Much attention has been given this year to a push by the late Pope Francis (with Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew) to find a date for a “common Easter.” Francis had resurrected a dormant appendix of Vatican II’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy as his warrant for the push which, one senses, the ecumenical establishment would love as a “deliverable” to mark this year’s 1,700^th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea.

I’ve previously argued that what the appendix of Sacrosanctum Concilium authorizes is, in fact, Nicaea’s greatest betrayal. Nicaea established the principle to which Catholics have adhered for 1,700 years: Easter is the first Sunday after the first full moon of spring. That choice was not arbitrary. It was closest to the way Jews, using a lunar calendar, reckon Passover. The Council sought to maintain the nexus to Passover, not just to pacify the Quartodecimans (the losers at Nicaea, who had argued Easter should absolutely coincide with Passover, even if it fell on any day of the week other than Sunday) but to keep the theological linkage between Passover as prefiguring the definitive liberation of Easter.

What Sacrosanctam Concilium considers is departing from the Nicene principle and assigning Easter to a fixed Sunday, i.e., designating one particular Sunday (the second or third Sundays of Easter are the most spoken-of candidates) as Easter. By ripping up the Nicene solution, such an approach would completely disconnect Easter from Passover. What commends it (though the “benefits” in my view are paltry) is: confining Easter to a narrower range than the 35 possible dates it can now float among; lodging it in generally better weather (April 8-15 or 15-22 are usually is nicer than March 24); and nesting it in “neutral territory,” a time frame not previously staked out by either Catholics or Orthodox.

If one abandons (as I hope) the “fixed” Easter solution, the basic choices are for the West to accept the Orthodox date or the East to accept the Catholic date. (There is, of course, the “Aleppo” solution of commonly reckoning the vernal equinox astronomically according to a fixed point, e.g., Jerusalem, but — let’s be honest — that is almost always going to give the same outcome as the Catholic date.) Anybody honest enough to admit contemporary intra-Orthodox fractures knows the latter — Orthodoxy accepting the Catholic date — is not going to happen. Bartholomew may be the “Patriarch of Constantinople,” but the truth is — other than symbolically — he is Patriarch of a couple of blocks in Muslim Istanbul, and is hardly reckoned with by Kirill, Patriarch of the Muscovite “New Constantinople.” The Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) far outstrips any other autocephalous Orthodox church in size and adherents. If it does not come along well, did the mountain labor to produce a molehill?

And the ROC will not come along. The ROC continues to labor under its historical deficiency: it is the Russian regime (even when that regime is run by avowed atheists) at prayer. It is de facto far more the Russian Ministry of Religion than an autonomous church. And in the fantasyland of Vladimir Putin’s русский мир (“Russian world”), the ROC is a necessary element in the cultural construct that props up and tries to baptize Russian imperialism across its asserted “space.” The fact that even non-ROC Orthodox theologians have denounced the heresy of the “Russian world’s” ethnonationalism and the ROC’s lapdog subservience to its geopolitical ideology has not stopped Kirill and company. Amidst those conditions, adopting the Gregorian Calendar will be seen as “abandoning Russian ways” and “capitulating” to a “decadent” West. Even if there was the slightest smoldering interest to do that on the ROC’s part, Vladimir Vladimirovich would ensure that wick was crushed.

Nor would these problems simply be limited to Russia being odd man out. There was talk this year of an Easter “ceasefire” in Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. At least this year, all Christians agreed on one date for Easter. If this was 2024, that discussion would have to begin first with “by what calendar will we figure Easter?” And, in that debate, it would have been well for Francis to have remembered that those Christians who have suffered the most to remain in communion with him would be most exposed to the crossfire. Wherever the ROC is ascendant, Uniate Catholics are in its crosshairs. One might suggest papal ecumenical concerns with the East start there and not by throwing Uniates under the Popemobile.

All this said, I do not believe that the “witness” of “unity” marked by a “common Easter” is going to make an impression on anybody except the professional ecumenical class that is pushing it and which usually is ready to offer a Catholic concession to get there. Mixed marriages (or, as the contemporary euphemism prefers, “ecumenical couples”) have generally long ago established their own modus vivendi amidst such circumstances. And, as I’ve noted, the arbitrary redesignation of Easter does nothing to fix the continuing disconnect of when Eastern and Western Christians celebrate “Christmas.” Yes, Easter may be theologically the more significant solemnity, but in large parts of the West it is also suffering cultural erasure (see here). Christmas, on the other hand, perhaps theologically less significant is nevertheless more culturally visible, making the dissonance between Eastern and Western observances more glaring.

There should be no illusion that Kirill is going to lead his by-multiple-factors-bigger-than-any-other-Orthodox ROC into a common Easter date (unless that “common date” is adopting his). Even if one imbibed sufficient hallucinogens to imagine the Patriarch of Moscow trying that (or the permanent President of Russia blessing it), such an effort would require massive “education” and catechesis of the Russian faithful. Absent that, such a proposal would likely be a dead letter among them. If Russian church and government (but I repeat myself) got on board, the “official” ROC celebration might be forced on the faithful, but I suspect there would be an “underground” Russian Orthodoxy that would cling to the old ways, maybe even generating a new “Old Believers” movement.

Which is why I fear, given the proclivity of Vatican professional ecumenists to concede Catholic positions, there would instead be a push to align the West with the East.

I’ve previously criticized abandonment of the Gregorian Calendar not because it is Catholic but because it is correct. Gregory XIII reformed the calendar because the Julian Calendar — the product of a pagan to which many Orthodox cling — was in his time ten days out of alignment from the sun. (Today, it’s unsynchronized by 13 days and growing). Abandoning a more accurate for a less accurate calendar in the name of “ecumenism” also sacrifices another vital Catholic principle: faith and reason. Orthodox fideism may cling to an outmoded calendar, but one clearly has to question the commitment to “reason” in Orthodox theology and spirituality if one seriously has to conduct a debate about Nicaea’s criterion for Easter being at root scientific, not calendrical. If that is the “unity” to which we Catholics should aspire, then no, thank you.

Incidentally, how do you wedge a “Julian Easter” into the Roman Calendar that is built on the Gregorian (including a “Gregorian Christmas”)? As Easter is moveable, you will have a prolonged post-Epiphany Ordinary Time of more than eight weeks. How will you “fill the time?” Concede to the Traditional Latin Mass community and restore Septuagesima? You will also have a shortened post-Pentecost Ordinary Time. In other words, two different dating systems operating within the liturgical calendar will produce mishmash.

Let’s also consider the question of reception in the Catholic Church of a “from above” imposed common Easter. Of course, the institutional Church would fall into line. Of course, most Catholics will follow, if not out of conviction out of least resistance. But what does that say about Francis’s “synodality” and his “listening” to the sensus fidelium? Yes, a call for a “common Easter” was stuck into the concluding document of the last synod, but does anybody really believe that the issue surfaced frequently or with vehemence among the global “listening sessions” that preceded the October synod?

And if the Francis who wrote Traditionis custodes should have learned anything, it’s that changes in liturgy and liturgy-related matters do not go down lightly and really cannot be forced by motu proprio. Yes, one can compel the institutional structures to align with “policy,” but at the risk not just of tolerating but of strengthening a festering resistance. And no one in the Vatican should be blind enough or sycophantic enough to fail to consider how abandoning the 1,700-year-old method for reckoning Easter according to the calendar that we use could spawn another traditionalist schism in the Catholic Church, a parallel to the ROC’s “Old Believers.”

Some “ecumenical” achievement!

Finally, consider the Protestants. With their fractured (and largely nationally coterminous) governance, it’s a major assumption to think they will just follow Rome. Indeed, talking about “they” is presumptuous. “They” in a Protestant context is an equivocal pronoun, a collective for lots of “thems” that might follow in a flood, a trickle, or something in-between. My guess is “they” would most likely prefer to stay where we are: under the Gregorian Calendar. They might be receptive to a fixed date, but least likely would jump the Gregorian calendar to adopt a Julian-reckoned Easter. If that’s the case, what “ecumenical” gain has been achieved? And, given that Catholics adopting a Julian-reckoned Easter would put themselves at odds with the civil Western calendar (like Orthodox liturgically around the world) and thus marginalize themselves liturgically from the larger society, at what civil and cultural cost is this “unity”?

Ecumenical “dialogue” loves to expatiate on “unity” and “Christ’s desire” for oneness while glossing over the hard realities and real tradeoffs that are why we are not united. In this anniversary year when “good Nicaea vibes” will be prioritized, let’s realistically look at the many ways the “common Easter” vision can backfire and admit: the juice is not worth the squeeze.