Robbing Abraham to Pay Bartholomew

Pope Francis has again revived the idea of establishing a “common Easter.” At “ecumenical Vespers” on January 25, he called the coincidence of the Catholic and Orthodox celebrations on April 20 this year “providential” because 2025 also marks the 1,700th anniversary of the convening of the first ecumenical council, the Council of Nicaea. Among the items of business at Nicaea was the formula for setting Easter.

Supporters of this idea invoke what was largely considered a dormant appendix to the last ecumenical council’s Constitution on the Liturgy, Vatican II’s Sacrosanctum Concilium. In that appendix, the Council said it did not object to a fixed celebration for Easter if there was a consensus among Christians, particularly those not in communion with the Apostolic See (i.e., primarily the Orthodox). Most people thought this idea dormant because the East, lacking any common spiritual leader (Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople is not an Orthodox “pope”) or pan-Orthodox decision-making mechanism, would be challenged to establish consensus.  

The Nicaea anniversary, however, has apparently caught Bartholomew’s and Francis’ attention. The professional ecumenical class claims a common Easter would promote “Christian witness, unity, and evangelization.” The claim leaves me unconvinced because, by not addressing liturgical adherence to the Julian Calendar in large parts of Orthodoxy (especially its largest autocephalous church, the Russian Orthodox), none of those things will happen. “Witness” will be compromised because, absent the connection of reason to faith in liturgical usage, that “witness” will only be partial.  

Clinging to the Julian Calendar will still leave Catholic and Orthodox Christmas observances separated by 13 days. The “unity” here is one from above: there seems to be no push “on the ground” for what senior ecclesiastical leadership wants. It would be telling to see whether or how much the issue came up in any “synodal listening sessions” before it showed up in paragraph 139 of the final document. “Evangelization” here is nominal and notional, given that the Orthodox were complaining not long ago about Catholic presence and growth on their “canonical territories” as “proselytism.” The only way that complaint might be squared is if we redefine normal Catholic life and missionary activity to make Orthodox complaints of “proselytism” and Francis’ dread of “proselytism” synonymous.  

In the end, then, the ecumenical “gains” of this change would be limited. (The potential for intra-Orthodox schism if the Russian Orthodox do not agree and the competing Orthodox jurisdictions in Ukraine clash would be a real loss. We will not even ask what mechanisms should signify Protestant “consensus.”) What I don’t hear discussion of is the interreligious losses.  

Easter has always been connected to Passover. It is clear from the Gospels, regardless of discrepancies in the exact chronology each reports, that Jesus’ Passion, Death, and Resurrection took place in conjunction with the Jewish Passover and the preparation for it. The Last Supper is clearly modeled on the Seder. For John, Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross is chronologically synchronous with the time for slaughter of the paschal lambs in the Temple.

As mentioned above, Nicaea addressed the “Easter controversy.” Back in 325, the Church was divided over the “Quartodeciman Controversy.” The issue was how literally Easter should track Passover. The Quartodecimans wanted Easter and Passover to coincide. Because Passover can be any weekday, the Quartodecimans observed Easter regardless of the day of the week.  

Nicaea stressed the primacy of the Resurrection on “the first day of the week” (John 20:1) and so, instead, tied Easter to a Sunday, the Sunday after the first full moon of spring. The Paschal Moon generally coincides with Passover, since the Jewish calendar is lunar.  

So, for over 1,500 years, the Church’s observance of Easter was closely tied to Passover. Some Orthodox even insist that the Catholic Church errs in how it celebrates Easter because, in their reckoning, Easter should not occur until after the multiday Passover has been completed.

If we are to accept the current proposal for a “common Easter,” what does that mean? Most advocates want Easter to be pegged to a particular Sunday, the second or third Sunday of April being leading candidates.  

Accepting this arbitrary assignment of Easter to a nicer springtime Sunday in April (sometime between April 8-21) disconnects the feast from the Paschal Moon and, thus, the closer association with Passover. That is a liturgical departure from theological roots. Accepting this arbitrary assignment of Easter to a nicer springtime Sunday in April (sometime between April 8-21) disconnects the feast from the Paschal Moon and, thus, the closer association with Passover.Tweet This

Furthermore, without resolving the Julian/Gregorian Calendar question and/or articulation of which Calendar should be used when speaking of the “second or third Sunday of April,” how do we know when the target Sunday occurs? 

Granted, the question of Easter’s relationship to Passover probably does not loom large for Judaism because the latter does not affirm the claim of fulfillment in Christianity of God’s promises to Israel. (Let me make clear that in the Christian vision it fulfills those promises and is not “supersessionism.”) Indeed, Judaism has often had a conflicted relationship with and attitude toward Easter, particularly when anti-Semitic mindsets came into play in conjunction with it.

That does not make the interreligious issue any less important. Arguably, it makes it even more acute for Christians because acknowledging Jews as “our elder brothers in the faith” means recognizing the Jewish roots of Christianity. Weakening the Pesach/Pascha connection seems hardly to serve that end.