Bulgarian Orthodox Church might change to Julian Calendar this Christmas 2009

Hi all,

As you can probably see, this is my first post, though I must admit to lurking. I have been living in Bulgaria for the past six months and haven't heard or read anything about the proposed change. There was a debate last year in regards to 'changing the date of Christmas' as it was known, but the Church's national council voted against it. Though I cannot post a link, I took the liberty of copying the article, below, from Sofia Echo, dated May 17th, 2008


"In a decision on an issue that symbolises the divisions in the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, its national council has turned down a proposal to return to the Julian calendar and celebrate Christmas on January 7.
The decision was taken at the sixth National Orthodox Church Council, which began meeting on May 14 and closes on May 18. The council is discussing wide range of issues, including the permissible minimum age limit for its head, to be elected after the death of Patriarch Maxim, who is in his 90s and in frail health.
"There is no need to change the calendar, more so because Bulgaria is on the road to Western Europe where holidays are established and are celebrated on the same day," the spokesperson for the council, Patriarch Tihon, was quoted as saying by Bulgaria's Focus news agency.
Bulgaria, as a country, changed from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar in March 1916. The Bulgarian Orthodox Church made the change in 1968, sparking a long-running feud between "Old Calendarists" and "New Calendarists" which resurfaced on the agenda of this year's council meeting at Rila Monastery.
Among countries where the Eastern Orthodox Christian Church dominates, Russia, Georgia and Serbia celebrate Christmas on January 7. Armenia, on a slightly different calendar celebrates on January 6. The Greek Orthodox Church celebrates Christmas on December 25.
The 2008 council, attended by 190 delegates, is significant because rivals in the church are preparing for the time when Patriarch Maxim, now 93 and who has been head of the church since 1971, will die. There has been severe strife in the church during his leadership, especially after the fall of communism, when there were attempts by anti-communist political and church forces to oust him. Maxim's ill health was given as the reason for the postponement of this council's meeting two years ago.
However, observers of the church note that Maxim's continued presence, in spite of his frailty which has kept him away from a vigorous public role, is keeping the lid on disputes between rival factions on serious issues, from the direction the church should take as a social force, to whether to allow the alienation of church property for real estate development.
One idea doing the rounds at the Rila gathering was whether to lower the minimum age for a Patriarch from 50 to 45 or even 40. Another debate which symbolises the tension between conservatives and reformists is about whether to stop using Church Slavonic at services and adopt modern Bulgarian to enable churchgoers to easily understand what is being said.
Standart newspaper reported on May 14 that an idea to reduce the size of the Holy Synod had numerous supporters. The reform envisages that the Holy Synod would be cut down to six metropolitans, applying a rotation principle for replacements.
On May 17, it was announced that the council would probably soon resume deliberations because it was unlikely to complete its agenda.
In another decision, the council, which gathers both clergy and Bulgarian Orthodox laity, decided to remove the word "People's" from the name of the gathering.
Speaking on May 14 at the opening of the council, President Georgi Purvanov said that the gathering should play an important role in strengthening the church's place in Bulgarian society.
In a reference to the strife involving the church after the fall of communism, Purvanov said that there had been "negative events" that had damaged the standing of the church, but this had been ended with the approval in 2002 of a new law on the registration of religious denominations.
According to a report by Bulgarian news agency BTA, Purvanov said that Bulgaria pinned its hopes on the Bulgarian Orthodox Church helping inovercoming the negative and alarming phenomena happening with the new generation that was born and grew up in the difficult years of Bulgaria's post-communist transition."

with the Old Calendar is actual heresy!

Sphinx777 said:

The Julian calendar, a reform of the Roman calendar, was introduced by Julius Caesar in 46 BC, and came into force in 45 BC (709 ab urbe condita). ..............................
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Orthodox Churches no longer using the Julian calendar typically use the Revised Julian calendar rather than the Gregorian calendar.

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Could you explain what you think the difference is between a Revised Julian calendar and the Gregorian calendar ?

Sphinx777 said:

The Revised Julian calendar or, less formally, New Calendar, is a calendar, originated in 1923, which effectively discontinued the 340 years of divergence between the naming of dates sanctioned by those Eastern Orthodox churches adopting it and the Gregorian calendar that has come to predominate worldwide. In 2800 the two calendars will diverge again, though more slowly than the Julian and Gregorian do.

The term "Revised Julian" is informative primarily in describing the fact that it replaces the de facto Orthodox endorsement of the Julian calendar, and has the effect of avoiding any implicit recognition of Pope Gregory XIII's promulgation of a system with the same goals and general approach in the Gregorian reform of 1582.

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While will the calendar diverge again in 2800 ?
Do you (not only you Sphinx, but also you all hre posting on this issue and especially you who consider the Julian calendar OK (yes OK, at a certain point as well as the Ford T model was Ok at its time) and especially consider returning to the old calendar) know what is the difference between Old and New Calendar ?

It seems to me that you treat this matter rather with your human mind and forget the Divine Creation of the nature for which the human mind invented the calendar just to be able to organise its life.

Petronius said:

with the Old Calendar is actual heresy!

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Then you are in communion with heretics as am I

John

Petronius said:

While will the calendar diverge again in 2800 ?
Do you (not only you Sphinx, but also you all hre posting on this issue and especially you who consider the Julian calendar OK (yes OK, at a certain point as well as the Ford T model was Ok at its time) and especially consider returning to the old calendar) know what is the difference between Old and New Calendar ?

It seems to me that you treat this matter rather with your human mind and forget the Divine Creation of the nature for which the human mind invented the calendar just to be able to organise its life.

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First off the Orthodox churches use the revised Julian calendar. I'll tell you the differences that make the julian calendar a superior LITURGICAL calendar. With the revised julian calendar neither us nor our children or grandchildren will ever have the oppurtunity to celebrate a Kyriopascha. That is when Pascha and the Annunciation fall on the same sunday. Liturgy is celebrated with special rubrics that day to show the festive nature of such occurence.

Secondly its inaccurate in the life of the church, as monastics can attest to, when the apostles fast is wiped out. The feast of St George is especially problematic. In the old calendar it always falls after Pascha but before the ascension, the hymns of the service reflect this festive season of the Ressurected Christ. On the new revised calendar it falls on the final weeks of Lent yet the hymns pertain to the paschal season!

Another thing is we live in a post-christian society where politics should not dictate what religious calendar we use. The politicians and economic system wants us to use all immoveable feasts so they can better market to us chocolate easter bunnies that lay pastel colored eggs and all celebrate christmas on the same day so coca-cola's Santa wont have to take his reindeers out twice in less than a month.

So yes Petronius your partly right. it is invented to organize our lives which is not being done with the revised julian calendar as the above examples show.

Even the research of Catholics has shown the divine favour shown to the Old Liturgical Calendar.
John

MariaRegina said:

Welcome Mysho,

Are you an Orthodox Christian?

What is the percentage of Orthodox Christians in Bulgaria now that it has more religious freedom than under Soviet communism?

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Thank you for the welcome MariaRegina.

In answer to your questions, I was baptized Catholic (was born in Poland), though Catholicism was more of a cultural identifier than actual belief, at least in my family. Over the past year I have found myself moving closer to an Orthodox 'viewpoint' based on reading, attending services, feeling, and common sense.

Orthodox make up 80-82% of Bulgaria's population, with the Church in Bulgaria claiming autocephaly from 919, recognized by Constantinople as a Patriarchate in 927.

I hope that helps a bit, and thanks again for the welcome

buzuxi02 said:

First off the Orthodox churches use the revised Julian calendar. I'll tell you the differences that make the julian calendar a superior LITURGICAL calendar. With the revised julian calendar neither us nor our children or grandchildren will ever have the oppurtunity to celebrate a Kyriopascha. That is when Pascha and the Annunciation fall on the same sunday. Liturgy is celebrated with special rubrics that day to show the festive nature of such occurence.

Secondly its inaccurate in the life of the church, as monastics can attest to, when the apostles fast is wiped out. The feast of St George is especially problematic. In the old calendar it always falls after Pascha but before the ascension, the hymns of the service reflect this festive season of the Ressurected Christ. On the new revised calendar it falls on the final weeks of Lent yet the hymns pertain to the paschal season!

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What you say it is correct, but this is because a compromise to keep the human will (Julian calendar) at the same level to a better approximation of the God's will (revised Julian calendar). And putting human will at same level as God's will, this is many times called heresy.

I will explain you.

God created the world, nature, everything.
Good created the day and night i.e. the Earth spinning. This phenomenon is called DAY (people divided this into 24 units called hours, each divided into other 60 units called.....).
God created the Earth revolutioning around the Sun and the Month revolutioning around the Earth.
How many Days it takes the Earth to turn around the Sun was called a (Sollar) Year. And they started to measure the number of Days and at a certain point of development of human technology, it was established that there are 365.25 days.
To cope with 0.25, the humans invented also the leap day. Then humans divided this period into months, weeks etc. This is pure human will trying to organize time in a systematic and predictable manner. Why have months different lengths etc etc ? Just because humans were weak (in those days and in this area of human knwoledge) and made a poor calendar in the beginning (Lunar initially), than it was upgraded and upgraded and upgraded (does this not ressemble a situation we encounter very often today....?).
But still keep in mind what God created and what human mind.
Then we humans, in this part of the world (Mediteranean bassin, Roman Empire) created the Julian calendar as we roughly know it today in terms of how many months are, number of days in each months, leap years (if I remember well, the initial Julian calendar started at Sept. 1st, January 1st ast the 1st day of the year was intorduced later).
It worked well for many many years, but as time passed and human technology developped with God's help, humans realised that when THEIR year ended, it was later than when SOLAR year ended (this was set by God).
Humans started to research why and found out the human error: 365.25 days for one year is a little bit too much, meaning that a leap day each fourth years makes that the human year is longer by one day that the God's year within four hundred years. So the Julian calendar was revised like this: every fourth year we have an extra day added, BUT this will not happen in EVERY secular year. What is a secular year ? A secular year is an year where last two digits are 00. In this case we discard the 00 from the number of the year, the remaining number divide by 4 and if the result is an integer number, then that year will be a leap year, otherwise no. So 1600 was a leap year, but 1700, 1800 and 1900 were not. For instance from 1897 to 1904 there were 7 years in row with 365 days.
We see here how the humans tried to make their inventions keep up with God's creation.
When reforming the calendar, theer were two steps to take:
1/ Upgrading the way we add leap days
2/ Bringing back (or not) the calendar date of an astronomical event to the same date when it was initially recorded when Julian calendar was introduced. For instance spring equinox. This was absolutely necessary, so watching the sky, the spring equinox would occur on 30 March (approx. for 1582) and that would be the new refference date for the spring equinox.
It was probably decided to keep consistent with previous events, and the date was also adjusted to keep the continuity.
Just because this reform was made by a Pope is not a reason to refuse it. It is just as refusing any invention, just because it was invented by a non-orthodox.
So accepting or not accepting the revised Julian calendar it is to decide if we keep up with the Solar year (God's creation) or we human say that we are smarter than God and our year is EXACTLY 365.25 days.

Coming to Pascha, we realise more evident how the heresy is propagated.
At a certain Ecumenical Council (in 325 ?, I do not remember exactly which one), our Fathers decided to unify the celebration of Pascha and establish the rule for all Christians. All of you know what and Ecumenical Council IS.
At that Ecumenical Council it was decided that Pascha is to be celebrated the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox, but after the Jewish Pascha (I may make a mistake here regarding the Jewish Pascha, which is not relevant to what it is discussed here).
Read well and understand well: the first refference point is vernal equinox, an element of the God's creation, the second refference point is full moon, also an element of God's creation, only the third refference point is an element of human creation, a Sunday.
Also when the Ecumenical Council established the rule, it happened that the vernal equinox was on March 21.
What are the Old calendarist doing now? The apply the rule considering the 21st of March as the fix datum for the vernal equinox.
Not only that the vernal equinox is not every year on March 21, but they count March 21st in the Old calendar, which nowdays is 13 days behind the Solar year (God;s creation) meaning actually that reffered to the Solar calendar, it is on April 3th.
The Old calendarist do not look any more at what God created in order to establish the the vernal equinox, but at what humans created and what happened to be at a certain point.
In other words, the Old calendarist ALTERED the rule established by the Fathers at the Ecumenical Council to establish Pascha. It is no more related to vernal equinox, but to the 21st of March, which every 400 years is one day later than it was during the previous 400 years and so on.
Even using the Old calendar, but looking at sky, the Pascha would be different. (just a formal research shows that from 2004 till 2017 the vernal equinox will be only once on March 21, otherwise on March 20....)


The problems related in the quotation above with the feasts that cover itselves when keeping up with the Revised Julian calendar, are caused not by the new calendar, but also by the Old Paschal.
The explanation is this: When introducing the New calendar in certain Orthodox Churches, it was realised that there will no more common feasts with orthodox Churches continuing with the Old calendar and because the pascha is the greatest Feast of Orthodoxy and it is not a fix date Feast, it was decided to continue with Pascha according to the Old calendar so all Orthodox celebrate Pascha and other Pascha related feasts together, at least some feasts together.
But if all feasts were celebrated according to God's creation and Pascha according to the rule established by Fathers at the Ecumenical Council in 325, there would be no problems as described before.

The problem with celebrating Pascha according to the Old Calendar, it is that we will have the Pascha beeing celebrated during all seasons of the year so including in winter and this may occur for the new Calendar Orthodox that they may celebrate Christmas and Pascha during same day or very closed, but in a cycle of thousands of years it may happen to be celebrated the same day.

Conclusion: people set up a calendar by their minds, trying to describe the God's creation for practical purposes. As ANY human creation, this was found later not to be exact and needed correction to keep pace with God's Creation.
Who continued to upgrade human creation to fit the God Creation, adopted the Revised Julian Calendar (that will also need an corection, but much mucu much later than the Julian Calendar).
Who thinks that the human creation is better than the God's Creation and that we can change just like that what Fathers established at an Ecumenical Council, continues to keep up with the Julian Calendar and the Old Paschal Order.
In the name of Orthodox solidarity, some Orthodox made a painfull compromise and while accepting the God's Creation, continued the Old Paschal Order just for the sake of communion with other Orthodox, but depriving themselves of certain Liturgical events etc as described in the quotation above.
The ones who did not this comproimise, is the Orthodox Church of Finnland. They celebrate all fix date feasts in common with New Calendar Orthodox, but nothing with the Old calendar Orthodox.

Think yourselves how it has to do.

Economy and social lay life has nothing to do with the calendar approach. We can set any day as the beginning of the year, the days can be organised in any way want, named as we want, havin a certain day out of agroup consecrated to pray God.
But vernal equinox happens at a certain and precise moment of the year, not when humans decide. And from vernal equinox on, we have Pascha, the Great Feast celebrating the Resurrection, never seen before, the greatest proof of how much God is able to do for humans, the victory of Life upon death.

Do you really think we can do what we want with the God's Creation and manipulate it as we want ?

The Church is theanthropic. It is both human and divine, thus whatever decisions are made by the Church are not simply 'man-made'. The Church has the authority to bind and loose, so it had the authority to arrange to celebrate Pascha on a Sunday every year instead of following the Jewish Passover, which could fall on any day of the week. It was a decision which brought about liturgical unity throughout the Church and has been blessed by God accordingly.

The change by some to the Revised Julian Calendar has by contrast brought nothing but grief to the Church. It is not blessed by God as miracles which have occured for centuries on various feast days according to the Julian Calendar continue to occur according to the Julian Calendar and not according to the Revised Julian Calendar. These include the reversal of the Jordan river on Epiphany, the cloud which covers Mt Tabor on the feast day of the Transfiguration, and not the least, the coming of the Holy Fire on in Jerusalem on Pascha.

John

Prodromos, how do you think the coming of the Holy Fire occurs in the Finnish Orthodox Church ?

The question of calendar in Jerusalem is affected by other issues, very lay: each party is waiting that the other party make a change and consequently declare centery old agreements as void this permitting to grasp more .... It is not difficult to understand who would be a victim if trying to rearrange something in Jerusalem...

Petronius said:

Coming to Pascha, we realise more evident how the heresy is propagated.
At a certain Ecumenical Council (in 325 ?, I do not remember exactly which one), our Fathers decided to unify the celebration of Pascha and establish the rule for all Christians. All of you know what and Ecumenical Council IS.
At that Ecumenical Council it was decided that Pascha is to be celebrated the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox, but after the Jewish Pascha (I may make a mistake here regarding the Jewish Pascha, which is not relevant to what it is discussed here).
Read well and understand well: the first refference point is vernal equinox, an element of the God's creation, the second refference point is full moon, also an element of God's creation, only the third refference point is an element of human creation, a Sunday.
Also when the Ecumenical Council established the rule, it happened that the vernal equinox was on March 21.
What are the Old calendarist doing now? The apply the rule considering the 21st of March as the fix datum for the vernal equinox.
Not only that the vernal equinox is not every year on March 21, but they count March 21st in the Old calendar, which nowdays is 13 days behind the Solar year (God;s creation) meaning actually that reffered to the Solar calendar, it is on April 3th.
The Old calendarist do not look any more at what God created in order to establish the the vernal equinox, but at what humans created and what happened to be at a certain point.
In other words, the Old calendarist ALTERED the rule established by the Fathers at the Ecumenical Council to establish Pascha. It is no more related to vernal equinox, but to the 21st of March, which every 400 years is one day later than it was during the previous 400 years and so on.
Even using the Old calendar, but looking at sky, the Pascha would be different. (just a formal research shows that from 2004 till 2017 the vernal equinox will be only once on March 21, otherwise on March 20....)


The problems related in the quotation above with the feasts that cover itselves when keeping up with the Revised Julian calendar, are caused not by the new calendar, but also by the Old Paschal.
The explanation is this: When introducing the New calendar in certain Orthodox Churches, it was realised that there will no more common feasts with orthodox Churches continuing with the Old calendar and because the pascha is the greatest Feast of Orthodoxy and it is not a fix date Feast, it was decided to continue with Pascha according to the Old calendar so all Orthodox celebrate Pascha and other Pascha related feasts together, at least some feasts together.
But if all feasts were celebrated according to God's creation and Pascha according to the rule established by Fathers at the Ecumenical Council in 325, there would be no problems as described before.

The problem with celebrating Pascha according to the Old Calendar, it is that we will have the Pascha beeing celebrated during all seasons of the year so including in winter and this may occur for the new Calendar Orthodox that they may celebrate Christmas and Pascha during same day or very closed, but in a cycle of thousands of years it may happen to be celebrated the same day.

Conclusion: people set up a calendar by their minds, trying to describe the God's creation for practical purposes. As ANY human creation, this was found later not to be exact and needed correction to keep pace with God's Creation.
Who continued to upgrade human creation to fit the God Creation, adopted the Revised Julian Calendar (that will also need an corection, but much mucu much later than the Julian Calendar).
Who thinks that the human creation is better than the God's Creation and that we can change just like that what Fathers established at an Ecumenical Council, continues to keep up with the Julian Calendar and the Old Paschal Order.
In the name of Orthodox solidarity, some Orthodox made a painfull compromise and while accepting the God's Creation, continued the Old Paschal Order just for the sake of communion with other Orthodox, but depriving themselves of certain Liturgical events etc as described in the quotation above.
The ones who did not this comproimise, is the Orthodox Church of Finnland. They celebrate all fix date feasts in common with New Calendar Orthodox, but nothing with the Old calendar Orthodox.

Think yourselves how it has to do.

Economy and social lay life has nothing to do with the calendar approach. We can set any day as the beginning of the year, the days can be organised in any way want, named as we want, havin a certain day out of agroup consecrated to pray God.
But vernal equinox happens at a certain and precise moment of the year, not when humans decide. And from vernal equinox on, we have Pascha, the Great Feast celebrating the Resurrection, never seen before, the greatest proof of how much God is able to do for humans, the victory of Life upon death.

Do you really think we can do what we want with the God's Creation and manipulate it as we want ?

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With all due respect Petronius, I think you've been listening to the ecumenists alittle too much. First off the fathers of the church intentionally established a FIXED date for the equinox. If the fathers of the Nicene Council in 325 wanted an astronomically accurate date for the equinox , then the patriarch of Alexandria would have been in charge of updating the equinox whenever neccesary. Instead Alexandria only informed the other churches of the date of Pascha always basing it on a fixed date for the equinox. Instead no ecumenical council ever found this to be a problem, if it was a council would have dealt with it.

In fact the entire festal calendar would have to be lunar based and not solar/lunar, quite similar to what the jews practise. The entire point of the calendar is to keep an accurate liturgical cycle. When you have moveable and immoveable feasts then the equinox needs to be static. If you want astronomical correctness then either all feasts should be immoveable or all should be based on the moon, you cant have both.

Can you find me any Father who taught what your saying? How is a full moon or crescent moon or new moon an aspect of creation? its all intervals of the same moon. Can you find me Church Fathers who take your view of creation and incorporate it into their understanding of the liturgical calendar?

The Sigillon of 1583 (as do other decrees since then) makes clear that astronomical accuracy wasnt what the Fathers had in mind when they established the calculation of Pascha or the liturgical cycle:

"That whoever does not follow the customs of the Church as the 7 Ecumenical councils have decreed, and Holy Pascha, and the Menologion with which they did well in making it a law that we should follow it, and wishes to follow the newly invented Paschalion and the New Menelogion of the atheist astronomers of the pope, and oppose all those things and wishes to overthrow and destroy the dogmas and customs of the church which have been handed down by our fathers let him suffer anathema...."

With all due respect Petronius, I think you've been listening to the ecumenists alittle too much. First off the fathers of the church intentionally established a FIXED date for the equinox. If the fathers of the Nicene Council in 325 wanted an astronomically accurate date for the equinox , then the patriarch of Alexandria would have been in charge of updating the equinox whenever neccesary. Instead Alexandria only informed the other churches of the date of Pascha always basing it on a fixed date for the equinox. Instead no ecumenical council ever found this to be a problem, if it was a council would have dealt with it.

Buzuxi,
The vernal equinox IS a fix date, if you have a proper calendar. It si 20 or 21 March.

If you use a calendar that every 400 years is longer by a day, then the vernal equinox is no longer a FIX date, slowly but steady, it movoes around the whole year.

Petronius said:

Prodromos, how do you think the coming of the Holy Fire occurs in the Finnish Orthodox Church ?

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???
The Holy Fire only comes to the tomb of Christ at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem and only on Pascha according to the Julian Calendar, just like the Jordan river reverses flow at the location where Christ was baptised on the feast day of Theophany, again according to the Julian Calendar, just like a cloud settles over Mt Tabor on the feast day of the Transfiguration. I don't understand what you are asking regarding the Finnish Orthodox Church, which celebrates according to the Gregorian Calendar because it is required to by the Finnish government.

The question of calendar in Jerusalem is affected by other issues, very lay: each party is waiting that the other party make a change and consequently declare centery old agreements as void this permitting to grasp more .... It is not difficult to understand who would be a victim if trying to rearrange something in Jerusalem...

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That is moot because they did change the calendar in the Jerusalem Patriarchate, only to change back when the Holy Fire failed to appear on the Gregorian Pascha, but subsequently did come on the Julian Pascha.

John

Buzuxi,
The vernal equinox IS a fix date, if you have a proper calendar. It si 20 or 21 March.

If you use a calendar that every 400 years is longer by a day, then the vernal equinox is no longer a FIX date, slowly but steady, it movoes around the whole year.[/quote]

In the julian calendar a single day drifts every 120 years or so, the Fathers didnt have a problem with this, why do you? The byzantines didnt worry over astronomical accuracy, its become one now because the ecumenists have attempted to make us think its a problem. Certainly the 3 pan-orthodox council of the late 1500's made it clear that astronomical accuracy is not the reason for a liturgical calendar.