as the culmination and triumph of the sacrifice?

Which verse from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians best represents the dominant or original theology of an annual “Christian Passover” ?
NAB 1 Corinthians 11:26 For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes.
or
NAB 1 Corinthians 15:14 And if Christ has not been raised, then empty [too] is our preaching; empty, too, your faith.

Quartodeciman theology and liturgy vs a liturgical theology of Sunday as the Lord’s Day
Both synchronic and diachronic comparisons or Pascha and Passover, and relations among Christians and between Christians and Jews
Immenent vs realized or anticipated eschatology
Political/secular involvement/domination (aka Constantine especially) in the Church
Synoptics’ vs John’s chronology

GOARCH has a link [goarch.org] to an essay by Archon John Fotopoulos explaining the difference between Julian and Gregorian Easter.

This essay covers the chief issues quite thoroughly and well. It is worthwhile and informative but it repeats the standard lore that is close enough to fact but needs additional nuance. Some examples:

1. "the rules for calculating the date of Pascha issued by the 1st Ecumenical Council at Nicaea." Nicaea issued no extant "rules." The rules developed over time supported by documents emanating from Nicaea.

2. "vernal full moon." Used 25 times. This is the unfortunate, misleading and INCORRECT "dynamic equivalence" of the proper and actual Patristic and Scriptural "14th day of the moon."

3. "more accurate calendar—although not perfect." The word perfect is not proper for understanding a calendar. A calendar either does the job or does not; it does the job or does it better, or best. It there is a truly perfect calendar then it is nature, the earth-sun-moon dynamic that is not perfect.

4. "new Revised Julian Calendar." An unnecessary improvement that obscures and is enabling (via the "mixed" calendar) rather than eliminating the problem, the Julian Paschalion.

5. "use of a more accurate calendar and more accurate scientific calculations." The Gregorian calendar and its Paschalion already does the job and does it quite well. God in Scripture does not require more from Israel regarding the determination of Passover than what is achieved in the Gregorian Paschalion.

Fotopoulos concludes, pointing in the right direction:
I concur within the context of the 5 caveats above. In particular, the Biblical formula (my synthesis and phrasing based on Scripture) for Passover


developed after Nicaea into

Scholars are building a website called Computus in the Carolingian Age [computus.tchpc.tcd.ie] which will be pretty remarkable when it is all built.

An interesting and ambitious project. From the into on the home page:

Some questions come to mind: As an approach or discipline, was it (computus) completed, or terminated, with the Gregorian reform? Was it a methodology that was considered to have been brought to fruition? Is there any interest or activity, or need or desire, to consider it further? Does it have a role today in the calendar question? Does it fit in with the current emphasis on the detailed scientific approach taken by the EP and Aleppo?

There are many excellent and comprehensive studies, e.g., current studies by Mosshammer and especially Nothaft which, however, stop short of the Gregorian reform in providing details. Is there a standard modern or relatively current commentary on the actual definitive work of the Gregorian reform, the Explicatio of Clavius?

I think that the computations of the Gregorian paschalion can rightly be called "computus".

The history of computus continues to be useful in the present day. I met someone on line who believes that the council of Nicea implemented the Alexandrian computus in all its details. The history of computus refutes that proposition.

I recommend to all a remarkable book: The Ordering of Time : From the Ancient Computus to the Modern Computer [German original: ZEIT UND ZAHL IN DER GESCHICHTE EUROPAS (TIME AND NUMBERS IN EUROPE'S HISTORY) ] by Arno Borst. Internt Archive: The ordering of time [archive.org]