The Calendar Question
by Andrew Bond
Surely, more nonsense has been written about this subject in
Orthodox journals than about almost any other ecclesiastical
controversy. This year, another jurisdiction, the "Orthodox
Church in America," has introduced a change of calendar, so
perhaps this is a convenient moment to re-examine the arguments
for and against such a change. The official announcement by the
OCA merely stated that the New Calendar would be adopted on the
Church's New Year Day (1st Sept.) 1982, but gave no actual
reasons for this decision. However, the official newspaper of the
OCA, The Orthodox Church, in its February 1982 issue
published a lengthy apologia.
The gist of the OCA argument seems to be that, although there
is only one Julian Calendar, there are four versions of it that
have been used at different times. Thus the impression given is
that there is no continuous tradition, and that changes to the
calendar have taken place before, and that another is, therefore,
quite in order. The article is described as a "Memorandum of
Explanation by the Holy Synod," and claims that the
"data presented are taken from published documents from
Constantinople in 1923 and from Moscow in 1948."
Let us examine the data cited in this article. The first item
is the "Original Julian Calendar," worked out by the
astronomer Sosigenes for Julius Caesar and introduced in 44 B.C.
There was an inaccuracy in his calculations of about eleven
minutes per year, which nobody disputes. Then we come to
something called the "Old Style Julian Calendar." Here
it is necessary to quote in full: "The 'Old Style' Julian
Calendar dates from A.D. 325. By the fourth century the spring
equinox was arriving on March 21st according to the 'Original'
Julian Calendar. When the First Ecumenical Council met in Nicea
in 325 to settle the date for celebrating Pascha, the Church adopted
the 'Original' Julian Calendar and ruled that Pascha shall be
observed on the first Sunday, after the first full moon, after
the spring equinox on March 21st and independent of the Jewish
Passover. The Council did not correct the calendar, nor did it
set the spring equinox date back to March 25th where it was in
the first place. By fixing a faulty civil calendar
date to a fixed phenomenon in nature, the Church created for
herself a calendar problem." [Emphasis mine. A.B.] Having
told us that the Council adopted the "Original Julian
Calendar" and made no changes, what does the next sentence
mean? It says, "The 'Old Style' Julian Calendar dates from
A. D. 325 and not from the year B.C. 44, as is commonly
believed." Clearly from the evidence given, the
"Original" and the "Old Style" are one and
the same thing! In any event, this brings us to the question of
authority.
In the Orthodox Church we accept infallibility, not in a
personal, papal sense, but as the voice of Christ's Church
expressed through an Ecumenical Council. Thus, even if a change
had been made in A. D. 325, which it was not, it would have been
quite legitimate and binding on all Christians, simply because it
is only an Ecumenical Council that can order these aspects of the
Church's liturgical discipline. This is why Pope Gregory in 1582
and Patriarch Meletios in 1923 acted in defiance of Holy
Tradition. They did something they had not the right to do, by
usurping and taking to themselves the authority that rightly
belongs to a General Council.
The next exhibit in the OCA article is called the "New
Style Julian Calendar," but is actually the Gregorian
Adjustment named after Pope Gregory XIII, introduced in 1582 and
commonly called the Gregorian Calendar. The memorandum notes that
this adjustment more or less corrects the eleven minute error,
and then goes on to tell us about the "Revised Julian
Calendar," which has the curious characteristic that
"until about the year 2200 both the 'New Style' and the
'Revised' versions of the Julian Calendar will coincide"
(!).
These are all false and misleading distinctions. There is only
one Julian Calendar—not an "Original, "Old
Style," "New Style," or "Revised." No
amount of invented distinctions and superfluous information can
mask these facts: 1) The Julian Calendar has remained unchanged
and in continuous use for over two thousand years; 2) The other
church calendar is called the "Gregorian
Calendar,"—not the "New Style Julian
Calendar."
+ + +
One claim often made in favor of "calendar reform"
is that it would be more convenient to have the festivals, such
as Christmas, at the same time as they are celebrated by everyone
else. But where was the Gregorian Adjustment first introduced
into the Orthodox Church? Not in the diaspora, but in places like
Constantinople, Greece and Romania, where almost all the
Christians are Orthodox. When Pope Gregory XIII introduced his
adjustment, he tried to pressure the Orthodox Church into doing
the same, but a synod which met in 1583 gave him a very firm
reply. Carrying the signatures of Patriarch Jeremias II of
Constantinople, Patriarch Sylvester of Alexandria and Patriarch
Sophronios of Jerusalem, the document states: "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 enacted well for us to follow, but wants to
follow the newly invented Paschalion [method of fixing the date
of Easter] 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 any such have the anathema and let him be
outside the Church and the Assembly of the Faithful." A very
different spirit prevailed in 1923, when an "Inter-Orthodox
Congress" was called together by Patriarch Meletios of
Constantinople. Its agenda also included proposals to allow
bishops to be married and to allow a priest to remarry after the
death of his first wife. The congress was attended by delegates
from Constantinople, Greece, Cyprus, Serbia (which rejected the
calendar change) and Romania. The Patriarchs of Antioch and
Jerusalem refused to send delegates, the Patriarch of Alexandria
did not reply to the invitation and the Church of Bulgaria was
not invited.
In the diaspora, a certain tension can exist in a mixed
marriage, where there may be pressure on the Orthodox partner to
conform to the local custom at a time like Christmas. However,
domestic convenience is not the criterion for determining
liturgical discipline. Every Christmas time in the West there are
heard numerous religious voices lamenting the fact that Christmas
is so commercialized. We who are Orthodox do not have a
commercialized Christmas because we celebrate it on a day that
the world around us regards as an ordinary working day. Why give
up this advantage? In this respect, the Jewish community
sets us an example. They are deeply involved in commerce in
Europe, America and elsewhere, but they have not changed the
dates of their festivals to coincide with secular holidays,
although doubtless their businesses would profit by doing so.
The desire for astronomical accuracy is just a red herring. If
it really were an important consideration, surely the advocates
of the Gregorian Adjustment would use the Gregorian reckoning for
everything, including Easter. By not doing so, they seek to avoid
the condemnation of the First Canon of the Synod of Antioch (A.D.
341) which says that if any bishop, priest or deacon disturbs the
good order of the Church by "observing Easter (at the same
time) with the Jews, the holy Synod decrees that he shall
henceforth be an alien from the Church, as one who not only heaps
sins upon himself, but who is also the cause of destruction and
subversion to many; and it deposes not only such persons
themselves from their ministry, but those also who after their
deposition shall presume to communicate with them." No room
for doubt there about the attitude of the Church to those who
celebrate Easter at the same time as the Passover; yet, think how
often the Latin West does just that. But in seeking to avoid this
transgression, the Orthodox Christians who use the Gregorian
Calendar fall into another trap by celebrating Easter sometimes
in May, which is also also forbidden.
It is indeed fortunate that the liturgical order of the Church
does not depend on astronomical accuracy. Far more important to
us is the unbroken unity of the Church. This has several aspects,
of which the unbroken cycle of liturgical prayer is one. By
dropping thirteen days in making the Gregorian Adjustment, we
break this continuous liturgical cycle and thus violently disrupt
the unity of the Church, by which we are at one with all our
fellow Orthodox believers now and through the centuries. Which is
preferable: unity of prayer with the saints and all Orthodox
Christians or, by adjusting the liturgical cycle, unity with Pope
Gregory and the Latin/Protestant West?
The OCA memorandum concludes: "If the Orthodox Church is
the Pillar of Truth, it cannot afford to ignore the scientific
truths discovered by man. How can we claim: I believe in One
God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth.... and
refuse to accept the truth of the scientific measurements of the
length of the year he created?" Yes, the Orthodox Church is
the Pillar of Truth, and for this very reason, we must defend the
decisions of the Seven Ecumenical Councils as God's revealed and
timeless Truth. Scientific truth is much more unreliable. That
everything is,composed of four elements, that the sun revolves
around the earth, that the earth is flat, and many other things
have, in their time, been regarded as scientific truth, but
our saving faith has never depended on such "truths. "
Make no mistake, the line of reasoning that advocates the
adoption of the Gregorian Adjustment will open the flood gates to
other and more serious innovations. The Queen of Feasts, Easter,
is already under attack. Already, some Orthodox hierarchs are
suggesting that we do not really have any objections to a fixed
day for Easter, and that we could fall into line with the
suggestion of the Pope and the World Council of Churches on this
issue. Sadly, some simple souls will be led into believing that
this is true, when in reality any such suggestion is utterly
condemned by numerous canons.
This whole insidious process leads the faithful, often in
trusting naively, further and further away from the Ark of
Salvation. First, break the liturgical cycle of the fixed-date
festivals, and then settle a fixed date for Easter, all in the
name of a spurious unity with those who deny Orthodoxy. Having
detached most of the faithful from any true understanding of Holy
Tradition and the nature of the Church, it will be quite a short
step to destroy a principle of worship that has always
characterized the religion of the True God. This is the seven-day
or weekly cycle of prayer. Throughout the time of the Old
Covenant, as God Himself commanded Moses, every seventh day was a
day of prayer. When almost everything else relating to the Old
Covenant was superseded by Christ, the resurrection guaranteed
that the seven-day cycle of worship would continue unbroken. This
also could soon be under threat by the introduction of the
"World-wide Calendar." This anti-Christian abomination
has been accepted, in principle, by the governments of the world.
The only thing they cannot agree upon is when and how to
introduce it. Its basic premise is that commerce would be able to
plan production schedules more effectively if all holidays were
at the same time each year. In other words, the plan guarantees
that Christmas Day would always be a Sunday and New Year's Eve, a
Saturday. The odd day each year (a year is 52 weeks and one day
long) would be disposed of by adding "World Day" at the
end of December. So the sequence would be "Saturday,"
December 31; followed by "World Day;" followed by
"Sunday,"January 1. In a Leap Year, a second
"World Day" would be inserted between the last day of
June and the first day of July. In this calendar the day
designated as "Sunday" could actually be any day of the
week, and the seven day cycle of worship would be disrupted every
year, and twice every Leap Year. Doubtless, the Latin/Protestant
West will regard this as being of no importance and accept the
change with alacrity, when it comes. If the Orthodox Christians
who presently use the Gregorian Adjustment continue to do so,
their domestic convenience will again be shattered. They will
have unity with nobody, neither with their fellow Orthodox nor
with the West and the modern world.
From The Orthodox Word, Sep.-Oct., 1982, vol. 32, no. 5, 45-48.
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