Posted on 06/16/2015 11:10:18 AM PDT by NRx
The Russian Orthodox Church has cautiously welcomed the willingness expressed by Pope Francis to establish a common date for Easter, so that Catholics, Orthodox and Protestants will celebrate the Resurrection on the same day.
According archpriest Nikolai Balashov, deputy chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate Department of External Church Relations, the Pontiff’s statements as reported in the media are not sufficient to give a proper understanding of the essence of his proposal.
"I would prefer to know the exact statements of Pope Francis first, transmitted by different sources of information," said Balashov, in an interview with Tass news agency, noting that "if the Church of Rome intends to abandon Easter according to the Gregorian calendar, introduced in the sixteenth century, and go back to the old one (Julian), used at a time when the Church of the East and West were united and used to date by the Orthodox, then this intention is welcome". If, instead, the idea is to "have a fixed date for Easter and not tie it to the first full moon after the spring equinox, as established in the East and in the West by the Council of Nicaea in 325, then this proposal is totally unacceptable to the Orthodox Church”, warned Balashov. "We will wait for official Vatican sources," he added.
(Excerpt) Read more at asianews.it ...
Abbreviated by necessity.
Since when does the Catholic Church presume to speak for Protestants?
“”if the Church of Rome intends to abandon Easter according to the Gregorian calendar, introduced in the sixteenth century, and go back to the old one (Julian), used at a time when the Church of the East and West were united and used to date by the Orthodox, then this intention is welcome”. If, instead, the idea is to “have a fixed date for Easter and not tie it to the first full moon after the spring equinox, as established in the East and in the West by the Council of Nicaea in 325, then this proposal is totally unacceptable to the Orthodox Church”
The Greeks will concur as will, I expect, the Arabs and the Ethiopians.
Well, if religion is about the truth, then I give the archpriest more credit for sticking to the Orthodox Church's beliefs than cutting some deal with Feel Good Francis to set a date unmoored from any religious belief or teaching so we can all celebrate together.
Somebody has to. They tried to get hold of the leader of the Natl Association of Evangelicals but the last time anyone in that position was heard from at the national, much less the international, level he was getting a rub down and doing meth with a gay hooker in a hotel room outside Denver.
Don’t get me wrong, I was raised Protestant and I am not observant in any of the traditions today, but the Protestants didn’t change Easter during or after the Reformation.
The Protestants currently date Easter like the RCC using the Geogorian calender. The dating of Easter is one of the major reasons the calender was reformed to the Gregorian as the slight inaccuracy of the Julian caused drifting in dating the vernal equinox and the dating of the moon cycle used to compute Easter.
Shouldn’t it be linked to passover?
Just my dumb question of the week.
The Church Fathers of the 3rd/4th century did not like the inaccuracy of using the Jewish Lunar Calender necessary to link Easter with Passover resulting in Easter could be any day of the week. Also different Jewish communities did not use the same exact calender. It was decided that Easter needed to be celebrated on a Sunday after the vernal equinox so the switch to using using the equinox and moon although these were based on calenders not astro observations.
Looks like this proposal will lead to greater divisions. If the Catholic church changes the Catholic Easter to conform to the Orthodox, the protestants will get mad and reject the change.
Unless I’ve been misinformed all the years of my life, Catholics and Protestants celebrate the Resurrection on the same Sunday, using the metonic cycle and the Gregorian calendar. Somehow I don’t see Protestants being all that worked up about this.
Easter is celebrated on the Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox. If that full moon is on a Sunday, Easter is the following Sunday.
Those using the Julian calendar sometimes have Easter following the second full moon after the vernal equinox (which is something that can be empirically established--it's when the sun appears to cross the celestial equator moving north). It's very unlikely that the 80 to 90% of Christians who calculate Easter according to the Gregorian calendar will agree to change to the Julian calendar to placate the minority.
The Gregorian reform was after the Reformation, and initially it was accepted only in the Catholic countries. Of course it affected the calendar in use for all purposes, not just for calculating Easter. The Protestant countries gradually came around—in the case of England, not until 1752. The Russians kept the Julian calendar until after the Communist takeover of 1917. Lenin presumably did not care if the Russian Orthodox patriarch liked the change or not.
Since we already celebrate Easter on the same day, it probably assumed that, on this subject at least, there was no issue .
BTW, who does speak for Protestants? If there is such a person, perhaps he/she could provide a statement.
You’re saying that Protestants would prefer to stick with method for dating Easter that was partially devised by a late 16th Century counter-Reformation Pope of Rome?
I looked squintily at this quote and didn't see where it said that the Catholic Church was presuming to speak for Protestants. But grammatically it's a little ambiguous.
It looks like the Pope expressed "a willingness...to establish a common date for Easter." And it's not clear whether the inclusion of "Catholics, Orthodox and Protestants" was implied by the Pope, or inferred by the Patriarch.
Presumably each speaks for himself. So AM will speak for the kirk of AM
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