I have always wondered why Eastern Catholics celebrate Easter on a different date. I know they do but know little of why and when?
Not all of them do. Many eastern Catholics in the United States calculate Easter with the Gregorian calendar just like western Christianity does.
It’s really more determined by cultural context than by communion. Latin Catholics and Protestants in predominantly eastern Christian areas that are majority Muslim will actually use the Julian calendar, and the Eastern Orthodox in Finland use the Gregorian calendar.
So it’s not uniform.
Those eastern Catholics who
do calculate Easter according to the Julian calendar do so out of solidarity with their Orthodox brethren, which is a good and noble thing.
I have used this as an argument for a difference in doctrine and discipline but would like to now look further into why we have different dates for Easter. Thanks for any help!
This is a bad example for proving there is a difference in doctrine and discipline. This difference lies in math alone - math and astronomy. Find a real difference and use
that to illustrate that western and eastern Christianity are different.
Almost without exception Eastern Orthodox celebrate on the Old Calendar, in accordance with the norms as decided at the Council of Nicea in 325 A.D.
The Latin Church also conforms 100% with what Nicaea I decided in A.D. 325. It was decided then that Easter would be the first Sunday after the first full moon after March 21.
That’s exactly how
everyone calculates Easter today. The problem is that Gregorian March 21 does not equal Julian March 21. But everyone uses the Nicaean formula.
I said it in another thread, and a part of me feels bad saying it, but part of me enjoys the fact that we get to celebrate easter without all the commercialization associated with Western Easter.
Yeah, that is an advantage.
There’s a ROCOR parish about twenty minutes from where I live, and they use the old Julian calendar for
everything, not just to calculate Easter and the moveable feasts it determines. As a result they enjoy this advantage regarding Christmas as well, which is to me even more significant since that holiday is by far the most secularized Christian holy day.
On another note, I have heard that Latin Catholic Churches in countries like Egypt celebrate the Orthodox date so there is even variation within the Latin Church.
Exactly. I like the idea of solidarity among Christians of a given region.
And the eastern Orthodox Church doesn’t have a uniform date either… Orthodox in Finland use the Gregorian calendar in calculating Easter.
And I’m the odd one out here who think we should toss both calendars and follow the astronomical calculations of Nicea, rather than either set of tables that try to predict them . . .
The problem is that the Church after Nicaea prescribed March 21 as the starting point from which to calculate Easter. If we scrap the very notion of a fixed ecclesiastical equinox and use the
real (varying) astronomical equinox (on this year the real vernal equinox is Gregorian March 20, not 21), that technically does violate what was decided right after Nicaea I - namely, that the equinox is to be reckoned March 21.
I personally don’t mind that, but plenty of Orthodox object to the idea of changing the formula.
That would be a good compromise. Use the real astronomical figures.
However I can’t see it being well liked by either Church.
Really? What makes you say that? I think the Catholic Church would be plenty happy with it. Not sure about the Orthodox, but maybe you can elaborate further for your own church as well; I’m genuinely curious!
It didn’t work even then. There was no detail given of how to make the calculation of the first Sunday after the first full Moon after the Vernal equinox. Also from Nicea, Easter should not be celebrated with the Jews, so when that occurs, it is delayed a week, but then the way the Jewish calendar is calculated changed also.
Using the precise astronomical data we have today is not something they could have tried back then. I for one think this is a great idea, although I respectfully acknowledge that many Orthodox would be unhappy with it.
As a Lector, I am annoyed when I see other Lectors read it as “Thou shalt not kill”, when I know for a fact that is NOT the Commandment!
Not their fault. The translation approved for use in the Roman rite in the United States says “kill,” not “murder,” and lectors do
not have the authority to paraphrase Scripture as they read. I think you should direct your annoyance elsewhere - to the translators, or the ones who selected the NAB, etc. - but not at those who in obedience don’t change whatever they feel like when they proclaim from Sacred Scripture at Mass…
