A Common "Easter"
Question: In our local paper I read that the World Council of Churches,
with the cooperation of Orthodox representatives, has settled on
a new date for Pascha that is based on the dictates of the
Council of Nicea. If this is true, will it be possible for all
Orthodox to accept this, since it is the Orthodox formula? (M.P., CT)
Answer: In one of the most
deceptive press releases ever issued by the World Council of Churches (WCC),
this powerful ecumenical organization announced on March 25, 1997, in a statement
entitled, "The date of Easter: Science Offers Solution to Ancient Religious
Problem," that "senior church representatives have come up with an
ingenious proposal to set a common date for Easter." The proposal in question
was hammered out at a conference in Aleppo, Syria, from March 5 to March 10,
1997, convened under the auspices of the WCC and the Middle Eastern Council
of Churches. Represented at the conference were consultants from the Roman Catholic
Church, the Old Catholic Churches of the Union of Utrecht, various European
Protestant Churches, the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, the Armenian Orthodox
Church, the Syrian Orthodox Church, and the Orthodox Patriarchates of Constantinople,
Antioch, and Moscow. The Orthodox Church in America (in the person of Professor
John Erickson) and the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada also sent representatives
to the conference, which was "staffed," according to the WCC news
release, by "Fr. Dr. Thomas FitzGerald [sic] (director) and Rev.
Dr. Dagmar Heller (executive secretary) from WCC Unit I: Unity and Renewal..."
(Fitzgerald is a Greek Orthodox Priest assigned to the ecumenical center of
the Patriarchate of Constantinople in Chambesy, Switzerland—Ed.).
According to WCC officials, the
conference in Aleppo, recognizing that the celebration of
"Easter" on "different dates [in the Christian
East and West—Ed.]
gives a divided witness and compromises the churches' credibility
and effectiveness in bringing the Gospel (good news) to the
world," divised a formula for the common celebration of
Christ's Resurrection. In a remarkably dishonest reference to the
common date for the celebration of Pascha established at the
First Ecumenical Synod in Nicaea—removing any reference to the
proscription against celebrating Pascha at the same time as the
Jewish Passover (a deception for which Orthodox ecumenists have
been preparing us for decades)—, the Aleppo representatives claim that, in their
proposed common date for Easter, "the Nicea principle will
be preserved and neither Churches in the East or [sic]
West will have to change their policy." The fact is, of
course, that the common date proposed, which will be implemented,
if it is universally accepted by the Christian world, in the year
2001 (when Orthodox Pascha and the heterodox Easter feast
coincide), presumes that the Orthodox Church (Julian or Old)
Calendar will not be used to determine the date of the spring
equinox, as it was at Nicaea and as it has been by the majority
of the Orthodox Church since. And because, as we observed above,
Orthodox ecumenists have, through their deliberately deceptive
and misleading "scholarship," made the issue of the
common celebration of Pascha and the Jewish Passover a non-issue,
this element in the Nicean formula was also wholly ignored at
Aleppo.
Recognizing the lie contained
in their claims that this new proposal would not change the
"policy" of the Orthodox Churches with regard to the
date of Pascha, the WCC acknowledged, in its statement about the
Aleppo conference, that "Churches in the East will be most
effected [sic] by the new dating system." The
statement even notes that the "'old calendar' has been a
symbol of the [Orthodox] churches' desire to maintain their
integrity and freedom from the hostile forces of this world. The
consultation therefore concluded that there will be need of great
pastoral sensitivity among the church members as the proposal is
pursued." (One wonders, quite naturally, whether this
sensitivity to the calendar issue will continue to entail, as it
has in the past, a characterization of us "Old
Calendarists" as "rubbish in the street,"
"illiterates, "peasant ecclesiastical figures,"
and "a wretched minority" existing "outside the
Church" by Orthodox ecumenists, or whether simple violence
and persecution, again as in the past, will be the
"sensitivity tools" of the day.)
No reasonable person could
possibly consider the nonsense coming forth from Aleppo, let
alone the bizarre report about the conference issued by the WCC
last March (adorned, as it is, with the imbecilic rhetoric and
strange syntax of "ecumeni-talk"), consistent with the
traditional pronouncements of the Orthodox Church regarding the
date of the Paschal Feast. The proposals made by this conference
are an insult to the Orthodox people; derive from a simple-minded
approach to a complex issue; rely on pseudo-scientific formulae
(as though science dictated our spiritual beliefs and customs,
anyway); base themselves on a deceptive misrepresentation of the
provisions of the Council of Nicaea concerning the date of
Pascha; and, to quote a British Orthodox journal, "The
Shepherd" (Vol. XVII, No. 8, p. 20), succeed in
"pulling the wool over our eyes" in the name of
condescending notions of pastoral sensitivity.
Setting aside dogma, doctrine,
and matters of Faith, this move towards a common Pascha is a
simple attempt to achieve a superficial "cosmetic"
unity among Christians. All of this is in the spirit of the late
and lamentable Patriarch Athenagoras, who opened the door to a
new approach to Orthodoxy—one foreign to the Church Fathers and
Holy Tradition—, dispensing with the study of God and
things spiritual (theology) for what is the hypocrisy of
ecumenical humanism ("love"):
"There are two paths [to
Christian unity—Ed.]:
theological dialogue and another. On both sides we have
theologians who are studying the subject of our return to the old
state of affairs. And because I do not set many hopes on
theological dialogue..., I prefer the dialogue of love....A
great spirit of love is spreading abroad over the Christians of
the East and West."
We Orthodox anti-ecumenists
have come, once more, to understand just what "spirit"
Patriarch Athenagoras saw spreading throughout Christianity and
just what the love which he preached involves. The spirit and
love of ecumenism have divided the Orthodox Church, have silenced
the majority of the People of God, who, outside the tiny minority
of vocal Orthodox in America, are opposed to ecumenism, and have
created in the guise of Orthodoxy a religion which aims at
accommodation to the world and its priorities—a religion foreign to the other-worldly
Faith of the Fathers, which calls us from this world of darkness
to the higher life of light.
From Orthodox Tradition, January 1998.
Canons On the Date for Celebrating Pascha
Canon VII of the Holy Apostles
If any Bishop, or Presbyter, or Deacon celebrate the holy day of Easter before the vernal equinox
with the Jews, let him be deposed.
Canon I of Antioch
As for all persons who dare to
violate the definition of the holy and great Synod convened in
Nicaea in the presence of Eusebeia, the consort of the most
God-beloved Emperor Constantine, concerning the holy festival of
the soterial Pascha, we decree that they be excluded from
Communion and be outcasts from the Church if they persist more
captiously in objecting to the decisions that have been made as
most fitting in regard thereto; and let these things be said with
reference to laymen. But if any of the person occupying prominent
positions in the Church, such as a Bishop, or a Presbyter, or a
Deacon, after the adoption of this definition, should dare to
insist upon having his own way, to the perversion of the laity,
and to the disturbance of the church, and upon celebrating Pascha
along with the Jews, the holy Synod has hence judged that person
to be an alien to the Church, on the ground that he has not only
become guilty of sin by himself, but has also been the cause of
corruption and perversion among the multitude. Accordingly, it
not only deposes such persons from the liturgy, but also those
who dare to commune with them after their deposition. Moreover,
those who have been deposed are to be deprived of the external
honor too of which the holy Canon and God's priesthood have
partaken.
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