All Christians celebrate Easter on the same day this year
By Margaret DeRitter | Kalamazoo Gazette
April 03, 2010, 12:01AM
Easter usually comes twice a year, but you might not know that if you’re Protestant or Roman Catholic.
That’s because the date observed by Western churches, rather than the date observed by Eastern Orthodox churches, tends to get most of the attention in both the religious and the secular world.
But this year and next year all of the world’s Christians will celebrate Easter on the same day. This year it’s on Sunday, and next year on April 24 — an East-West convergence that hasn’t occurred in back to back years since 1943 and won’t happen again until 2037. Over the next 10 years, though, there will be a shared Easter in four separate years.
With only isolated exceptions, Orthodox churches use the old Julian calendar’s equinox and lunar-cycle calculations to determine the date for Easter, while Catholics and Protestants use the Gregorian method, adopted in the 16th century, as the basis for the secular January-to-December year.
Penelope Ragotzy, a member of Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church in Kalamazoo who was raised in an Orthodox Christian family, said she thinks it would be “fantastic” if all Christians could celebrate Easter on the same day every year. “It would further unite us as Christians,” she said.
But she also said the celebration of Easter should never precede Passover, which it sometimes does for Protestants and Roman Catholics, but not for Orthodox Christians.
“You’re overlooking the Jewish aspect (of Jesus’ life),” she said. “Christ was at Passover so I feel like Easter obviously can’t precede Passover. Celebrating Resurrection before Passover can’t be done.”
Unfortunately for those who would prefer a permanently shared date for churches to celebrate Jesus’ resurrection, the World Council of Churches says Eastern Orthodox traditionalists won’t budge on their calendar.
In 1997, the WCC proposed updating both calendars — a compromise favored by the West but still troublesome for the East.
“It is difficult, especially for the Orthodox churches, to change anything,” said the Rev. Dagmar Heller, a German pastor who serves on the WCC’s Faith and Order Commission.
“There’s a conviction that you just do not touch the calendar,” said the Rev. Leonid Kishkovsky, ecumenical officer of the Orthodox Church in America. “Any attempt, even a perfectly appropriate one, in historical and theological terms, is interpreted at the popular level as an assault on tradition.”
Lewis Patsavos, a canon law professor at the Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology, in Brookline, Mass., says Eastern church leaders will eventually be forced to update their calendar system, if only because their Easter Sunday will eventually start heading off course, into summer, in a few centuries.
“It’s a scandal that the most important feast of the Christian church is celebrated by two different methods of calculation. Any serious theologian understands that this cannot continue indefinitely,” he said. “We really need to put our heads together and start seriously considering how to update this matter.”
The Catholic Church would welcome a return to the universal celebration of earlier centuries, said the Rev. Ron Roberson, ecumenical officer for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. “It would be ideal to celebrate together, as Christians,” he said.
Religion News Service reporter Nicole Neroulias contributed to this report.
Contact Margaret DeRitter at mderitter@kalamazoogazette.com or (269) 388-8542.
