Critical Thoughts on a Recent Book About the Church Calendar

by Hieromonk [Archimandrite] Patapios and Archbishop [Metropolitan] Chrysostomos of Etna

 

 

In a recently published book entitled, Netntelegerea Indreptarii Calendarului [The Misunderstanding of the Calendar Emendations], [1] Nicolae Popescu, a graduate of the Orthodox Faculty of Theology at the Ovidius University in Constanta, Romania, ardently defends what he calls the “correction” of the Julian Calendar by the Orthodox Church of Romania, when, in 1924, that body—and several other local Orthodox Churches—adopted the Papal, or so-called “New” or “Gregorian” Calendar, for the calculation of the cycle of the Church’s liturgical Feasts. (The Romanian State had already adopted the Gregorian Calendar for secular use on April 1, 1919.) Misunderstanding the calendar issue himself, the author wrongly equates the Julian Calendar with the Church Calendar, which, employing the Julian Calendar in its calculations, achieves a clever and complex arrangement of the ecclesiastical festal year around various solar and lunar events and the centrality of the Feast of Pascha. It was the scrapping of this Church Calendar—universally used in the Orthodox Church since the First Ecumenical Synod of Nicaea (325) and still used by the vast majority of Orthodox Christians worldwide—, and not a correction of the Julian Calendar, that was at the heart of the 1924 calendar reforms. It was this breach with Church tradition that also accounted for the widespread reactions against the innovation by many Orthodox clergy and believers, the “Anticalendarigtii” (or “Anti-Calendarists,” a rather vacuous epithet) and "Slilislii” (or “Stylists,” a pejorative term derived from references to Julian Calendar dates as “Old Style” dates), as the author refers to Orthodox believers who refused to adopt the Papal Calendar and who are more commonly known as “Old Calendarists.” Though an alleged defense of the calendar reform, Mr. Popescu’s book is essentially an attack against what he sees as the obstinate refusal of the Old Calendarists to accept the calendar change, ending with a list of somewhat gratuitous, crudely-crafted, ill-advised and somewhat intemperate measures that he believes ought to be taken by the “official” State Church of Romania to restore the erring Old Calendarists to the bosom of the Romanian Patriarchate.

We have no desire to call into question the author’s sincerity or his motives for writing such a book. He obviously believes very strongly that the Old Calendarists have misunderstood the reasons which led the Romanian Church to relinquish the Julian Calendar and to adopt the Gregorian (or Papal) Calendar for the Heortologion, that is, the cycle of fixed ecclesiastical Feasts, albeit retaining the formula set forth at the First Synod for calculating the date of Pascha. However, his treatment of the calendar question is marred by numerous distortions, omissions, and other inaccuracies, some of which we will endeavor to address within the confines of this brief article.

Needless to say, as Old Calendarists, we are not at all sympathetic to the ideas set forth in the present book or to its sometimes polemical approach. Nevertheless, like other Old Calendarists who espouse a moderate ecclesiology, we are not opposed in principle to an open, eirenic, and charitable debate of the issues surrounding the Church Calendar. After all, as Metropolitan Cyprian of Oropos and Fill, Chief Hierarch of the moderate Old Calendarist resisters in the Orthodox Church of Greece, points out, “the Orthodox Church today, by reason of ecumenism and the calendar innovation, is divided and in need of being united.” [2] And the very purpose of our resistance, His Eminence suggests, is to convoke a general unifying Synod, in order to enable those in error to return to right belief. When we fail to keep the prospect of such a general Synod uppermost in our minds, he notes, “quietism and an unhealthy ecclesiological introversion and self-sufficiency prevail, with all of their tragic and painful consequences on the theological, pastoral, and spiritual levels.” [3] If we are to avoid becoming introverted, we must not only endeavor to present an articulate defense of our stand against ecumenism and the calendar innovation, but must also be willing to listen to our opponents and to respond in a balanced and fair-minded way to their criticisms of us. By the same token, however, we may reasonably expect New Calendarists to display a similar balance and fairness when writing about us. Unfortunately, Mr. Popescu’s book is neither balanced nor fair, and it thus does nothing to promote a better understanding among his fellow New Calendarists of a movement which, since its inception in the 1920s, has been the object of so much vitriol, violence, and repression on the part of the powers that be, both temporal and ecclesiastical.

In the first part of the first chapter of his book, Mr. Popescu offers a reasonably competent summary of the origins of the Julian Calendar and notes its deficiencies, from an astronomical point of view. Of course, the Julian calendar, like any other calendar (and especially the Gregorian Calendar), is not absolutely perfect; but it is not as significantly flawed as proponents of the Gregorian Calendar would have us believe. In support of this point, we might adduce the high regard which the renowned German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss had for the Julian Calendar. Gauss, who derived the mathematical formula for the calculation of the Orthodox Paschalion, was fascinated by the antiquity and the sophistication of the Julian Calendar, which he considered to possess far greater scientific worth than the Gregorian Calendar. [4] Likewise, the eminent Russian astronomer E.A. Predtechensky has opined that, whereas the Church Calendar (which, again, rests on the Julian Calendar) “was so executed, that till now it remains unsurpassed,” the Gregorian Calendar is, by comparison, “ponderous and clumsy to such a degree, that it reminds one of a cheap print alongside an artistic depiction of the same subject.” [5]

In the second part of this chapter, furthermore, Mr. Popescu’s limitations as a historian become quite evident. According to Vasile Gheorghiu, whose book on the calculation of Pascha Mr. Popescu cites, Patriarch Jeremiah II of Constantinople wrote a letter to Pope Gregory XIII, in August of 1583, maintaining that it was impossible for the Eastern Churches to accept the Pope’s calendar reform, which had been introduced without consulting the Eastern Churches, since it might provoke misunderstanding among the Orthodox Faithful. This is an astonishing over-simplification. In fact, the major concern for the Patriarch and the Eastern Orthodox Church was the Pope’s claim that the imposition of his New Calendar was a sign of his power over time and eternity. And, indeed, this claim was also rejected by Protestants, and even the American colonies— originally settled by Protestant dissenters—did not adopt the Gregorian Calendar until the mid-eighteenth century, originally considering it an impossible acknowledgement of Papal authority. It is thus a matter of further amazement that Mr. Popescu misses Patriarch Jeremiah’s mild chastisement of the Pope’s claim to authority over time and eternity in his proposal that, to determine whether the calendar was “pleasing to God,” it be submitted to all of the Patriarchs and be implemented only “with the mutual consent of all.” [6] This appeal to Patriarchal conciliarity was not, as Popescu tries to argue, an endorsement of the reform by the Patriarch; it was, rather, a challenge to Papal prerogatives.

More to the point, Mr. Popescu performs this act of historical legerdemain in the very face of the well-known condemnations of the Gregorian Calendar that were issued when, ultimately, Patriarch Jeremiah submitted the question of calendar reform to the Eastern Patriarchs. Mr. Popescu could hardly be unaware of the very forceful language of the anathemas contained in the Sigillion signed by Patriarch Jeremiah, Patriarch Sylvester of Alexandria, and a representative of Patriarch Sophronios IV of Jerusalem at a Synod held in November of 1583 to discuss the Pope’s request that the Orthodox Church adopt his calendar. The following excerpt from the Sigillion in question makes it very clear just how antipathetic the three Patriarchs were towards the Gregorian Calendar and any notion of Papal primacy:

Again the Church of Old Rome, swayed by the proud vainglory of her astronomers, recklessly changed the most honorable decree concerning Holy Pascha, established by the 318 Holy Fathers at the First (Ecumenical Synod of Nicaea and held in great esteem by all Christians throughout the world as something inviolable… If anyone does not follow the traditions and the customs of the Church as ordained by the Seven Ecumenical Synods regarding Holy Pascha, but rather desires to follow the Gregorian Paschalion and Papist Calendar, like the atheist astronomers, contravening all of the decisions of the Holy Synods and trying to weaken and change them, let him be anathema, banished from the Church of Christ and from the assembly of Christians. You, the Orthodox and right- believing Christians, remain steadfast in what you have learned, in that into which you were bom and educated. And when it becomes necessary, shed your very blood to preserve the Faith and confession of your Fathers. Guard and protect yourselves from reformers, so that our Lord Jesus Christ might help you, and may the prayers of our Faith be with you all. Amen. [7]

Nowhere in Mr. Popescu’s discussion, in fact, is there so much as a hint of this and other clear conciliar rejections—and with adamantine resolve—of the Papal calendar. Instead, he merely notes, rather lamely, that “the Patriarch of Constantinople affirmed that the Eastern Church would abide for the time being by the rules for calculating Pascha that had been in use up until then.” [8] He makes absolutely no mention, moreover, of the two Synods convened by Patriarch Jeremiah in 1587 and 1593 in order to reaffirm this earlier decisive rejection of the Gregorian Calendar by the Orthodox Church. In 1587, for example, “the correction of the calendar was condemned as being perilous and unnecessary,” [9] while in 1593, no fewer than four Patriarchs—Jeremiah of Constantinople, Joachim VI of Antioch, Sophronios of Jerusalem, and Meletios (Pegas) I of Alexandria—condemned the reformed calendar, declaring that anyone found violating the prescriptions of the traditional Orthodox Paschalion be “excommunicated and rejected from the Church of Christ.” [10] It is, once again, hard to believe that Mr. Popescu, in his study of the calendar reform, was unaware of these very staunch repudiations of the Papal calendar by no less than three pan-Orthodox Synods. Thus, his insistence that the Orthodox Church “was aware of the need to correct the calendar,” [11] rings quite untrue. So, too, does his baseless claim that the Church was unable to implement this change because, inter alia, it was impossible to convene a pan-Orthodox Synod under the Turkish Yoke!

Mr. Popescu goes on naively to enlist, among supposedly pious and serious Orthodox supporters of the reform of the Church Calendar, such figures as Nicephoros Gregoras, an unrelenting opponent of St. Gregory Palamas, who was kept under house arrest in a monastery, for several years, after refusing to accept the vindication of St. Gregory by the pro-Palamite Synod of 1351; [12] George Gemistos Plethon, die eccentric Byzantine humanist who advocated a return to pagan Greek polytheism; and, incredibly and astoundingly enough (if we have understood Mr. Popescu aright), St. Nicodemos the Hagiorite. One is left bewildered enough at his placement of St. Nicodemos in such ignominious company; but does he actually believe that St. Nicodemos favored the correction of the calendar? Did he fail to read the very sources which he cites? It is true, as Mr. Popescu asserts, that in the Pedalion (the Rudder, or collection of Church Canons) St. Nicodemos “noted that the equinox of the Julian Calendar was now lagging behind the celestial calendar by twelve days.” [13] However, he makes this observation in the following context:

Let [the Latins] know that the Ecumenical Synods held after the First Synod, and the rest of the Fathers, wise as they were, could see, of  course, that the equinox had deviated a great deal [from where it was previously]; nevertheless, they did not wish to change its position from March 21, where the First Synod found it, because they preferred the agreement and union of the Church to accuracy in the matter of the equinox, which causes no confusion in fixing the date of our Pascha, nor any harm to piety. [14]

In the light of this citation in context, it is wholly disingenuous for Mr. Popescu to insinuate that St. Nicodemos believed that it was necessary to alter the Church Calendar. In like manner, he fails to note that all of the sources to whom he attributes a desire for calendar reform (e.g., the monk Isaacios and the Canonist Matthew Blastaris) were simply ignored by the Church. They were outside the ecclesiastical consensus and did not express the conscience of the Church.

Continuing his “historical” case for Orthodox sympathy for calendar reform, the author informs us that, during the years 1863-1864, the Romanian Prince Alexandra Cuza attempted to revise the Church Calendar. This is quite true, but to be more specific and accurate, the Prince

convoked a Church Synod, at which he recommended that the Romanian Orthodox Church change from the Julian Calendar to the Gregorian Calendar. Also present at this Synod was St. Calinic of Cernica (1787- 1868), one of the most dauntless stragglers for the triumph of the truth and for the preservation of the True Faith. He was categorically opposed to the calendar innovation and exclaimed as he was leaving the hall in which the Synod was meeting: ‘I will not be reckoned with transgressors!’ Thus, the Prince did not succeed in implementing this recommendation, which had been imposed on him by Freemasons. [15]

This is not a ringing endorsement for the author’s vision of a Church pining for a reform of its Church Calendar. Equally questionable is the force of his claim that, after 1900, many Orthodox Hierarchs and academics demanded that the Church Calendar be corrected—without telling us, incidentally, who these Hierarchs and academics were. The facts, it seems, make for quite a different scenario. For example, in 1902, the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Constantinople rejected a memorandum from the Greek mathematician, Epaminondas Polydoris, concerning calendar revision; in 1903, the Jerusalem Patriarchate maintained that any attempt to alter the Church Calendar would be to the detriment of Orthodoxy; and, in the same year, the Romanian Patriarchate declared that it was impossible to change the calendar without violating the Canons of the Church. [16]

In the first paragraph of the second chapter of his book, Mr. Popescu refers to what he calls the “sinod interortodox” (“inter-Orthodox Synod”) convened in Constantinople in 1923, which approved the “correction” of the Julian Calendar. Two pages later, with greater accuracy, he calls this meeting a “congres” (“congress”), and elsewhere he terms it a “conferima” or “consfatuire” (“conference”). To his credit, he also admits that the 1923 congress did not have the authority of an Ecumenical Synod, or even a pan-Orthodox Council, and that it was not representative of all the autocephalous Orthodox Churches. [17] The second chapter is in general, therefore, reasonably objective and much less marred by snide polemics against the Old Calendarists.

However, we must on two counts take Mr. Popescu to task for his comments in this chapter. First, like many other apologists for the New Calendar, he argues that the Romanian Patriarchate did not adopt the Gregorian Calendar—“as some enemies of the corrected calendar simplistically say” [18]—but rather “recommended all of the Orthodox Churches to correct the Old Calendar by a new method, and one much better than that used for the Gregorian reform.” [19] This specious argument is clearly refuted by Hieromonk Cassian in his important treatise, A Scientific Examination of the Orthodox Church Calendar. Patriarch Meletios (Metaxakis) sought to allay the qualms expressed by Patriarch Damianos of Jerusalem, who immediately perceived that the so-called “Revised Julian Calendar” was nothing other than the Gregorian Calendar in disguise, with arguments that show his absolute ignorance of matters astronomical. As Father Cassian justly observes, Patriarch Meletios deliberately omitted to mention that “the ‘New [that is, “Revised”] Julian’ Calendar fully coincides with the Gregorian Calendar until 2800, when, admittedly, a difference of one day will occur in leap years.” However, this temporary difference “will disappear in 2900, when, once again, the two calendars will fully coincide.” [20] In other words, those who introduced the New Calendar were engaging in a form of astronomical legerdemain in claiming that they had simply “corrected” the Julian Calendar. They had, in fact, created a veritable mongrel by combining the Orthodox Paschalion with the Gregorian reckoning for the festal calendar.

Secondly, in his brief reference to the meeting of inter-Orthodox representatives commissioned to prepare the agenda for a new Ecumenical Synod—held in June of 1930 at the Vatopedi Monastery on Mount Athos—, Mr. Popescu leaves the impression that this meeting was sympathetic to the calendar reform. This is not so. St. Nikolai (Velimirovic) of Ohrid, for one, warned that the Serbian Orthodox Church would boycott the meeting “unless it was assured that the inter-Orthodox commission would have nothing in common with the ‘Pan-Orthodox’ Congress at Constantinople, which adopted resolutions concerning the calendar change. ‘If this condition is not met, the Serbs will condemn the Ecumenical Patriarchate.’” [21] Moreover, the representatives of the Polish and Serbian Churches attending this meeting refrained from worshipping with delegates from those Churches which had adopted the New Calendar, on grounds that the latter were essentially schismatics. From this we can see that it was not only the Old Calendarist resisters, but also prominent figures in what would nowadays be called the “official” Orthodox Churches, who objected to the calendar change well into the past century.

In the third chapter of his book, Mr. Popescu abandons any objectivity that might have survived his historical errors and misrepresentations; unfortunately, in this chapter he gives way to blatant revisionism. After extolling the Orthodox Church as a powerful source of spiritual support for the Romanian nation and a treasury of culture and education for the people, Mr. Popescu assures us that the pre-Communist Romanian State guaranteed freedom of religion and legal protection to all faiths, as long as their exercise thereof did not infringe on public order, good morals, or the laws of the land. Thus, he argues a priori that the Romanian Old Calendarists were not, when their movement first began to gain momentum, persecuted, except, of course, to the extent that they violated social order, behaved immorally, or become transgressors of the secular legal system. (It should be noted that the author conducted not an iota of original research for this section, but based his remarks on a book—by one Constantin Vulpescu, a public prosecutor commenting on the first few years of the Old Calendarist resistance—entitled The Error of the Old Calendarists [22]) In an array of grandiloquent outbursts about the alleged maleactions of the Old Calendarists, Mr. Popescu attributes their persecution wholly to unscrupulous agitators who, using freedom of conscience as a pretext, took advantage of weak laws meant to protect their religious freedom to stir up trouble, thereby making of the Patriarchate a laughingstock.

In the frenzied abuse of their rights as Romanian citizens, we are led to believe, the Old Calendarists attacked the “official” Romanian Church with impunity. They published spiritually poisonous attacks, hinging mud and filth at the State Church. Covering themselves under the protection of secular law, they circulated their tracts and books freely. And indeed, they had the audacity to claim that they were Orthodox Christians. The “Stylist” agitators, we read, erected churches without official authorization and for no reasonable purpose; and when these illegal churches were closed, they would commit outrages and insult and rebel against the authorities. People who were previously indifferent to religion were transformed into fanatics through the malign influence of the Old Calendarists, who, according to Mr. Popescu, were not only troublemakers and mudslingers, but also—as incredible as his language may seem to a reasonable person—scoundrels, idiots, mentally ill, crazy, and individuals devoid of faith and culture. It is difficult to believe that anyone with a modicum of civility would resort to such a farrago of accusations or so disingenuously whitewash the horrendous persecution of the Romanian Old Calendarists, which has gone on in various forms for more than seven decades. [23] In response, we will simply cite but two of hundreds of such examples of the persecution unleashed against the Romanian Old Calendarists in the 1930s, during the very period which Mr. Vulpescu, whose work Popescu uses as his sole source, was purportedly describing:

[First, in 1936,] ... the commune of Radascni, Suceava County, was surrounded by several battalions of gendarmes brought all the way from Cernauti, Cernauti County. These gendarmes blocked all of the access roads to the village and gathered most of its inhabitants into the City Hall. Those found to be on the New Calendar were ordered to go home. The Old Calendarist Faithful were advised to change to the New Calendar if they wanted to return home. When they refused to comply, the police took all of the men to the local school, where they were stripped and told to lie on the floor. They were savagely clubbed, and some of them suffered for the rest of their lives from the wounds they received. The women and the youngsters, who remained in the City Hall and stood fast in their confession of the True Faith, were forced to ran between two rows of gendarmes who beat them ferociously with clubs. These violent actions had a twofold purpose. The authorities attempted, on the one hand, to force the clergy and Faithful to switch to the New Calendar out of fear, and, on the other hand, to limit their resistance by the destruction of their Churches. For example, the church of Radaseni was dismantled and moved to another locality, where it was used as a New Calendar church. [24]

[Secondly, in Brusturi, in 1935,] ... [i]n order to prevent its pillage or burning, the [Old Calendar] Church was guarded at night by Petre V. Ignat, then thirty years of age. Likewise, all of the Faithful who lived in the village were ready to intervene if the need arose. The New Calendarist Priest was not only dissatisfied with this status quo, but even wanted to destroy the Church by any means, regardless of what it would take. He organized, with the help of the Gendarmerie and the principals of the local schools, Sturza from Brusturi and Dumitrescu from Grosi, a gang that, dressed as gendarmes, jumped over the fence during the night and beat Petre Ignat, who was guarding the Church. He was saved by the intervention of another believer who saw the attack and sounded the alarm bell. When the people gathered, one of the gang fired several pistol shots to enable all of the assailants to withdraw. A few days later, the commune was taken by surprise and surrounded by an enormous number of gendarmes armed with rifles and machine guns, and all of the access roads in and out of the area were blocked. At nine o’clock in the morning, the gendarmes entered the locality and forced the inhabitants to go to their post, where they were kept under close guard. In addition, Father Vasile Lupescu, the New Calendarist Priest, was at the entrance gate. The gendarmes confiscated Church books from the pockets of the Faithful and other items found on their persons after a body search. The Faithful were warned to renounce their beliefs, but they stood their ground. The gendarmes then took ten people at a time (men or women) into a room, forced them lie face down, and savagely beat them with cudgels so severely that blood gushed through their clothing. ...The same question was repeated over and over again: ‘Are you still keeping the Old Calendar?’ Among those brutally beaten were the parents of Archimandrite Timotei of the Slatioara Monastery. [25]

In the second part of the third chapter of his book, Mr. Popescu enumerates what he perceives to be violations of Church Canons by the Old Calendarists, who have, oddly enough, always prided themselves—and quite rightly so—on their strict adherence to these same Canons. We will not attempt to refute all of these allegations of canonical infractions, for the simple reason that not one of them has any relevance to the situation faced by the Old Calendarists. However, in the interest of truth and honesty, we must deal with five of these allegations. In the first place, Mr.  Popescu asserts, without any evidence whatsoever, that the Old Calendarist clergy serve the Divine Liturgy using Antimensia (a cloth, into which sacred Relics have been sewn, upon which the Divine Liturgy is celebrated) not given to them with the blessing of the local Bishop, and that in other cases they even use stolen Antimensia. This, in his opinion, constitutes a violation of the Seventy-Third Apostolic Canon. In actuality, this Canon states that no one should ever appropriate for his own use any gold or silver vessel, or any cloth, that has been blessed for Church usage. According to St. Nicodemos the Hagiorite and other canonical commentators, this Canon is meant to prohibit the promiscuous (that is, profane) use of sacred things. He illustrates this by citing the example of King Baltasar, who used the sacred vessels seized by his father, Nabuchodonosor, from the Temple of Jerusalem for a banquet. [26] Quite obviously, even if the Old Calendarist Priests had stolen Antimensia from New Calendar Churches—for which there is not a single shred of evidence—they would not have been using them, like Baltasar, for profane purposes.

Secondly, Mr. Popescu cites numerous Canons pertaining to clergy who, having shown contempt for their Bishops and thus having excommunicated themselves from the Church, proceed nonetheless to form their own congregations and set up their own altars, in defiance of the local Bishop. [27] None of these Canons has any application at all to those traditionalist clergy who opposed the uncanonical imposition of the New Calendar. All of these clergymen were deposed in a spirit of revenge for objecting to an innovation which introduced discord and division into the body of the Church. The Canons that Mr. Popescu cites are directed against Priests who separate themselves from communion with their Bishops for purely personal reasons or for purposes of self-aggrandizement. More to the point, we might note that the Canons enjoining obedience to one’s Bishop always presuppose that the Bishop in question is right-believing. A Bishop who openly preaches heresy or introduces innovations such as the New Calendar, which provoke confusion and division among the Faithful, is no longer a properly-functioning Orthodox Hierarch and is, therefore, not entitled to demand obedience from the members of his flock.

Thirdly, Mr. Popescu asserts that Old Calendarists do not have Priests to celebrate services for them. He evidently means by this curious, if provocative and rather presumptuous, remark that, since they are, in his eyes, schismatics, their clergy are mere laymen masquerading as Priests. He then goes on to claim that they permit non-Ordained monks and laymen to perform Baptisms and funerals and to hear confessions. This is simple poppycock and an artless retreat into cheap ridicule and slander. Using the Church Canons to adorn his loutish charges, Mr. Popescu adduces, of all things, the Fifteenth Canon of the First-Second Synod (861) to support his view. There is, as any canonical scholar knows, no reference anywhere in the text of this Canon to illicit lay celebrations of Divine services. In fact, this Canon is the very locus classicus of lawful resistance to theological error and the kind of resistance undertaken by the Old Calendarists; indeed, it asserts that those who wall themselves off from a Bishop who teaches false doctrine “have not sundered the unity of the Church through schism, but, on the contrary, have been sedulous to rescue the Church from schisms and divisions.” [28]

Fourthly, Mr. Popescu berates the Old Calendarists for their belief that the Fathers of the First Ecumenical Synod devised a Paschalion in perpetuity—which, of course, they did—and goes on to argue, on the assumption that the proceedings of the Synod have been completely lost, that there is no evidence that the First Synod issued any regulation concerning the date of Pascha. This is an inane position, given the fact that the Orthodox Church has, in fact, accepted the pronouncements of this Synod in calculating the date of Pascha to this day—including, of course, the New Calendarists, who, even in reforming their Church’s Festal Calendar, have not abandoned Her traditional Paschalion. Mr. Popescu is also evidently unaware—a curious lapse for a student of theology—that proceedings of the Synod of Nicaea are, in fact, preserved in the Ecclesiastical History of Gelasios of Cyzicus. [29]

Fifthly and finally, Mr. Popescu claims that the chief founder and inspirer of the Old Calendar Church of Romania, Hieromonk (later Metropolitan) Glicherie and his co-ascetic, Hierodeacon David, along with ten other monks, were “expelled from monasticism” [30] by the Metropolis of Moldavia in April of 1931, and that, by virtue of this “deposition.” were deprived of the canonical right to celebrate the Divine Liturgy or any other Church services. This is absurd, since a monk cannot be “deposed” from the monastic state, though this fact is little understood by modernist Churchmen. Mr. Popescu also fails to explain what bearing this putative expulsion from monasticism has on someone’s right to exercise his Priestly faculties. Moreover, as St. Maximos the Confessor explains in his commentary on the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy of St. Dionysios the Areopagite, “If a Hierarch excommunicates anyone contrary to God’s purpose, Divine judgment does not come upon that person; for the Hierarch ought to apply these measures in accordance with Divine judgment and not in accordance with his own will.” [31] In other words, depositions issued in a spirit of malice and pettiness, for political reasons, or for the purpose of revenge and merely making some point, have no binding force.

The final chapter of Mr. Popescu’s agonistic volume contains some recommendations, primarily for New Calendar Priests in Romania, on how to “enlighten” the misguided “Stylists.” Much to his credit, the author makes some rather civil comments in this chapter, in contrast to his odiously crude and sometimes pantagruelian remarks in the foregoing chapter. Among other things, Mr. Popescu suggests that New Calendar Priests comport themselves in a morally irreproachable manner, so as to avoid furnishing Old Calendarists with additional pretexts for remaining separated from the official Church. In essence, he suggests that Patriarchal clergy employ the “velvet glove” rather than the “iron fist,” when dealing with Old Calendarists. This would certainly constitute an improvement over the policies pursued by the Romanian Patriarchate and State in the 1930s and subsequently. He also proposes that New Calendar clergy engage in eirenic public debates with representatives of the Old Calendar movement and that the “correction” of the Church Calendar be clearly explained in religion classes at the nation’s schools. In fact, the Romanian Patriarchate has assiduously avoided such confrontations and would no doubt avoid an objective consideration of the Old Calendar in public schools, since the issue, as we have pointed out, is not quite as Mr. Popescu and others have claimed.

Indeed, in any open forum with competent representatives of both the Old Calendar and New Calendar factions of the Romanian and other local Churches, the calendar issue would emerge as something far more significant than most would think. Much in the same way that the Iconoclasts mocked the Iconodules, in the eighth and ninth centuries, for believing that Icons were an integral part of Holy Tradition, so Old Calendarists are mocked, today, for “worshipping a calendar” or attributing “dogmatic significance” to mere days. Yet, just as when the matter of Iconoclasm was carefully examined by the whole Church, it proved to be an issue of immense moment, so the calendar issue, when examined in a careful and intelligent manner, rises to a level of critical importance. The following quotation brings that fact into focus:

Concerning this question, Father Paul, a monk of the Holy Sepulchre, remarked most justly that a board, before it has the countenance of our Saviour portrayed upon it, is but a common piece of wood which we may bum up or destroy. From the moment, however, that we paint the Icon of Christ, the King of All, upon it, this wood becomes sanctified and a source of sanctification for us, even though the wood be of inferior quality. Likewise, the solar calendar, insofar as it is a calendar of days and months is, in itself, nothing to be esteemed. But from the moment when the Holy Church placed Her seal upon it and organized Her life upon this foundation, even though it has become astronomically erroneous, still it remains holy! The calendar is no longer Julian, but ecclesiastical, just as the board is no longer a simple piece of wood but an Icon. [32]

Indeed, it is further clear that the traditional Church Calendar is so intimately bound up with the liturgical life of the Church—and, in particular, with the Typikon, or the rules and rubrics governing the Church’s worship services—, that when the New Calendar was introduced it gave rise to numerous liturgical anomalies. For example, even the somewhat innovative revised Typikon of the Great Church (of Constantinople), compiled by George Violakis and published in 1888, provides rules for combining the Feasts of Pascha and the Annunciation (Kyriopascha). Yet, this “unique concelebration of salvific events” [33] is altogether precluded by the New Calendar. Likewise, the Feast of the Forty Holy Martyrs of Sebaste can fall, according to the New Calendar, as early as the Tuesday of the Week of the Prodigal Son, and so New Calendarists find themselves chanting the following hymn while partaking of non-fasting fare: “O Prize-winners of Christ, ye have rendered the most honorable Fast more radiant through the commemoration of your glorious suffering; for, being Forty in number, ye sanctify the forty days of Lent, through your own suffering for the sake of Christ emulating His saving Passion.” [34] Finally, there are certain years in which the Apostles’ Fast is simply eliminated, if one adheres to the New Calendar. In 1983, for example, die Bulgarian New Calendarists celebrated the Apostles’ Fast by fasting for one day during the week after Pentecost, when fasting is actually prohibited by the Typikon. [35]

Again, in an open forum, where the Old Calendarists may objectively confront the vacuous polemics of critics such as Mr. Popescu, no reasonable individual could argue that the Church Calendar is not a part of Holy Tradition; that the New Calendar has not introduced confusion into the liturgical life of the Church; or that the calendar reform is, in fact, anything but an ill-conceived innovation. Thus, in response to the claim, in the preface of this volume, by the late Deacon Father Petra David (a rabid critic of the Romanian Old Calendarists [36]), to the effect that the author has succeeded in clarifying the situation created by the calendar change, we would say just the opposite: he has obfuscated the issue and misrepresented myriad facts. Father David’s hope that the author will produce other works “in the realm of learning and truth” we can only confront with our sincere hope that, for the sake of accuracy, he does not do so in the realm of theology or Church history. Mr. Popescu being, as we are told in this book, a student in the Law Faculty at the University of Constanta, we, on our part, strongly urge him to pursue a legal career and to leave the task of writing theology to those who are not only better qualified than he, but who are also perhaps a bit more disinterested and less rectitudinous in their approach to ecclesiastical matters.

 

Notes

1. Constanta: Europolis, 2002. Unfortunately, this at times odiously polemical book claims an imprimatur from the New Calendar Romanian Orthodox Church.

2. The Heresy of Ecumenism and the Patristic Stand of the Orthodox, tr. Archbishop Chrysostomos of Etna and Hieromonk Patapios (Etna, CA: Center for Traditionalist Orthodox Studies, 1998), p. 44.

3. Ibid., p. 50.

4. Hieromonk Cassian, A Scientific Examination of the Orthodox Church Calendar, ed. Archbishop Chrysostomos of Etna and Hieromonk Gregory (Etna, CA: Center for Traditionalist Orthodox Studies, 1998), pp. 73-74.

5. Church Chronology and a Critical Review of the Existing Rules for Determining Pascha [in Russian] (St. Petersburg: 1892), pp. 3-4. Cited in Ludmila Perepiolkina, “The Julian Calendar: A Thousand-Year Icon of Time in Russia,” tr. Daniel Olson, Orthodox Life, Vol. XLV, No. 5 (September-October 1995), p. 14.

6. Nofiuni de Cronologie fi Calcul Pascal (Bucharest: Editura Cartilor, 1936), p. 59, cited in Neintelegerea, p. 22.

7. Cited in Constantin Bujor, Resisting Unto Blood: Sixty-Five Years of Persecution of the True (Old Calendar) Orthodox Church of Romania (October 1924-Decetnber 1989), tr. Deacon Father loan Comanescu (Etna, CA: Center for Traditionalist Orthodox Studies, 2003), pp. 36-37.

8. Neintelegerea, p. 22.

9. Father Basile Sakkas, The Calendar Question, tr. Holy Transfiguration Monastery (Jordanville, NY: Floly Trinity Monastery, 1973), p. 23.

10. Ibid., p. 24.

11. Neintelegerea, p. 23.

12. Curiously enough, Mr. Popescu calls him “one of the great Patrologists.”

13. Neintelegerea, p. 23.

14. The Rudder, tr. D. Cummings (Chicago: Orthodox Christian Educational Society, 1957), p. 10 [We have made some slight terminological amendments to this translation, based on the Greek original].

15. Resisting Unto Blood, p. 10.

16. Cited in Sakkas, The Calendar Question, p. 26.

17. Neintelegerea, pp. 28-29.

18. Neintelegerea, p. 27.

19. Neintelegerea, pp. 27-28.

20. Scientific Examination, p. 54.

21. Bishop Photii of Triaditza, The Road to Apostasy: Significant Essays on Ecumenism (Etna, CA: Center for Traditionalist Orthodox Studies, 1995), p. 35.

22. Ratacire Calendaristica (n.p.: Editura Mitropoliei Moldovei, 1935).

23. See a full recounting of this persecution in Constantin Bujor, 65 de Ani de Persecute a Bisericii Ortodoxe Romane de Stil Vechi: Octombrie 1924-Decembrie 1989 (Slatioara: Editura “Schimbarea la Fata,” 1999).

24. Resisting Unto Blood, p. 64.

25. Ibid., pp. 68-69.

26. The Rudder, p. 131; Daniel 5:1-4.

27. E.g., the Thirty-First Apostolic Canon, the Fifth Canon of the Synod of Antioch, and the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Canons of the First-Second Synod.

28. The Rudder, p. 471.

29. Book 11, ch. 37, §13. See also Socrates, Ecclesiastical History, Book I, ch. 9 (Patrologia Grceca, Vol. LXVII, cols. 81B-84A), and the excellent article by Archimandrite Sergius, “The First Ecumenical Synod and the Feast of Pascha,” Orthodox Tradition, Vol. XIV, Nos. 2-3 (1997), pp. 2-8.

30. Neintelegerea, p. 42.

31. Patrologia Grceca, Vol. IV, col. 18IB.

32. Sakkas, The Calendar Question, p. 11.

33. Scientific Examination, p. 116.

34. March 9, Matins, Doxastikon at the Praises.

35. Scientific Examination, p. 132.

36. See Archbishop Chrysostomos, “An Orthodox Auto-da-Fe: Critical Comments on a Recent Book on Sects,” Orthodox Tradition, Vol. XX, No. 1 (2003), pp. 5-20. Also in Romanian, “Un Autodafe Ortodox,” tr. Ioana Ieronim, Dilema, XI (2003), nrs. 522, 523, & 524.

 

Source: Orthodox Tradition, Vol. XXI (2004), No. 2, pp. 14-26.