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Thirtieth Sunday of the Year
24 October 2010
Dear Friends in Christ,
1. Last Wednesday, Pope Benedict XVI announced that he will hold a consistory of the College of Cardinals on 20 November 2010, during which he will create 24 new cardinals from among the senior archbishops serving both around the world and in Rome. Of these 24 new cardinals, two are Americans: Donald Wuerl, the Archbishop of Washington and Raymond Burke, the Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura in Rome. The chief duties of cardinals are to give counsel and assistance to the Bishop of Rome during his petrine ministry and to elect the new pope after the death of his predecessor. The College of Cardinals has existed since the 11th century and has historically served to protect the liberty of the Church from the interference of secular rulers in the election of the Bishop of Rome.
2. Since 10 October, over 250 bishops from around the world have been meeting in Rome with Pope Benedict in a Synod for the Middle East, and this Synod will conclude today. The task of the Synod Fathers (as the bishops are called) has been to consider the situation of Christian communities and institutions in the various countries of the Middle East, in which Christians are a tiny minority and often suffer fierce persecution from their Muslim neighbors. The catholicity or universality of the Church is reflected in many ways, including the rich tapestry of Eastern Catholic Churches, each with its own sacred liturgy and hierarchy of bishops, priests, and deacons. And this meeting of the Synod of Bishops has served to remind us that the most ancient Christians communities are in the Middle East and are now in grave danger of disappearing.
3. One item of business in the Synod for the Middle East has been a renewed call for the Catholic Church and all the Orthodox Christians of the world to keep a common date for Easter. In the early years of Christianity, there was great controversy over how to calculate the date of Easter, but the Council of Nicaea declared in 325 that all Christians would keep Easter on a common date, and for a thousand years all Christians did keep a common date for Easter. But in 1582, Pope Gregory XIII promulgated a new calendar which corrected the slight miscalculations of the calendar that had been in use since it was introduced by Julius Caesar in 45 BC. And from the introduction of the Gregorian calendar, Western Christians calculated the date of Easter differently than most Orthodox Christians, who kept the Julian calendar simply because the new calendar was promulgated by the hated Bishop of Rome! But this means that the Orthodox date of Easter coincides with our date only every four years, and the Father of the Synod for the Middle East would like to see that changed. Almost every nation in the world now uses the Gregorian calendar (at least in addition to their own native calendars), and if the Orthodox will agree to this renewed proposal, then after a gap of 429 years, all Christians throughout the world will once again celebrate the Resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ on the same day.
Father Newman