Posted on 05/28/2009 8:28:16 AM PDT by annalex
A Common Date for Easter is Possible
Contact: Juan Michel, World Council of Churches, +41-22-791-6153, +41-79-507-6363 media@wcc-coe.org
MEDIA ADVISORY, May 28 /Standard Newswire/ -- The hope that all Christians will be able to celebrate Easter on the same day in the future was reaffirmed by an international ecumenical seminar organized by the Institute of Ecumenical Studies at the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv, 15 May.
The problem is just about as old as the church itself: As Christianity started to spread around the world, Christians came to differing results on when to commemorate Jesus Christ's death and resurrection, due to the different reports in the four gospels on these events.
Attempts to establish a common date for Easter began with the Council of Nicaea in the year 325. It established that the date of Easter would be the first Sunday after the full moon following the vernal equinox. However, it did not fix the methods to be used to calculate the timing of the full moon or the vernal equinox.
Nowadays the Orthodox churches use the 21 March of the Julian calendar as the date of the equinox, while the churches of the Western tradition – that is the Protestant and Catholic churches – base their calculations on the Gregorian calendar. The resulting gap between the two Easter dates can be as much as five weeks.
All participants at the seminar in Lviv, which included Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Protestant theologians from a variety of European countries, endorsed a compromise proposed at a World Council of Churches (WCC) consultation in Aleppo, Syria, in 1997. The proposal was to keep the Nicaea rule but calculate the equinox and full moon using the accurate astronomical data available today, rather than those used many years ago.
Concretely, participants at the seminar expressed the hope that the years 2010 and 2011, when the coincidence of the calendars will produce a common Easter date, would serve as a period during which all Christians would join their efforts "to make such coincidence not to be an exception but rather a rule" and prepare for an Easter date based on exact astronomical reckoning and celebrated by all Christians on 8 April 2012.
However, the seminar entitled "A common date for Easter is possible" did not turn a blind eye to what participants considered to be "the main problem": "not the calculations, but the complex relations and missing of trust among different Christian denominations because of long divisions."
French Orthodox theologian Prof. Antoine Arjakovsky, director of the Institute of Ecumenical Studies, pointed out: "Whilst the astronomic reckoning of the Nicean rule comes closer to the Gregorian calendar than to the ancient Julian one, the Roman Catholic and Protestant churches did take a step towards the Orthodox churches in Aleppo, accepting that the date of Easter should be established on the base of a cosmic calendar rather than by a fixed date as had been proposed prior to the inter-Orthodox meeting in Chambésy in 1977."
Other speakers at the ecumenical seminar were Rev. Dr Dagmar Heller, professor at the Ecumenical Institute Bossey and executive secretary of the WCC Faith and Order Commission, Jesuit Father Milan Zust, an official of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, and Prof. Konstantin Sigov, director of Saint Clement Centre in Kiev, Ukraine.
Further to the students of the Institute of Ecumenical Studies – a consortium between the Ukrainian Catholic University, the National University of Lviv and several other European universities – the seminar had gathered representatives of the city's major denominations: the Ukrainian Orthodox Churches of the patriarchates of Moscow and Kiev as well as the Autocephalous Orthodox Church in the Ukraine, the Greek and Roman Catholic Churches, the Armenian Apostolic Church, the Baptist and the Evangelical Church.
Frequently asked questions about the date of Easter
http://www.oikoumene.org/?id=3169
Proposals from the Aleppo consultation
http://www.oikoumene.org/?id=2678
More information about the seminar (Ukrainian Catholic University website)
http://www.ecumenicalstudies.org.ua/eng/ies_activity/one.easter/
Additional information: Juan Michel,+41 22 791 6153 +41 79 507 6363 media@wcc-coe.org
The World Council of Churches promotes Christian unity in faith, witness and service for a just and peaceful world. An ecumenical fellowship of churches founded in 1948, today the WCC brings together 349 Protestant, Orthodox, Anglican and other churches representing more than 560 million Christians in over 110 countries, and works cooperatively with the Roman Catholic Church. The WCC general secretary is Rev. Dr Samuel Kobia, from the Methodist Church in Kenya. Headquarters: Geneva, Switzerland.
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Copyright © 2009 |
Good point. The whole Paschal Liturgy is jam-packed with Judaism.
I really think getting more into having a more unified date for Easter is a way of honoring the prayer Jesus said that all the belivers be one.
I’m going to second you concerning the WCC. I personally hope the RCC and the Orthodox Church remove themselves from these people. Being a part of the WCC is like asking the Arians, or Montanists their opinion, and then pretending to take them seriously. Nothing good can come of it.
Yep! Me! :)
I never understood how Pascha could be celebrated before Passover since the Last Supper was a Passover seder? Think about it!
I am Russian Orthodox (ROCOR, which has been in Canonical Communion with the Moscow Patriarchate sine 17 May, 2007) and don't mind having a different date for Easter though, as it makes getting the days off easier! Selfish, yes...but convenient as I refuse to EVER miss going to church from Holy Thursday through Bright Monday.
IMO, if there were to be a common date, it ought to be calculated the way we do it....after the Passover...
I am Old Calendar....
Yes, you are, borther! I believe Alex had a question for you.
that should be brother, brother! :)
Wat difference does it make if ROCOR is in communion with Moscow? The Paschal Sunday falls on the same day for ALL Orthodox Churches (except Finnish, by EP's special dispensation!).
The Catholics do not celebrate Easter before Passove either, that is not an issue.
No, not really a question, since on the Easter there is no division between you, and that is what the thread is about. I was simply wondering how important it is for the fixed celebrations such as Christmas.
Christmas is an arbitrary date. The Church really doesn't know the exact date of his birth, so as such it is not critical. Resurrection is a different story. It is an exact date and it is by far more important in the Church then the Lord's birthday.
The problem with the New Calendar is twofold: (1) the way it was initiated and (uncanonically) implemented, and (2) why it was initiated.
The Ecumenical Patriarch, a shady character suspected of being a Freemason, convened a Synod to which only four (out of fourteen) Patriarchs responded. He then wanted to implement a number of changes, including clean-shaven clergy, and the New Calendar, etc. They all failed, save for the Calendar. But, because there was no Synod, there was no proclamation either. The changes accepted have no binding authority and are dictates of the EP's personal choice.
Although the Calendar (put together by a Serbian astronomer contracted by EP) is technically not Gregorian because in a few hundred years it will begin to diverge from the Gregorian, so the coincidence of dates is only accidental and temporary.
Of course, with the majority of patriarchs not attending no such change could have been implemented. The rule is that the Synod can do nothing without the Patriarch and the Patriarch nothing without the Synod! Clearly, the New Calendar is not canonical and therefore illicit.
But for reasons unknown to me, the supposedly independent and auctocephalous Church of Greece set out on a pogrom-like mission to shove the New Calendar down everyone's throat. Whether in those areas of Greece under EP's jurisdiction (about 30% of the territory) or not, those who resisted the Patriarch were removed and punished.
The only enclave that remained defiant is Mount Athos (the Holy Mountain), an autonomous monastic republic of sorts (which considers even the current EP a heretic even though it is under his jurisdiction!).
The second problem with the New Calendar is why it was implemented (1921). The Old One served the Eastern Christians since the beginning and was for a good many centuries the Calendar of the whole albeit divided Church.
It is profoundly accurate when it comes to Easter, and this is what matters the most. The Old Calendar is based on the Jewish lunar as well as the Roman solar methods of calendar keeping. The Jewish lunar part ensures that Easter always falls after the Passover.
Pragmatism, vis-a-vis the West could have been the reason the EP wanted it but, for he also instead on clean-shaven clergy, so that they "look western" in which he was not far from Peter the Great and his meddling into the Church affairs with a western agenda.
This EP character actually unilaterally proclaimed "re-union" with the Anglicans and recognized Anglican clergy as duly ordained!
Bottom line is: the Old Calendar served us for 2,000 years and has no reason to be fixed. It establishes Easter accurately and that is the most important day in the liturgical calendar of the Church. It really makes no difference if it coincides with the Gregorian Calendar. Church fasting rules interfere a lot more with a "normal" life in America the the Calendar.
The forthcoming all-Orthodox Synod in Cyprus (in June) will address the issue of the Calendar. It would be good if the Church as whole agreed to a single Calendar if for no other reason than for the sake of unity.
I am afraid, however, that the Serbian Church may have second thoughts as many of her "progressive" vladykas have been brainwashed in Greece, and because of Serbs' tendency to imitate things western. This may leave only the Moscow Patriarch as the sole defender of the Old Calendar against 12 others.
You know, I’ve long had this dream that the reconciliation between East and West will be very straightforward: the Orthodox admit that the Romans are right about the calendar, and the Romans admit that the Orthodox are right about everything else.
Kosta:
We are in agreement. I do hope this synod will correct a lot of things, like the EP’s interfering in other jurisdictions, using the “barbarian lands” canon as an excuse......
Amen to that!
I thought that 15 Nisan was the first day of Pesach. Which should correspond to what we call "Good Friday", not Easter.
His jurisdictional authority also is a matter of dispute. The Orthodox Church in Finnald celebrates Easter according to the western calendar, by EP's permission, etc. His idea of jurisdiction over "barbarian lands" is certainly stretched, and the ambiguous "little deal" that exists between EP and the Church of Greece.
The MP, rightfully, feels that the EP is a "Prisoner of Phanar" with barely 2,000 parishioners, and presides over a fictitious city (Constantinople), and is in no position to be the leader of the world's Orthodox. His patriarchate, in name only, is a vestige of history and a pretense. MP is certainly in much better position to defend the world Orthodox community and to do so effectively while exercising jurisdiction over 80% of the world Orthodox 350 million believers.
Because of EP's overt ambitions to be the Orthodox "pope," as the perception goes, Serbian hierarchs who have been "educated" in Greece or in Greek institutions under EP's jurisdiction, have returned with novel ideas about how to serve liturgy which are evident in Greek churches. These innovations smack of yet another westernization attempt by the EP (the doors are kept open throughout, the silent prayers are said aloud, the Ambo Prayer is recited by the priest facing the poeple, etc.
These changes are uncanonical and have caused a great deal of trouble in the Serbian community, effectively splitting the Church at home and ignoring the decision of the Synod last fall to cotinue serving the liturgy according to the established typikon.
I have to say that I am extremely upset about this subversive influence that has been done through EP and this unorthodox relationship that exists between the EP and the supposedly independent Church of Greece. To say that the differences pale is as understatement.
Thank you very much for clarifying these intra-Orthodox divisions for me.
One evident virtue of your position is that it can fit on a bumper sticker.
Romans do admit that the Orthodox are right about everything else. This is why the Orthodox are admitted to the Holy Communion, and particular Orthodox in practice and theology Churches are in many cases united to the Catholic Church. We think that the clarifications of doctrine that occurred in the West following the Great Eastern Schism do not contradict the state of the Church prior to it, and so should be acceptable to the Orthodox, perhaps after a ecumenical council puts its stamp on them.
You are welcome, Alex.
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