St. Tikhon of Moscow: On the Calendar Reform

Statement of His Holiness Patriarch Tikhon from September 17/30, 1924, to the Central Executive Committee of the USSR on the issue of the attitude of the Russian Orthodox Church toward the calendar reform

To the All-Russian Central Executive Committee
From Tikhon, Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia

Statement

To the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, in the person of its Vice Chairman, Citizen P. G. Smidovich, through Metropolitan Peter (Polyansky) of Krutitsy and Archbishop Nicholas (Dobronravov) of Vladimir, who were present at the meeting on August 21 (September 3) of this year by Our appointment, it was proposed that We express Our position in written form on the issue of the immediate introduction of the new style into the liturgical cycle of the Orthodox Church. In response to this proposal, We deem it necessary to communicate the following considerations on the matter in question.

The reform of the ecclesiastical calendar, in the sense of aligning it with the civil calendar, although presenting certain difficulties in reconciling it with the Paschalion and the discipline of fasting, is nevertheless, in principle, permissible. The Julian reckoning has not been elevated by the Church to the status of an inviolable dogma of faith, but, being linked to ecclesiastical rites that allow for modifications, it itself may be subject to change. The replacement of the Julian style with the Gregorian one offers significant practical advantages for the Church itself, since the new style has been adopted in civil use by Orthodox countries and determines the business life and days of rest, to which the Church aligns its days of prayer.

Nevertheless, the immediate implementation of the calendar reform encounters significant difficulties.

First, for the legitimate introduction of the new style, the consent of all Autocephalous Orthodox Churches is required. The Orthodox Church is a Catholic Church, consisting of individual independent Churches, united in an unbreakable unity through the commonality of dogmas, rites, and canonical rules. To preserve universal unity, it is important that the same prayers are offered and the same feasts are celebrated simultaneously in all Orthodox Churches. Moreover, the Julian calendar, adopted in all Autocephalous Orthodox Churches, is sanctified by universal authority and cannot be altered by the ecclesiastical authority of one of them, as this authority is a lower instance in relation to universal authority. Hence arises the necessity of resolving this issue by the unanimous voice of the entire Orthodox Catholic Church.

But it must be not only lawful but also painless, and this can only be achieved with the consent of the believing people. According to the teaching of the Orthodox Church, the guardians of the purity of faith and the ancestral traditions are not only the Head of the Church and not solely the ecclesiastical hierarchy in its entirety, but the whole body of the Church, and therefore also the believing people, who likewise possess certain rights and a voice in ecclesiastical matters. The Primate of a particular Orthodox Church, and the Patriarch of All Russia in particular, is not the Roman Pope, who exercises unlimited and absolute authority; he cannot rule over the people of God tyrannically, without seeking their consent and without taking into account their religious conscience, beliefs, customs, and habits. History shows that even when the Primate of the Church, in implementing a particular reform, is correct in essence, but, encountering the opposition of the people, resorts to force instead of influencing them through the word of pastoral exhortation, he becomes the cause of disturbances and divisions in the Church. Patriarch Nikon was right when he undertook the correction of the liturgical books, but by clashing with the people's discontent and refusing to convince them of the necessity of this measure, instead seeking to compel them to submit to his authority, he caused the Old Believer schism, the grave consequences of which continue to be felt by the Russian Orthodox Church to this day.

After these fundamental clarifications, it is necessary to address the history of attempts to introduce the new style in the Russian Church, beginning in 1918. By decree of the Soviet government, during the sessions of the First All-Russian Church Council, the new style was introduced into the civil calendar. Recognizing the desirability of aligning the ecclesiastical calendar with the civil one, the Council appointed a commission to conduct a preliminary discussion of this issue. The commission deemed the transition to the new style possible, provided that the other Orthodox Churches agreed to this reform. The Patriarch of All Russia was entrusted with initiating communication with them for the joint implementation of this reform. In fulfillment of the Council’s directive, We then addressed a letter to Patriarch Germanos of Constantinople, proposing that he discuss the question of changing the calendar. However, We did not receive a response from him, likely due to the difficulties of international communications at that time.

A new phase in the history of the proposed reform occurred in 1923. The issue of introducing the new style was raised simultaneously, though independently of each other, by the Ecumenical Patriarch Meletios IV (Metaxakis) in Constantinople and by the so-called Renovationist Higher Church Administration in Russia. After Pascha in 1923, Patriarch Meletios IV convened a meeting in Constantinople with representatives of Orthodox Churches for a preliminary discussion of certain ecclesiastical matters, including the question of changing the calendar. This meeting was by no means an Ecumenical Council, as it was sometimes mistakenly called in our press, but rather a kind of commission for drafting legislative proposals, which could become binding church laws only if approved by a general Council of representatives from all Orthodox Churches or by the Councils of each Church individually. An unfavorable circumstance for the meeting, significantly diminishing the weight of all its resolutions, was the absence of representatives from the Patriarchates of Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, and All Russia. (The Russian Church was represented at the meeting by Archbishop Anastasius (Gribanovsky) of Kishinev and Archbishop Alexander (Nemolovsky) of America, who had been personally invited by Patriarch Meletios IV.) The commission’s unanimous decision to change the liturgical calendar and Paschalion, sent for conciliar approval to the autocephalous Churches, was met with objections from the majority of these Churches and thus did not come into force as law. Despite this, in a clear departure from universal unity, Patriarch Meletios IV issued a directive to introduce the new style in his Patriarchate and in those parts of the Russian Church that had been severed from it, which he, also in violation of church canons, took under his jurisdiction without the consent of the Patriarch of All Russia (Finland, Poland). However, the reform in Constantinople ultimately failed, likely due to the subsequent removal of Patriarch Meletios.

The Renovationist Higher Church Administration and the schismatic Council of 1923 convened by it, having in other instances demonstrated complete disregard for universal authority, issued a resolution on changing the calendar without any consideration for either universal unity or the unity of the Russian Church. This resolution on changing the calendar was made without any agreement with other Orthodox Churches, and the nearly simultaneous discussion of this issue at the Constantinople meeting was merely a coincidence. This rendered the resolution canonically unlawful. Moreover, it was reckless. The initiators of the reform refused to take into account the opinion of the people, did not listen to their voice, and did not consider the necessity of first explaining to them the permissibility and desirability of the new style. As a result, the reform proclaimed by the so-called Council of 1923 was not accepted—not only by the vast majority of the Orthodox Russian population, which rightly regarded all resolutions of the unlawful Council as null and void—but even by those few communities that, due to various circumstances, found themselves under the authority of the Renovationist bishops and their diocesan administrations. When, in the summer of 1923, the Renovationist clergy began introducing the new style into ecclesiastical use, almost the entire people rose up against it in unanimous opposition. Everywhere, the same scene was repeated: on feast days according to the new style, the people did not come to church, while on feast days according to the old style, despite the demands of the people, the clergy did not dare to perform services. At times, the people even forcibly compelled priests to conduct services according to the old style. Less than a month had passed before the priests who had switched to the new style, under pressure from their flock, were forced to return to the old one. A little later, even the Renovationist Synod clarified to its subordinate clergy that the resolution on the new style should be implemented only where local conditions made it feasible. After Our return to the governance of the Church, a representative of the GPU, E. A. Tuchkov, acting on behalf of the Government, presented Us with a demand to introduce the civil calendar into the practice of the Russian Orthodox Church. This demand, repeated many times, was accompanied by a promise of a more favorable attitude from the Government toward the Orthodox Church and its institutions in case of Our compliance, and by a threat of deteriorating relations in case of Our refusal. Although such a demand seemed to Us to be a violation of the fundamental law of the Republic on the non-interference of civil authorities in the internal affairs of the Church, We nevertheless considered it necessary to accommodate it. Believing that the introduction of the new style was, in essence, permissible, and mistakenly convinced—due to the impossibility of direct communication with the East and the inaccuracy of newspaper reports—that all Orthodox Churches had already agreed to introduce the new style based on the resolution of the Pan-Orthodox Conference in Constantinople, and hoping that an order issued by legitimate authority and based on a Pan-Orthodox agreement would be obediently accepted by the people, We decided to call the Russian Church to calendar reform starting from October 2 (15), 1923, and issued a message to this effect. However, after the decision to introduce the new style had already been made, We began receiving more accurate information from the East, which revealed that the Constantinople meeting had not included representatives from many Orthodox Churches, its resolutions were not accepted by the majority of Churches, that Patriarch Photius of Alexandria, in a letter to Patriarch Gregory of Antioch dated June 23, 1923, No. 211, declared that the resolutions of the Constantinople meeting had no canonical authority and that the introduction of the new style was impossible without the sanction of an Ecumenical Council, that Patriarch Damian (Kasatos) of Jerusalem firmly refused to introduce the new style in his Patriarchate, and finally, the calendar reform had been suspended in all Orthodox Churches. On the other hand, as soon as the rumor spread that the new style was to be introduced from October 2 (15), strong agitation arose among the faithful. True, almost all Moscow parishes obediently, though not with peaceful hearts, submitted to Our directive. However, from the dioceses surrounding Moscow, from the south, from Crimea, and from distant Siberia, delegations of believers began arriving to ask whether the calendar reform was indeed planned and to request, on behalf of the people, that We refrain from it, as the introduction of the new style everywhere aroused anxiety, fear, dissatisfaction, and resistance. At the same time, We were inundated with written statements expressing the same concerns. In view of this, We considered it Our pastoral duty to heed the voice of the faithful, so as not to commit violence against the conscience of the people, and on October 26 (November 8), 1923, issued a directive: "The universal and obligatory introduction of the new style into ecclesiastical use is to be temporarily postponed." Following this, Our chancery was sealed by government agents, and the remaining undistributed copies of Our, by then already rescinded, message on the introduction of the new style were taken and posted on the streets of the capital without Our knowledge or consent. Archbishop Hilarion [Troitsky], Our closest assistant, was arrested and, for unknown reasons, administratively exiled to Solovki. [This last phrase was erased in the original manuscript—Note of the copyist.] The faithful saw in this repression, which followed as a consequence of Our directive to suspend the calendar reform, clear evidence of the interference of the civil authority in the internal affairs of the Church. However, from the dioceses, We received expressions of great joy from the faithful regarding Our directive of October 26 (November 8), and all of Moscow breathed a sigh of relief and immediately returned to the old style. In December of the past year, when the Government declared the Nativity holidays according to the new style as official days of rest, We hastened to permit the celebration of the Nativity of Christ according to the Gregorian calendar wherever this was desired and convenient for the working population. However, almost no one wished to make use of this permission, which again demonstrated the unanimous desire of the people to preserve the old custom. This led Us to appeal to the People's Commissar of Justice, D. I. Kursky, requesting that he not insist on introducing the new style into ecclesiastical use. We received from him a verbal assurance that the civil authority was not at all interested in this matter.

To resolve the issue of the procedure for ecclesiastical calendar reform, it is necessary to consider this general protest of the people and its causes. These causes are numerous. First, our people place great value on the rite and its traditional immutability. This form of piety, characteristic of the Russian people, has already given rise to the Old Believer schism. Second, the ecclesiastical year is closely intertwined with the daily life of the people and the economic year of the peasant. In the countryside, time is still reckoned by feast days, and agricultural work begins according to the timing of these feasts. The introduction of the new style into the ecclesiastical calendar clashes with the people's way of life, which is everywhere marked by conservatism and steadfastness.

To these reasons for the people's opposition to the introduction of the new style, two additional circumstances are added, which make the implementation of this reform exceedingly difficult.

The first is that it has been compromised by the Renovationist schism. The introduction of the new style was first loudly proclaimed by the Renovationist Higher Church Administration and the schismatic Council of 1923—that is, by clergymen who had openly declared their disregard for canonical norms, who had permitted various innovations, who had proposed further changes not only in church discipline but also in dogmas, and who had intended to exclude from the ecclesiastical calendar saints of "bourgeois origin." This caused great alarm among the faithful and fears for the integrity of the faith. However, since the masses have little understanding of canon law and dogmatic theology, in their minds, the new style, which profoundly affects daily life, became identified with the Renovationist schism and was perceived as its mark and sign. In the eyes of many, the acceptance of the new style became equivalent to falling away from the Orthodox Church. There is no doubt that the calendar reform would have been much easier to implement had it not been associated with the Renovationist Council.

The second circumstance that creates great difficulty in the transition to the new style is the widespread conviction that this reform is not being introduced by the Church on its own initiative but under pressure from the civil authorities. This conviction arose during the elections to the so-called Council of 1923 as a result of the mass arrests and administrative exiles of Orthodox bishops and laity known for their opposition to the Renovationist schism and for taking a stand against it at diocesan electoral assemblies. It was further reinforced by events such as the confiscation from Our chancery of the message We had rescinded regarding the introduction of the new style from October 2 (15) and its posting throughout the city (as well as the exile of Archbishop Hilarion Troitsky, which followed the suspension of the calendar reform). Interference in the internal life of the Church by the civil authorities, even when they are well-disposed toward the Church and protective of religion, always provokes dissatisfaction and resistance among the faithful. However, when the leaders of the Church are suspected of being under pressure from a Government that has proclaimed in numerous decrees its commitment to an irreligious order of life, the faithful begin to fear that behind these acts of interference in ecclesiastical affairs lies a deliberate plan to harm the faith. Consequently, their resistance naturally becomes even stronger.

At present, the issue of introducing the new style into ecclesiastical use is once again being raised by the Government, which has expressed an urgent desire for Us to take decisive measures to align the ecclesiastical calendar with the civil one. Taking into account Our previous experiences, We feel compelled to state that We absolutely do not find it possible to repeat them. Any new directive of Ours concerning calendar reform—while a general agreement on this matter among all Orthodox Churches has not yet been reached—would, both in the eyes of the faithful and in essence, lack canonical foundation and would justify the opposition of the people. In Our deep conviction, such a directive, if persistently enforced by Us and possibly supported by state measures, would become a cause of great unrest and discord within the Church.

The Church is currently experiencing an unprecedented external upheaval. It has been deprived of material means for its existence, surrounded by an atmosphere of suspicion and hostility. Dozens of bishops and hundreds of priests and laity have been imprisoned without trial, often without even an explanation of the reasons, exiled to the most remote regions of the republic, and dragged from place to place. Orthodox bishops appointed by Us are either not allowed into their dioceses, expelled upon their first arrival, or subjected to arrest. The central administration of the Orthodox Church is disorganized, as the institutions attached to the Patriarch of All Russia are not registered, and even their chancery and archives have been sealed and rendered inaccessible. Churches are being closed, turned into clubs and cinemas, or seized from numerous Orthodox parishes for the use of small Renovationist groups. The clergy are burdened with unbearable taxes, subjected to various housing restrictions, and their children are expelled from employment and educational institutions simply because their fathers serve the Church. Under such conditions, to cause further internal turmoil within the very bosom of the Church, to provoke disorder, and, in addition to the schism from the left, to create a schism from the right through a canonically illegitimate, reckless, and coercive directive would be a grave sin before God and men on the part of the one upon whom Divine Providence has laid the heavy Cross of governing the Church and caring for Her welfare in these times.

However, the modification of the ecclesiastical calendar, as proposed by the First All-Russian Council of 1917–1918, could, under certain circumstances, be implemented in a lawful and painless manner.

This would be greatly facilitated by the non-interference of the civil authorities in the course of the reform, since external interference does not bring it closer but rather pushes it further away, does not ease its implementation but complicates it. Let the Church itself be allowed to overcome the difficulties that arise in the process of introducing the new style into liturgical practice. The calendar reform has been prompted by the necessities of life in all Orthodox Churches, and it can be assumed that in the near future it will be adopted by the Churches without any external coercion. Non-interference by the civil authorities in this ecclesiastical matter would fully align with the principles of the separation of Church and state and the freedom of religious conscience, as proclaimed by our fundamental laws. It is true that the Presidium of the All-Russian Executive Committee has already issued a directive aligning days of rest and Christian feasts with the new style. However, the prestige of the Government would not suffer in the least if, without formally repealing this directive, it were to publish by the beginning of 1925 a list of rest days on Christian feasts according to the old style, correlating them with the corresponding dates of the new style. Thus, for example, the Nativity of Christ would not be listed under December 25 but under January 7, just as the commemoration of a well-known workers' demonstration is not transferred to the new style but remains on January 9 (22), and the celebration of the October Revolution does not fall on October 25 in the new style but on November 7. On the contrary, non-interference would be beneficial for the Government, since with the forcible introduction of the new style, all the discontent from those unsympathetic to this reform would fall not on the clergy but on the civil authorities, who had forced the clergy to act against established ecclesiastical tradition.

At present, We are deprived of the opportunity to establish communication with the East in order to obtain precise and fully reliable information regarding the progress of the reform in the Orthodox world. Furthermore, it remains unclear to Us in what legal forms the necessary correspondence, as Head of the Russian Church, with Orthodox Churches beyond the borders of the Republic would be permissible. Under such conditions, We have no choice but to adopt a waiting position regarding the introduction of the new style until an agreement on this matter is reached among the other Orthodox Churches. However, We could take a more active role in implementing the calendar reform if the possibility were opened for Us, either through representatives chosen by Us or at least in written correspondence, to engage with the representatives of other Orthodox Churches on this issue. Rumors have reached Us that a Pan-Orthodox Council is expected to be convened in the East in 1925 in commemoration of the First Ecumenical Council on the occasion of its 1600th anniversary. If this rumor corresponds to reality and the Council is convened in a canonically indisputable form, it would be most appropriate to align the resolution of the calendar issue with this occasion. If the new style is adopted by the unanimous voice of the entire Catholic Church, then it may be hoped that We will be able to influence the faithful and convince them of the legitimacy of the calendar reform from a church perspective, as well as its desirability for practical and state considerations. This would be possible if the Orthodox bishops appointed by Us, in whom the people trust and whom they follow, are granted the freedom to reside in their dioceses, to communicate with their flock, and to provide religious guidance to the clergy and parishes in canonical communion with them.

Moscow, September 17 (30), 1924.

 

Russian source: «В годину гнева божия…»: Послания, слова и речи св. Патриарха Тихона ["In the Hour of God's Wrath...": Messages, Words, and Speeches of St. Patriarch Tikhon], compiled by N.A. Krivosheeva, Moscow, St. Tikhon Orthodox Humanitarian University, 2009, pp. 272-289.