Catholic-Orthodox consultation urges common Easter date
By Jerry Filteau  (Catholic News Service)

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Members of the North American Orthodox-Catholic Theological Consultation have endorsed the 1997 Aleppo Statement urging all Christian   churches to start celebrating Easter on a common date  beginning in 2001.   At a meeting Oct. 29-31 at St. Paul's College in  Washington, the consultation continued its study of  baptism and mutual recognition of sacraments.   Participants also exchanged information on various  events in the lives of both churches and discussed the  relationship of their consultation with the   international Catholic-Orthodox dialogue, which next  June will meet in Emmitsburg, Md.
     In a two-page statement issued at the end of their  meeting, consultation members said the Aleppo Statement  provides a sound theological, scientific, historical  and practical basis to end centuries of division over   the date of Easter, letting all the Christian churches  give common witness once again to one of the
central  mysteries of the faith, the Resurrection.  "The Aleppo Statement does well to call attention  to the continuing relevance of the Council of Nicaea --a fundamental point of reference for the traditions of  both our churches--and in so doing, to reject proposals to establish a fixed date for  Easter/Pascha,'' the group
said. Easter is called  Pascha throughout the Orthodox world.
     In the 1920s, some churches proposed setting Easter  on a fixed Sunday
in April every year, but most  authorities believe this would only create another   schism and would lose the theological linkage of the first Easter with the Jewish Passover observance.  "As the Aleppo Statement points out,'' the group   added, "the Council of Nicaea was willing to make use of contemporary science to calculate the date of  Easter/Pascha. We believe that this principle still   holds
valid today.''
     The Aleppo Statement emerged from a consultation of   Orthodox, Oriental
Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant  scholars, jointly sponsored by the World Council of  Churches and the Middle East Council of Churches, which  met March 5-10, 1997, in Aleppo, Syria.  The Council of Nicaea in the fourth century decreed   that Easter should be celebrated on the first Sunday  after the first full moon after the spring equinox.  Differences in dating occur because churches follow   different
calculations of the equinox and the full  moon.
     The Aleppo statement called for all churches to  follow the Nicene rule of the first Sunday after the  first full moon after the spring equinox.   It urged that all churches forego previous methods  of calculating the Easter date and adopt as a common  standard modern precise astronomical calculations,   using Jerusalem, the site of Christ's suffering, death and resurrection, as the meridian from which the  calculations are based. Astronomical determinations of   the equinox and full moon depend on the position on  Earth used as a point of reference.  Under current calendar methods -- using the Julian  calendar in the East and the Gregorian calendar in the  West -- the churches of the East and West typically  celebrate Easter on the same date once every three or  four years. In the other years they are typically one,  four or five weeks apart.
     The first time in the new millennium that the date  of Easter coincides for churches of the East and West  is 2001. The Aleppo Statement called for churches to  set that as a target date to adopt a common standard.   Since the Gregorian calendar is only slightly off  from scientific astronomical reckoning at the present  time, adoption of the new standard by the churches of  the West would entail only one change in the projected  date of Easter over the next 25 years, from April 21 to
March 24 in 2019.  Since the Julian calendar is currently about 13  days off scientific astronomical reckoning, churches  that follow the Julian reckoning
would have to revise  17 projected dates of Easter in the first 25 years of   common observance.

     In addition to its discussions of baptism and  mutual recognition of
sacraments, the U.S. consultation  discussed the pending Catholic-Lutheran Joint   Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification.  Co-chairing the consultation are Metropolitan  Maximos of Ainou, bishop of the Greek Orthodox Diocese  of Pittsburgh, and, on the Catholic side, Archbishop Rembert G. Weakland of Milwaukee. . . .  The North American Orthodox-Catholic Theological  Consultation, which began in 1965, is the world's oldest official Catholic-Orthodox dialogue. It is  jointly sponsored by the U.S. Catholic bishops' Committee for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs and  the Standing Conference of Canonical Orthodox Bishops  of America.

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