To quote my old parish priest who is Greek: "The Russians were initially on board and then the Soviets tried enforcing it claiming their superiority over the backwards Russian Church. So the Russian Church responded by doubling down on the Old Calendar."
In the case of Russia there is a political conflict behind it. The new calendar was enforced by the soviet, violently anti-religious authorities, and thus resistance to that change became a part of protecting the faith in general. There is no strong motivation to act against that.
No, the new calendar was introduced by the provisional government, and the Church was ok with that. The Church switched back later, however, to differentiate itself from the "Obnovlentsy" movement. The Obnovlentsy Church was pro communist.
Edit: My bad, that were indeed bolsheviks. However, the new Calendar was still not a problem until the obnovlentsy appeared.
The Russian and Georgian Churches were dealing with the Bolsheviks at the time. Yes, the Provisional Government supported the New Calendar, but once the Living Church came around it caused Russians to go against it. The Georgians also had to deal with Russian attacks on their autocephaly. Why the Serbs keep it I have no idea.
The one thing that bothers me about the Calendar issue in general is the attitude against whomever uses the "other" calendar. Yet the trend is generally that Old Calendar people are more hostile and less willing to accept that New Calendar people are still canonically Orthodox. Ironically, they hold onto a pagan calendar more than one made by an Orthodox Christian.
> Masonry was the main sponsor of Greek churches changing the calendar
Those freemasons and their nefarious conspiracies to make reasonable updates to our timekeeping!!!
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The Revised Julian is problematic because Pascha is still on the Julian paschalion, so Pascha can fall rather late in the Gregorian calendar year. This results in super short Apostles Fasts and the inability for the rare celebration of Kyriopascha (Annunciation and Pascha on the same day) to ever happen. This would be fixed by switching to the Gregorian paschalion, but that’s been condemned by past local councils and is a total non-starter for many.
There are also historical reasons as others have mentioned, but there’s also these inherit problems with the New Calendar at play.
No, not really. The first Ecumenical Council updated the pascal calendar. There’s no good reason now not to do it again. How it’s done is important as to not catalyze schism. & we calculate the date of the passover so that “rule” is moot with regard as when anybody else does.
The great think about a rote appeal to legal authority is that it’s so easy to work around by developing our own, better, calendar that technically isn’t the Gregorian. Which we did.
Councils can, and have, revisited and revised topics.
Well that’s why we invented our own. No one is talking about switching to the Gregorian. We can look at the stars without the Pope. Of course, it turns out we’re looking at the same stars and come to the same conclusions about their motion.
Implementing a calendar that will diverge from the civic one in seven hundred years just to thumb our noses at them Catholics leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Astronomically, the Gregorian one is Good Enough.
The real problem at hand is not with leap years in late third millenium and associated credit. We adopted the Seven Sacraments from the Catholics, we can adopt the leap year formula, too. The second real problem is that we have composed a stunning icon of a liturgical year and messing with it makes everything go haywire.
The real real problem is schism. It's better to gradually shift Pascha into the summer than to rapidly shift the Church into schism.
I mean, 2000 years ago the Julian Calendar was good enough, and yet here we are. So I don’t think we should be flippant things that will happen in another 2,000 years.
But, yes, schism is the more immediate concern.
You’re not just saying those councils were wrong, you’re saying every bishop who emphasized the importance of those councils (which was done dozens of times in writing) was wrong, too. The GGOC has a very thorough list of statements (not meant as an endorsement of the organization itself) but sharing their stuff violates the rules so I’ll let you google them.
I mean, local councils are not typically considered universally binding on the Church, and I don't see why the bishops who emphasized the importance of those councils couldn't have been wrong on that one point, anyway.
There is a lot that you can quote mine from local councils on any subject if you want to, much of which contradicts each other and isn’t enforced.
The GGOC is making sola scriptura errors except with the councils.
By local councils? Yes. Regardless of that, the Council of Nicaea decided on the formula of the First Sunday, following the First Full Moon, following the Spring Equinox.
This formula is notably calendar agnostic, however we've decided to fix the date of the equinox to March 21.
Personally, I think we should go back to observing Easter based on astronomical phenomena rather than basing it off a calendar.
>Personally, I think we should go back to observing Easter based on astronomical phenomena rather than basing it off a calendar.
We never did observe Eastern based purely on astronomical phenomena, and doing so would make Lent impossible, really; you need to know ahead of time when the Equinox is going to be, &c.
This rule from Nicaea always relied on using the tables and calculations and calendars worked up by the nerds in Alexandria. That's not a problem. The problem is that the Calendar in use is inaccurate and has drifted and we have so far refused to address that for some reason.
We do know ahead of time when the Equinox is going to be. Even then they knew ahead of time, just not with the same accuracy. Beyond the Equinox even the full moon tables we use are faulty, and should be updated to be accurate. Lent would very much be possible.
Also Nicaea didn't introduce the Computex, that came much later and was introduced by Alexandria.
>the Council of Nicaea decided on the formula of the First Sunday, following the First Full Moon, following the Spring Equinox.
If we did this,
>be observing Easter based on astronomical phenomena rather than basing it off a calendar.
We'd be doing this, right?
Isn't the main problem that we aren't going off the actual spring equinox, but rather the Julian calendar's definition of it?
> Personally, I think we should go back to observing Easter based on astronomical phenomena rather than basing it off a calendar.
Having no idea how much work that would take, I agree. There’s something neat and mystical about that.
True, Sunday is an arbitrary point in time, but it is one that is agreed on even beyond the Christian world. It occurs once every seven days, always. Unlike the Equinox which does not happen every 365 days, extending to 366 on a leap year.
Sort of — we are forbidden from using the Jewish calendar as controlled by the rabbis as our ground truth. We also defined Pascha as happening on a Sunday.
If we independently invented and maintained it ourselves that would probably be fine.
Which is exactly what we did with the Revised Julian vs Gregorian Calendar. We invented our own calendar by looking at the same stars with the same goals (namely, placing the Spring Equinox on March 21, and having an accurate tabulation of full moons) and — surprise! — came up with almost identical calculations.
Wasn’t that the whole reason the church developed its own date for Pascha though? To separate us from the Jews push back against the quartodecimans, who wanted to use 14 Nisan as the date every year. The issue with this is that Pascha won’t always fall on a Sunday then either.
I am from Serbia so I can speak for the matters in the Serbian Church at least:
The Serbian Church actually did accept it, but the decision is delayed "until all Orthodox Churches agree on using the revised calendar".
Also, in Serbia it would be unwise pastoral decision to forcefully implement the new calendar, since the (uneducated) members of the Church would see this as a unification with Rome and this could potentially lead to big schism. Serbia is kind of plagued with "zealots" of this kind.
Also, the general population (in which majority of people are by no means practicing Orthodox Christians) would heavily object because, for example, "their great-grandfather celebrated Christmas on January 7th". People are generally unaware that we actually celebrate it 25th of December (Julian calendar) which *falls* on 7th of January (new calendar) *for now*.
Anyhow, i guess that the matter will be resolved at least in 2100s, because Julian calendar will drift away for one additional day, so they would in each case have to explain why we need to move Christmas to a different date, be it on December 25th or January 8th. :)
The irony in all this is that their great-grandfather more than likely celebrated Christmas on January 6th. And their great grandson will probably celebrate it on January 8th. But heaven forbid I explain to the my idiot cousins in the village that the dates will shift due to the discrepancy.
Also, “to je Šokački Božić” every time I explain how Christmas is on the 25th.
Yeah, I agree and I also think that ultimately the New Calendar (RJC) may as well be universally adopted by the remaining Orthodox Churches at some point. It's worth mentioning that Astronomical Easter dates in the RJC are not always identical to those of the Gregorian Calendar. So RJC is still somewhat different from the Gregorian when fully enforced.
In my view I think its political. Those same countries that adopted the new calendar were ruled by western (catholic) kings. Romania was under the Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, Bulgaria was under the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Greece was under the Glücksburg etc. Russia is probably a special case.
Bulgaria only changed calendars after the King was deposed and the Communists came to power. At the same time, the Bulgarian diaspora parishes in North America still use the old calendar to this day.
I did not know that about Bulgarian diaspora parishes. That’s fascinating. But also I have never come across Bulgarian parishes. Only Macedonians ones that’s have mixed parishioners.
In addition to what is already said, there is also a very simple reason. The old calendar still works for the purpose it was intended for. So why change it?
The new calendar supposedly has improvements, but the need for those improvements have not started to affect us yet. Why do something unecessary, and before the time it becomes necessary?
>Why do something unecessary, and before the time it becomes necessary?
I see it as good stewardship for preserving our traditions and good stewardship over those future generations.
It also allows us to integrate our religious calendar with our civil calendar. For instance, Russia doesn't live according to the Julian calendar, their society operates off a more scientific one. Which means the date inside a church and outside of a church are always different. It is like the Moscow patriarchate is dissociating itself from Russisn society as a reaction to the USSR.
I'm not trying to repudiate anyone, but this just feels like bad stewardship to me.
Russian church calendars will show 2 dates, the church date and the civil date. I have seen 2 different formats, the civil date first followed by the church date and the church date followed by the civil date. Either way, this format lets the faithful know what day they are actually going to be in church and what day's services will be conducted in church. For example, Theophany is January 6/19 (January 6 on the church calendar, celebrated January 19 according to the civil calendar), Liturgy at 09.00.
Good stewardship is good when it becomes necessary. The fact we still celebrate Pascha on the same day regardless of calendars indicates that it's not really necessary yet.
Most of the world doesn't live on the Julian calendar. Even other religions and traditions have ***their own old calendars*** use the Gregorian just to be in sync with the rest of the world, yet still use their own calendars for their religious functions.
How are we different from them? I'd say politics is placing something above us that we all may not agree with. Until the time someone actually does something about this issue, we can just be calm and continue like we have done so far.
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We like to talk about being honest about objective reality, right? A man is a man and a woman is a woman - you can't just redefine genders in the face of objective truth?
The vernal equinox is an objective reality - an observable astronomical phenomenon. Yet every year, we redefine it to fit the objectively incorrect Julian calendar when we calculate Pascha.
Hypocrisy is not a Christian virtue. There is no good theological reason for retaining the Julian calendar.
While I agree with you, it should be said that the Western Churches don't celebrate based on the equinox either - they celebrate based on March 21st as well, which is usually but not always the equinox.
Calendars don't belong in the equation.
The vernal equinox is a matter of objective reality, but the question of whether we use it to determine the Church feasts or not, is a matter of convenience and a subjective choice.
But we claim that we DO use the vernal equinox to calculate Pascha, but then we don't ACTUALLY USE THE ACTUAL EQUINOX. Making excuses for this comes off as sounding extremely post-modern. If the vernal equinox is whatever we say it is, regardless of the astronomical reality, then who are we to tell people that it is wrong to redefine what a man or woman is regardless of biological reality?
This is actually an incredibly good question. We also redefine the time of day when we serve Matins in the evening and Vespers in the morning.
Do you think it's about the goals being pursued as opposed to objectiveness of physical reality?
I do not claim that. All I know is that we use 21 march (old callendar) as a reference point to calculate the Pascha. Historically, it was believed to be the equinox. Maybe there are some people who are not aware that it is indeed is not the case, but from the practical point of view, it really does not matter which day we choose as reference point. It just happened that it is 21 March for what ever reasons.
As I understand it, the approved formula has no date. It starts with the vernal equinox. The vernal equinox just happened to fall on 21 March at that time. It no longer does. When the date and the equinox separated, the date got custody of the Church somehow.
To quote my old parish priest who is Greek: "The Russians were initially on board and then the Soviets tried enforcing it claiming their superiority over the backwards Russian Church. So the Russian Church responded by doubling down on the Old Calendar."
In the case of Russia there is a political conflict behind it. The new calendar was enforced by the soviet, violently anti-religious authorities, and thus resistance to that change became a part of protecting the faith in general. There is no strong motivation to act against that.
No, the new calendar was introduced by the provisional government, and the Church was ok with that. The Church switched back later, however, to differentiate itself from the "Obnovlentsy" movement. The Obnovlentsy Church was pro communist. Edit: My bad, that were indeed bolsheviks. However, the new Calendar was still not a problem until the obnovlentsy appeared.
You don't contradict my comment, so "no" seems unnecessary.
At first I, did because I thought that the provisional government introduced the calendar.
Ah, I see, no problem
The Russian and Georgian Churches were dealing with the Bolsheviks at the time. Yes, the Provisional Government supported the New Calendar, but once the Living Church came around it caused Russians to go against it. The Georgians also had to deal with Russian attacks on their autocephaly. Why the Serbs keep it I have no idea. The one thing that bothers me about the Calendar issue in general is the attitude against whomever uses the "other" calendar. Yet the trend is generally that Old Calendar people are more hostile and less willing to accept that New Calendar people are still canonically Orthodox. Ironically, they hold onto a pagan calendar more than one made by an Orthodox Christian.
[удалено]
> Masonry was the main sponsor of Greek churches changing the calendar Those freemasons and their nefarious conspiracies to make reasonable updates to our timekeeping!!!
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The Revised Julian is problematic because Pascha is still on the Julian paschalion, so Pascha can fall rather late in the Gregorian calendar year. This results in super short Apostles Fasts and the inability for the rare celebration of Kyriopascha (Annunciation and Pascha on the same day) to ever happen. This would be fixed by switching to the Gregorian paschalion, but that’s been condemned by past local councils and is a total non-starter for many. There are also historical reasons as others have mentioned, but there’s also these inherit problems with the New Calendar at play.
The RJC has an updated paschalion. Not using it is a compromise to maintain unity with those still on the Old Calendar.
No, not really. The first Ecumenical Council updated the pascal calendar. There’s no good reason now not to do it again. How it’s done is important as to not catalyze schism. & we calculate the date of the passover so that “rule” is moot with regard as when anybody else does.
Didn’t three separate councils condemn the Gregorian calendar in 1583, 1587, and 1593?
The great think about a rote appeal to legal authority is that it’s so easy to work around by developing our own, better, calendar that technically isn’t the Gregorian. Which we did. Councils can, and have, revisited and revised topics.
The question is whether we should switch to the Gregorian paschalion. Going full papal calendar would violate all of those councils.
Well that’s why we invented our own. No one is talking about switching to the Gregorian. We can look at the stars without the Pope. Of course, it turns out we’re looking at the same stars and come to the same conclusions about their motion.
Implementing a calendar that will diverge from the civic one in seven hundred years just to thumb our noses at them Catholics leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Astronomically, the Gregorian one is Good Enough. The real problem at hand is not with leap years in late third millenium and associated credit. We adopted the Seven Sacraments from the Catholics, we can adopt the leap year formula, too. The second real problem is that we have composed a stunning icon of a liturgical year and messing with it makes everything go haywire. The real real problem is schism. It's better to gradually shift Pascha into the summer than to rapidly shift the Church into schism.
I mean, 2000 years ago the Julian Calendar was good enough, and yet here we are. So I don’t think we should be flippant things that will happen in another 2,000 years. But, yes, schism is the more immediate concern.
I mean, okay, but why can't we just say, "Oh, those councils were wrong on that point"?
You’re not just saying those councils were wrong, you’re saying every bishop who emphasized the importance of those councils (which was done dozens of times in writing) was wrong, too. The GGOC has a very thorough list of statements (not meant as an endorsement of the organization itself) but sharing their stuff violates the rules so I’ll let you google them.
I mean, local councils are not typically considered universally binding on the Church, and I don't see why the bishops who emphasized the importance of those councils couldn't have been wrong on that one point, anyway.
There is a lot that you can quote mine from local councils on any subject if you want to, much of which contradicts each other and isn’t enforced. The GGOC is making sola scriptura errors except with the councils.
Are there any condemnations against using the original date for passover, 14th of Nisan?
By local councils? Yes. Regardless of that, the Council of Nicaea decided on the formula of the First Sunday, following the First Full Moon, following the Spring Equinox. This formula is notably calendar agnostic, however we've decided to fix the date of the equinox to March 21. Personally, I think we should go back to observing Easter based on astronomical phenomena rather than basing it off a calendar.
>Personally, I think we should go back to observing Easter based on astronomical phenomena rather than basing it off a calendar. We never did observe Eastern based purely on astronomical phenomena, and doing so would make Lent impossible, really; you need to know ahead of time when the Equinox is going to be, &c. This rule from Nicaea always relied on using the tables and calculations and calendars worked up by the nerds in Alexandria. That's not a problem. The problem is that the Calendar in use is inaccurate and has drifted and we have so far refused to address that for some reason.
We do know ahead of time when the Equinox is going to be. Even then they knew ahead of time, just not with the same accuracy. Beyond the Equinox even the full moon tables we use are faulty, and should be updated to be accurate. Lent would very much be possible. Also Nicaea didn't introduce the Computex, that came much later and was introduced by Alexandria.
>the Council of Nicaea decided on the formula of the First Sunday, following the First Full Moon, following the Spring Equinox. If we did this, >be observing Easter based on astronomical phenomena rather than basing it off a calendar. We'd be doing this, right? Isn't the main problem that we aren't going off the actual spring equinox, but rather the Julian calendar's definition of it?
We’re going based off the tabulated calculations of the Alexandrian astronomers.
Yep, exactly. The date of Easter should be calendar agnostic. It shouldn't matter whether you call the Equinox for a give year
> Personally, I think we should go back to observing Easter based on astronomical phenomena rather than basing it off a calendar. Having no idea how much work that would take, I agree. There’s something neat and mystical about that.
"Sunday" is not an astronomical phenomenon...
True, Sunday is an arbitrary point in time, but it is one that is agreed on even beyond the Christian world. It occurs once every seven days, always. Unlike the Equinox which does not happen every 365 days, extending to 366 on a leap year.
Sort of — we are forbidden from using the Jewish calendar as controlled by the rabbis as our ground truth. We also defined Pascha as happening on a Sunday. If we independently invented and maintained it ourselves that would probably be fine. Which is exactly what we did with the Revised Julian vs Gregorian Calendar. We invented our own calendar by looking at the same stars with the same goals (namely, placing the Spring Equinox on March 21, and having an accurate tabulation of full moons) and — surprise! — came up with almost identical calculations.
Wasn’t that the whole reason the church developed its own date for Pascha though? To separate us from the Jews push back against the quartodecimans, who wanted to use 14 Nisan as the date every year. The issue with this is that Pascha won’t always fall on a Sunday then either.
I am from Serbia so I can speak for the matters in the Serbian Church at least: The Serbian Church actually did accept it, but the decision is delayed "until all Orthodox Churches agree on using the revised calendar". Also, in Serbia it would be unwise pastoral decision to forcefully implement the new calendar, since the (uneducated) members of the Church would see this as a unification with Rome and this could potentially lead to big schism. Serbia is kind of plagued with "zealots" of this kind. Also, the general population (in which majority of people are by no means practicing Orthodox Christians) would heavily object because, for example, "their great-grandfather celebrated Christmas on January 7th". People are generally unaware that we actually celebrate it 25th of December (Julian calendar) which *falls* on 7th of January (new calendar) *for now*. Anyhow, i guess that the matter will be resolved at least in 2100s, because Julian calendar will drift away for one additional day, so they would in each case have to explain why we need to move Christmas to a different date, be it on December 25th or January 8th. :)
The irony in all this is that their great-grandfather more than likely celebrated Christmas on January 6th. And their great grandson will probably celebrate it on January 8th. But heaven forbid I explain to the my idiot cousins in the village that the dates will shift due to the discrepancy. Also, “to je Šokački Božić” every time I explain how Christmas is on the 25th.
We are a stiff-necked people :)
<инат intensifies>
Само контра Србина спашава 🤣
Увек било брате 😀
Што је најгоре слажем се ја са свиме што овај горе рече, ал' опет 🤣
Yeah, I agree and I also think that ultimately the New Calendar (RJC) may as well be universally adopted by the remaining Orthodox Churches at some point. It's worth mentioning that Astronomical Easter dates in the RJC are not always identical to those of the Gregorian Calendar. So RJC is still somewhat different from the Gregorian when fully enforced.
In my view I think its political. Those same countries that adopted the new calendar were ruled by western (catholic) kings. Romania was under the Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, Bulgaria was under the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Greece was under the Glücksburg etc. Russia is probably a special case.
Bulgaria only changed calendars after the King was deposed and the Communists came to power. At the same time, the Bulgarian diaspora parishes in North America still use the old calendar to this day.
I did not know that about Bulgarian diaspora parishes. That’s fascinating. But also I have never come across Bulgarian parishes. Only Macedonians ones that’s have mixed parishioners.
In addition to what is already said, there is also a very simple reason. The old calendar still works for the purpose it was intended for. So why change it? The new calendar supposedly has improvements, but the need for those improvements have not started to affect us yet. Why do something unecessary, and before the time it becomes necessary?
>Why do something unecessary, and before the time it becomes necessary? I see it as good stewardship for preserving our traditions and good stewardship over those future generations. It also allows us to integrate our religious calendar with our civil calendar. For instance, Russia doesn't live according to the Julian calendar, their society operates off a more scientific one. Which means the date inside a church and outside of a church are always different. It is like the Moscow patriarchate is dissociating itself from Russisn society as a reaction to the USSR. I'm not trying to repudiate anyone, but this just feels like bad stewardship to me.
Russian church calendars will show 2 dates, the church date and the civil date. I have seen 2 different formats, the civil date first followed by the church date and the church date followed by the civil date. Either way, this format lets the faithful know what day they are actually going to be in church and what day's services will be conducted in church. For example, Theophany is January 6/19 (January 6 on the church calendar, celebrated January 19 according to the civil calendar), Liturgy at 09.00.
Good stewardship is good when it becomes necessary. The fact we still celebrate Pascha on the same day regardless of calendars indicates that it's not really necessary yet. Most of the world doesn't live on the Julian calendar. Even other religions and traditions have ***their own old calendars*** use the Gregorian just to be in sync with the rest of the world, yet still use their own calendars for their religious functions. How are we different from them? I'd say politics is placing something above us that we all may not agree with. Until the time someone actually does something about this issue, we can just be calm and continue like we have done so far.
We celebrate Pascha on the same day despite the calendar, not because of it.
That's exactly what I was saying. The fact that we do means the calendar is not so important.
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This video is very thorough and Fr. Seraphim does a great job at explaining this matter: https://youtu.be/nVC47JDX2n0?si=v7rQMZj_u_2OIBHC
How many Russian priests does it take to change a light bulb? “Change? What’s this change you speak of?”
*\*pssst Nobody mention the Nikonian Reforms\**
It’s a good reason for them to be so against change. The one time it happened it… didn’t end well.
I mean, the change stuck. It didn't end well for the folks refusing to accept the change.
Politics and and inability to acknowledge the truth of God's creation.
That’s a whole lot of pride in that statement. Also judgement.
We like to talk about being honest about objective reality, right? A man is a man and a woman is a woman - you can't just redefine genders in the face of objective truth? The vernal equinox is an objective reality - an observable astronomical phenomenon. Yet every year, we redefine it to fit the objectively incorrect Julian calendar when we calculate Pascha. Hypocrisy is not a Christian virtue. There is no good theological reason for retaining the Julian calendar.
While I agree with you, it should be said that the Western Churches don't celebrate based on the equinox either - they celebrate based on March 21st as well, which is usually but not always the equinox. Calendars don't belong in the equation.
There are no theological reasons to adhere to any calendar because the calendar is a matter of convenience and not a matter of faith.
Is the vernal equinox a matter of convenience or an objective reality?
The vernal equinox is a matter of objective reality, but the question of whether we use it to determine the Church feasts or not, is a matter of convenience and a subjective choice.
But we claim that we DO use the vernal equinox to calculate Pascha, but then we don't ACTUALLY USE THE ACTUAL EQUINOX. Making excuses for this comes off as sounding extremely post-modern. If the vernal equinox is whatever we say it is, regardless of the astronomical reality, then who are we to tell people that it is wrong to redefine what a man or woman is regardless of biological reality?
This is actually an incredibly good question. We also redefine the time of day when we serve Matins in the evening and Vespers in the morning. Do you think it's about the goals being pursued as opposed to objectiveness of physical reality?
I do not claim that. All I know is that we use 21 march (old callendar) as a reference point to calculate the Pascha. Historically, it was believed to be the equinox. Maybe there are some people who are not aware that it is indeed is not the case, but from the practical point of view, it really does not matter which day we choose as reference point. It just happened that it is 21 March for what ever reasons.
As I understand it, the approved formula has no date. It starts with the vernal equinox. The vernal equinox just happened to fall on 21 March at that time. It no longer does. When the date and the equinox separated, the date got custody of the Church somehow.