Are WR Anti-Old Calendar?
An interesting question from a reader: Are Western Rite Orthodox opposed to the Old Calendar?
For our friends in ROCOR -- especially Dom James Deschene, Fr. Michael, and Fr. Barry -- this is an open-and-shut question: they all celebrate the Old Calendar exclusively. I have never heard a negative rumbling from any of the group on the issue.
As for those not presently under ROCOR, like many other questions not officially defined, you may receive a diversity of answers: some may balk at the idea of using the Old Calendar, while others look favorably upon it.
For my two-cents: Western Rite faithful generally are more traditional than most of their brethren (including some Byzantines). As a rule, they oppose changing "the old ways" of any rite. Although most WRO find themselves detached from this argument, you would find few die-hard opponents of the Old Calendar, much sympathy for those perceived as their co-traditionalists, and an overrriding wish for our peace and unity.
Labels: Old Calendar, ROCOR WRITE
posted by Ben Johnson at 4:39 PM
2 Comments:
Christ is risen!
well, if you need one "bad duck", then you can consider me as a "die-hard" against it.
Here, we use the corrected Julian calendar, as calculated by Orthodox Church of Romania in 1929 - and book in French, Romania being a Latin country, not an Eastern or Slavic.
And, same as the MP monastery in Belgium, the correct paschalia, based on that correct calendar for the North Hemisphere. Pascha is not like the legend of 1st Ecumenical Councile, but like tradition has asked it, after the Equinox of Lent.
So that we go to sanctify the time like he is happening, and have the reconquista of the Christian Feasts.
Because saint Gregory the Great and many great teachers of Church have said that we had to conquer the world for Christ, and transform all the Feast happening due to facts of Nature in Christian Feasts, giving the light of Christ. Who would say that this is not really Tradition?
Of course, those prefering another sort of Tradition, I don't have to blame them. As long as they don't blame us for following the advises of saint Gregory the Great and good calculations of several Orthodox Churches in the 20th century, we can perfectly live together. After all, in Japan, at this precise hour, it's another day than in Belgium. So the world being what it is, it will always be impossible to be "all at the same time on the world". No globalisation :)
The day a Concile comes together, I'm afraid it will have no other choice than finally fixing that problem. Almost 2 millenium of problems.
Jean-Michel
I do believe that I am probably the only one here who holds that the Old calendar is not only eminently proper, but American!
When I was a child, I read a biography of George Washington, in which the dates were always written twice, at a remove of about 10 days. I asked my dad what it meant, and he didn't know.
Fast forward forty years, and I figured out that the dates were due to the period right before America became the USA, when we USED to use the REAL calendar, and not that Roman 'innovation' (another -nation word comes to mind, but I am feeling charitable!).
Reading of the Ecumenist heresies of the early XXth Century, I realized that Marxism, Ecumenism, Masonry, and all the rest sought to, as Scripture says, "change times and seasons."
When I read that Washington, until his dying day, kept his birthday to the old calendar, even in the midst of a new nation that adopted a 'Romish innovation' i realized that the OC was far more historical than the NC- and that, if we are to be 'different' (not for the sake of being difficult, but in being orthodox) from the world (Rom.12:2) the Old Calendar is a more fitting ('meet and right') way to go about it.
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