Confused about calendars

[Monica4316]

Hi,

I’ve been reading about the Gregorian and Julian calendars and I have a question…

in the Council of Nicea, they determined that Easter should be on the first Sunday after the full moon following the spring equinox. They also determined that it should not be on the Passover. The Passover is on the full moon following the spring equinox.

Am I right?

From that time, Christians have used the Julian calendar… but eventually, it began lagging, astronomically… and the Gregorian calendar was introduced to solve this problem, and to match the actual time of the spring equinox.

What I was wondering is… in the Gregorian calendar, is it still true that Easter always falls on the first Sunday after the full moon following the spring equinox?

also, I read on an Eastern Orthodox website, that apparently only the Orthodox (who follow the Julian calendar) have stayed true to the tradition that Easter should not fall on the same day as the Passover (the Council said it should not be celebrated “with the Jews”). The argument for this tradition is probably that Jesus rose again after the Passover, not during it. But I don’t understand… why are the EO saying that the Gregorian calendar departs from this tradition? do we EVER have Easter on the full moon, or is it always on the Sunday after the full moon?

or, do today’s Jews calculate Passover differently than the Catholic Church, and so we end up having Easter before or during the time they celebrate Passover? this kind of worries me because the Council of Nicea seems to speak against this…

I also just read the total opposite… that the Gregorian calendar is not astronomically correct, but the Julian calendar is…

The Western church does not use the actual, or astronomically correct date for the vernal equinox, but a fixed date (March 21). And by full moon it does not mean the astronomical full moon but the “ecclesiastical moon,” which is based on tables created by the church.

Unlike the Western Church, the Eastern Church sets the date of Easter according to the actual, astronomical full moon and the actual equinox as observed along the meridian of Jerusalem, site of the Crucifixion and Resurrection.

infoplease.com/spot/movablefeasts1.html

what is true?

is there anyone here who understands these calendars? lol… thanks

 

[Monica4316]

I found this, but I don’t really understand what it means…

Gregory XIII is best known for his reformation of the calendar, producing the Gregorian calendar with the aid of Jesuit priest/astronomer Christopher Clavius. The reason for the reform was that the average length of the year in the Julian Calendar was too long, and the date of the actual Vernal Equinox had slowly slipped to 10 March, whereas the computus (calculation) of the date of Easter still followed the traditional date of 21 March

 

[mjs1987]

Easter is still the first Sunday after the first full moon following the vernal equinox. The Gregorian calendar was made because the Julian calendar calculated that a year was longer than it really was. This made the equinox vary as much as 10-11 days earlier than it was supposed to. The Gregorian calendar corrected this error and came up with a more precise way of calculating how long a year was. There are still errors though every 3,000 years due to leap years. Leap years are extra days that conform to the lunar cycle. In some years, the leap year is wrong but most of the time it is accurate.

 

[Joseph_L_Varga]

Hi Monica,
there’s a movement within certain EO Churches to bash the Catholic Church, and the Calendar is one of their favorite “gotcha” tactics. Show that the Pope is a heretic, the Pope deviated from what the Ecumenical Council of Nicea prescribed, but they, the EO are the true Church of Christ, because they stayed faithful to the decision made at the Ecumenical Council of Nicea. What they don’t understand (or don’t want to accept), is that the Pope is not bound by an Ecumenical Council, the Pope has the authority to override an earlier decision, and to come up with a new rule for the date of Easter.