REFORM OF THE CALENDAR

New Zealand Tablet, 9 January 1913, Page 35

REFORM OF THE CALENDAR

- - ■- 1 here is considerable excitement at the present time about the necessity of reforming the calendar (writes Abbe Th. Moreux, Director of the Observatory or Bourges, in America), and several Congresses have foimulated resolutions on the subject, but from all appearances, no solution of the difficulties that face the reformers will be arrived at. The reform proposes (1) to assign a fixed date for Easter; and (2) to make a more regular distribution of the weeks of 'the year. Ever since the Council of Nice, Catholics have celebrated Easter on the Sunday after the full moon which, follows the 20th of March. In keeping with this tradition, therefore, Easter always occurs after the spring equinox and in the coarse of the full moon. But the moon which regulates the ecclesiastical computation is not the moon in the heavens but the calendar moon. Hence it follows that, at times, the tradition is disregarded, and Easter comes a little earlier or a little later • but in any case it is easy to see, if we study the matter ever so little, that the feast must occur according to the vears, between the 22nd of March and the 25tn of April. ' , Hence it would be a decided advantage, say the reformers, if once for all we could assign the first Sunday of April as Easter day. Thus we should always take into account at least a part of the old rule, since the spring equinox always occurs on the 20th or the 21st of March. Some time ago, through the courtesy of the Director of the Vatican Observatory, who acted as intermediary 1 requested the opinion of Pope Leo XIII. about the matter. He answered very frankly that he would accept the new arrangement if the Synod of. the Russian Church would avail itself of the opportunity to arrange their calendar in accordance with ours But since then new changes have been suggested and the question has:

become still more complicated. Flaws have been found in the arrangement first proposed, and it now turns out , that fixing the date of Easter as indicated above solves only half the problem. As Easter is the anniversary of the Resurrection, it must fall on Sunday. On chat score there is no dispute. But in our calendar Sunday does not always occur on the same date. _ Hence a change in the date of the first Sunday of April, no matter how slight*, would interfere with the object in viewnamely, the fixing of the date which is to determine the ecclesiastical year. How can that difficulty be met ? We shall see. The length of the year does not depend on the will of the dwellers on this orb, but is determined by an astronomical phenomenon. For although we can begin the year on any day we choose, that will not prevent its length from being determined by the interval between the two successive spring equinoxes. In round numbers the year consists of 365 days, 5 hours and 48 minutes. We may neglect the seconds which vary a 'little in the course of the centuries and are practically the same numerically. This, however, constitutes a problem which puzzles the most skilful mathematicians. We are unable to control the fact that the. earth does not make a complete number of rotations during the period of its revolution around the sun, and if our years always consisted exactly of 365 days, we should find ourselves always 5 hours and 48 minutes behind these astronomical phenomena. Julius Csesar saw this, but by supposing that the year was equal to 365, day and 6 hours, and by adopting a year of 366 days every four years, he fell into another error. About 11 minutes were left out of his computation, and those 11 minutes grew little by little to such a figure that Pope Gregory XIII. felt called upon to construct what is known as the Gregorian Calendar. At the present time we are up to date, but according to the new reformers everything is not yet perfect. For it must be borne in mind that the numbers 365 and 366 are not divisible by 7. Hence there is not and never can be, in any year, a complete number of weeks of 7 days, and as the days follow each other in an order that never varies, it will be necessary at the end of 52 weeks to add one day or two in order to complete the year. If the first of January is a Sunday, the first of January following will be Monday, and in the bis-sextile years it will be Tuesday. How is this state of things to be remedied ? Different solutions more or less complicated are suggested. I shall select only one of them. We can, they tell us, always begin the year on a Sunday, and make all the days of the month correspond identically with the days of the week. But what would be done with the day at the end of the year? Make that troublesome Monday neutral, they suggest; a ferial, or supplementary day, and call the first of January following, Sunday. By making "two days neutral in the bis-sextile years the problem would be solved. * For Catholics, however, who believe in the divine consecration of the week and of Sunday, it would not be optional to say that Monday or Tuesday is Sunday. Even when Gregory XIII. was reforming the calendar and ordered that the day after the 4th of October should be called the 15th and not the sth, he was not changing the order of the days of the week but was dealing only with dates. & J This reason seems to me to be peremptory, and on the other hand, because we cannot control the march of the earth around the sun, the problem as it presents itself to-day would appear to me to defy solution, in the manner at least which the reformers of to-day would like to impose on us.