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I don't know about Nativity of Our Lord, you could be right. To tell you the truth I can't remember since I celebrated 12/25 with my Roman rite daughter and family so we went to Mass.

I know for Great and Holy Week and Pascha OLF was on the same calendar as the local Russian Orthodox (OCA) parish and Greek Orthodox (goarch) parish I go to when OLF doesn't have liturgy for feast days, a week after the RC Easter. OLF only had liturgy some days of Great Week so I was at the other two places for several.

It's great for me since I'm involved in the RCIA in my Roman rite parish so I must be present there for Holy Week and the Easter Vigil if we have catechumens, and we always do. It is rather bizarre to go from the joy of the Easter Vigil "back" to Passion Sunday the next morning.

As I've indicated before, I'm not that well catechized so much of this is confusing to me and probably always will be regardless of how much I continue to learn. As I mentioned in the Loaves and Fish thread, on 07/26 we had "the man born blind" at OLF for our Gospel reading, as did these Orthodox parishes, but apparently other Byzantine parishes on this list has the "Loaves and Fishes" Gospel that day. I need to ask Father Eugene about it. Because of other commitments I can only get to OLF a couple of Sundays a month, unfortunately. This month we have some extra liturgies due to the feast days not on a Sunday.

Well, we seem to always have the same readings as the goarch, as we did that day, tho I confess I don't always manage to read the readings before hand. Fr. Vito had clearly prepared his homily for "the man born blind", and it was excellent. It was the first time I've been there when he has preached. It's wonderful he is becoming bi-ritual.

My only experience of San Francisco is changing planes at the airport. But take this for what it's worth:

I'm familiar with several parishes which use the Julian Calendar, but which also hold a Christmas service on 25 December, on the theory that it is better to do that than to throw the entire typicon into chaos.

Fr. Serge

So I am confused. Alice said over on the DORMITION FAST thread:


And at OLF we are in that fast as of Aug 1. So I guess we and the Orthodox I go to are on a new calendar except for Pascha? So what is that calendar called? I'll ask on Wed. when I go to Festal Vigil...

It is called the Revised Julian Calender- Pascha on the Old Calendar and the other feasts according to the new.

I kinda of wish all Eastern Catholics followed the Old Julian Calender or at the very least the Revised Julian Calender but I do like that all Catholics (Eastern and Western) in this country, for the most part, celebrate Pascha together. Maybe the Latin Church will return to the Julian? hmmmm

Interestingly the Latin Catholic church in Greece (mainly for expats), celebrates Easter/Pascha on the Julian calendar date, out of respect for the majority in the country.
I am not sure if latin churches in other mainly orthodox countries do the same.

I understand that in Tsarist Russia,Latin Catholic churches outside of the Kingdom of Poland,did use the Julian Calendar,along with the Orthodox.In the the area called the Kingdom of Poland,the Latin Catholics would have used the Gregorian Calendar.For those unfamiliar with the history of this region,the Kingdom of Poland included both Ukrainian and Belorussian ethnographic territory;even with Poland's borders today being further west than 1918-39,there are still small chunks of Ukrainian and Belorussian territory within.

A real "Scientific Examination" of the Julian calendar can only come to one conclusion, and it is not an auspicious one for the Julian calendar. Though not books, for a non-polemical current appraisal of the issue one should at least be aware of:


1. The Aleppo Statement [oikoumene.org]

2. SCOBA on Aleppo [scoba.us]

I've read them both, and am profoundly unimpressed.

Fr. Serge

No doubt, but the Aleppo examination of the calendar and paschalion was a proper, precise and valid "Scientific Examination", and that is the claim of the book's title. A valid "Scientific Examination" (again, the book's claim) of the calendar issue, as shown by the Aleppo study, demonstrates the deficiencies of the Old Calendar.

I think we should scrap the idea of scientific examination for the Church calendar. While I am sympathetic to the Julian calendar since it is by far the more ancient I am not for it because it is scientificaly correct.
What matters is that the Church of Christ has blessed both of these calendar's for our sanctification. So instead of trying to prove which is better let us just work out our Salvation on the calendar we find ourselves using in our home parish.

For the calendar doesn't save us- Christ saves us.

There's nothing wrong with the Julian Calendar that could not be fixed by having the Pontifex Maximus and the College of Augurs make the necessary intercalations. When Caesar reformed the calendar, he intended these intercalations to be made a regular intervals, but he got stopped by the Ides of March and nobody much picked up on it after that.

But, if you must use the Julian Calendar, then I must insist you make 25 March the first day of each new year.

Someone did pick up on it, and the irony is that it was eventually fixed by a Pontifex Maximus named Gregory some 1600+ years later. He dropped only 10 of the 14 days needed to catch up on the needed intercalations because, being a Christian, he was resynchronizing the calendar to the time of the First Council of Nicaea. He then established a method for figuring the intercalations so they need not be done in an ad hoc manner; this also avoids their not being done at all as in the past. This fix was so successful that the calendar that resulted has become, as it is even today, the de facto international calendar.

For example in Italy the Rumenian and Ukrainan Catholic Byzantine communities follow the uses in their homeland, thus they follow both:
- the Julian calendar
- the Orthodox Pascalion
Thus also in Rome there are Catholic liturgies of Easter weeks after the Pope celebration...

Of course this doesn't mean that the Catholic Church is going to follow the (astronomical) mistakes of the Orthodox: approximations in calculation that were acceptable in a range of a couple of centuries are no more acceptable in a range of twenty centuries, and following their use the Orthodox in a far future will celebrate Easter in August, contrary the letter and spirit of Nicaea that wanted to keep the celebration of Easter tied to the first moon of spring.

A Pontifex Maximus is supposed to build bridges, not break them!

Fr Serge