The Chinese Calendar and the Date of Easter

The Chinese lunisolar calendar – whose New Year occurred adjacent to Ash Wednesday this week – is, as all men know, a Jesuit production. For imperial decrees of 1611 and 1629 commanded those expert mathematicians and astronomers, being missionaries of the Society of Jesus then resident in Beijing, to correct the traditional calendar of the Ming Empire; the work was completed between 1642 and 1644; and, after an invasion and change of dynasty, was promulgated in the first year of the Qing (that is, Manchu) Empire, in 1645.

There was some contretemps back in Rome at the involvement of Fr Johann Adam Schall von Bell, S.J., in the composition of such a calendar, providing as it did for the various feasts and fasts of pagan idolatry, not to mention days of good and bad fortune as prescribed by oriental superstition; but his involvement was all carefully examined and approved by a curial commission, Fr Schall's role being revealed as simply providing the calculations upon which substructure native officials arranged their customary observances, without any acquiescence of that Jesuit in their non-Christian rites; and in the same year of 1664, Pope Alexander VII officially approved the good father's appointment as a mandarin and chief mathematician of the Empire of China.

Being a lunisolar calendar, its lunar months (stretching from new moon to new moon, with the full moon occurring, more or less, on the fifteenth day of each) are carefully disposed to correspond to the solar year, with the intercalation of an extra month from time to time (roughly every three years). Though its solar year is calculated between successive (northern hemisphere) winter solstices, it is interesting to note several convenient properties of the Chinese calendar that relate instead to the vernal equinox, which must always fall within the second lunar month.

I wonder if the Jesuits, who laboured for the Son of Heaven that he be converted and turn to worship the Son of Man, that he, too, and all the peoples of his Empire, become sons of God and co-heirs of heaven, did not spot the eminent suitability of their clever improvement of the Chinese calendar for the determination of the date of Easter, in conformity with the then-recent Gregorian calendrical reform?

For I have been checking if a simple algorithm applied to the Chinese calendar will correctly yield the date of Easter: and it seems it does, if two safeguards be applied.

To begin with, recall what the first Ecumenical Council decreed: that Easter falls on the first Sunday after the first (or "Paschal") full moon after the (northern) vernal equinox. The West (whether non-Chalcedonian, Greek or Latin) has always determined this date by the use of tables. However, in principle astronomical calculations would yield an equal or superior result.

The reformed Chinese calendar of 1645 is based upon observations of the true rather than the mean sun and moon. (Since early last century, it has not been based upon the meridian of Beijing, but upon that of 120 degrees East; this is about the only change made after the Jesuits' codification and improvement of ancient tradition.)

To determine the date of Easter by use of the Chinese calendar, first one finds the date of the vernal equinox in the relevant year (this always falls in the second lunar month), converting if necessary from the Gregorian to the Chinese date (though most Chinese calendars provide the "solar terms", including the relevant equinox). Then one notes if that equinox occurs before or after the fifteenth of the lunar month (when the full moon, in almost all cases*, occurs). If before, then the first Sunday after that fifteenth* day will be Easter Sunday. If after, then the first Sunday after the fifteenth* of the third month will be Easter.

I add an asterisk (*) above to signify that I have made a perhaps unwarranted simplification (though it works well enough in over 93% of cases): for, having downloaded a table of all lunar phases and their timings from 1600 to 2200 inclusive, it appears that the fifteenth day of the Chinese month is not always the date of the full moon: sometimes it is the sixteenth, or even the seventeenth.

For the eighty years from 1974 to 2053, four times (in 1994, 2021, 2025 and 2048) the calculation of the date of Easter requires not merely assuming that the fifteenth of the lunar month is the date of the full moon, but a careful checking of its exact date. Obviously, a truly comprehensive Chinese calendar table will include the exact date of the full moon each lunar month, so providing a wholly accurate method for finding Easter Sunday.

There is a further rule necessary: in 1981, this method would suggest that Easter falls on the 26th of April, but Easter can only fall between the 22nd of March and the 25th of April – so an added rule must prescribe that, in such a case, Easter be observed a week earlier.

If only the good fathers of the Society of Jesus (in those days, not merely great scholars, but staunchly orthodox too) had managed to convert the Emperor of China! If only the Chinese Rites controversy had been correctly resolved in 1704 (when instead those observances were banned, raising the wrath of the Kangxi Emperor, and resulting in the persecution of Chinese Christians), rather than only in 1939! If only Clement XI had been as well-informed and truly irenic as Pius XII – without in any way being syncretistic!

Ah, the might-have-beens of history: if only Matteo Ricci's understanding of Chinese customs had been upheld rather than spurned, then the conversion of China could have been effected centuries earlier, rather than postponed until the Sino-Japanese conflict and the Communist conquest of mainland China; or, to speak of another theatre of conflict, why did Mary, James II, the Old Pretender and the Young Pretender fail, and Elizabeth and the Prince of Orange succeed? We must bow before the inscrutable decrees of Providence.

In any case, once the men of Han are converted in God's good time – and there are many Christians and Catholics among them, despite all persecution – then indeed one providential convenience will be that the Chinese calendar is admirably adapted to the calculation of the date of Easter.

Liturgical Calendar of the Australian Ordinariate

In between reading up on Byzantine Rite liturgiology (I have been making my way through Taft, as well as sundry liturgical works), I have noticed that Australia's Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of the Southern Cross has published its official liturgical calendar.

UPDATE:
Note that the Ordinariate of course observes all celebrations proper to the Calendar for the Latin Rite dioceses of Australia, such the Solemnities of St Patrick, Our Lady Help of Christians, and St Mary of the Cross (Mackillop).

Herewith, my transcription of the celebrations proper to the Ordinariate itself, first noting that it includes 32 optional memorials (1 downgraded from memorial), 4 memorials (3 upgraded from optional), 2 feasts (one upgraded from memorial) and 1 solemnity:

12 January - St. Benedict Biscop, abbot - optional memorial

13 January - St. Kentigern (Mungo), bishop - optional memorial

19 January - St. Wulfstan, bishop - optional memorial

1 February - St. Brigid of Kildare, abbess - optional memorial

4 February - St. Gilbert of Sempringham, religious - optional memorial

1 March - St. David, bishop - optional memorial

16 April - St. Magnus of Orkney, martyr - optional memorial

19 April - St. Alphege, bishop and martyr - optional memorial

21 April - St. Anselm of Canterbury, bishop and doctor of the Church - memorial

23 April - St George, martyr – memorial

4 May - The English Martyrs - optional memorial

19 May - St. Dunstan, bishop - optional memorial

27 May - St Augustine of Canterbury, bishop and Patron – feast

8 June - St William of York, bishop – optional memorial

9 June - St. Columba, abbot - optional memorial

15 June - [Anniversary of the erection of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of the Southern Cross, by Pope Benedict XVI, 2012] – optional memorial [sic]

16 June - St. Richard of Chichester, bishop - optional memorial

20 June - St. Alban, martyr - optional memorial

22 June - St. John Fisher, bishop, and St. Thomas More, martyrs - memorial

23 June - St. Etheldreda (Audrey), virgin - optional memorial

1 July - St. Oliver Plunkett, bishop and martyr - optional memorial

15 July - St. Swithun, bishop - optional memorial

30 August - St. Margaret Clitherow, St. Anne Line and St. Margaret Ward, martyrs - optional memorial

31 August - St. Aidan of Lindisfarne, bishop, and Saints of Lindisfarne - optional memorial

1 September - Our Lady of the Southern Cross, titular celebration of the Australian Ordinariate - solemnity

4 September - St. Cuthbert, bishop - optional memorial

19 September - St. Theodore of Canterbury, bishop - optional memorial

24 September - Our Lady of Walsingham – feast

3 October - St. Thomas of Hereford, bishop - optional memorial

8 October – [optional memorials transferred from 9 October]

9 October - Bl John Henry Newman, priest – memorial

10 October - St. Paulinus of York, bishop - optional memorial

12 October - St. Wilfrid, bishop - optional memorial

13 October - St. Edward the Confessor - optional memorial

19 October - St. Frideswide, abbess - optional memorial

26 October – St. Chad and St. Cedd, bishops - optional memorial

7 November - St. Willibrord, bishop - optional memorial

17 November - St. Elizabeth of Hungary, religious, or St. Hilda, abbess, or St. Hugh of Lincoln, bishop - optional memorials

20 November - St. Edmund, martyr - optional memorial

1 December - St. Edmund Campion, priest and martyr - optional memorial

The Ordinariate, now just over a year old, has thirteen priests (with an upcoming diaconal ordination in early July); and doubtless (no figures are available) a small but goodly number of lay members. One trusts that God will grant the increase. Forward the Ordinariate!

Sundays, then Saints, then Ferias

Pruning the calendar of feast days gets things exactly backwards, since historically speaking Mass was celebrated firstly on Sundays, then on the feasts of martyrs and other saints.  The development of the whole suite of feasts and seasons around Easter and Christmas paralleled this – hence the days of Lent have proper Masses, as they lead into the celebration of Holy Week.  Penitential times such as the Ember Days early on acquired proper Masses also.  But the very last days in the calendar to acquire their own Masses were ferias, and in two senses they never did: in the Traditional Roman Rite, on all free weekdays, the Sunday Mass was either repeated, including its readings, or a Votive Mass of some sort was celebrated – hence the way that old Missals specified which Votives were to be said on which weekdays.  Some mediæval Missals, such as the Sarum, provided Epistles and Gospels for Wednesdays and Fridays, so that, if those days – which were once both fast days – were without any feast, the Sunday Mass would be repeated but with those readings instead.

All this changed in 1969 or thereabouts (for experimentation had begun earlier), when an entirely new Lectionary was given to the modern Roman Rite.  Some of its features – such as extending to Advent, on the analogy of the Lenten Masses, daily readings and prayers and chants for weekday Masses; and doing the same for all of Christmastide and Eastertide, based to some extent on the ancient provision of proper Masses for each day of the Easter Octave – were logical extensions of existing practice.  Given, too, the precedent of providing Wednesdays and Fridays of old with their readings, to provide ones for every day could be seen as reasonable.

However, the Roman Rite is not the Byzantine Rite (which has had for over a thousand years a semi-continuous cycle of readings at the Divine Liturgy, such that almost the whole New Testament, except for the Apocalypse, is read through once a year), and the exaltation of the ferial Mass (most evident in Ordinary Time) that has gone with imposing a new Lectionary is in fact a reversal of the historical development, in that the readings (whether from the Proper or from the Common) for saint's days are now overshadowed by the panacea of semi-continuous Scripture readings.

I believe that this problem has arisen from confusion of Mass and Office.  In the case of the Office, the exact contrary is true, in that the ferial Office is the older, and later rather overgrown with feasts: by reason of the structure of the Office, with a weekly system for reciting all 150 psalms, and a yearly system for reading a good deal of Holy Writ at Matins, there is an impulsion in the Office toward retaining the ferial and pruning the sanctoral Office.   But in the case of Mass, I argue that the opposite is true.

Queenship or Immaculate Heart?

One of the few obviously better rearrangements of the Roman Calendar was transferring the feast of the Queenship of Our Lady to the Octave Day of the Assumption - for since her Assumption she reigns as Queen with her Son, Christ the King - and, in order to permit this change of date, moving the feast of her Immaculate Heart to the Saturday after the feast of her Son's Sacred Heart (since it is natural to have analogous devotion to the Two Hearts together).

But let us follow the Breviary at least in praying the Collect of the Heart of the Immaculata, together with the Vesper antiphon of the feast:

My heart hath exulted in the Lord, and my horn is exalted in my God, for I have been made glad in Thy salvation. (I Kings ii, 1)

Almighty everlasting God, Who didst prepare a worthy dwelling for the Holy Ghost in the Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary: graciously grant, that with devout mind recalling the feast of the same immaculate Heart, we may be able to live according to Thy heart. Through our Lord... in the unity of the same Holy Ghost...

Australian Calendars Old and New

Compare and contrast the particular calendars for the dioceses of Australia - what a topic for an introductory course in liturgical studies!

Here is my take on what a traditionalist would say...

First, it must be observed that three feasts have stayed the same: St Patrick (out of piety toward the Irish origins of our churches here, despite not being a Patron of Australia) and Our Lady Help of Christians (designated Patroness by an early synod, despite there being little devotion to her under this title) are 1st class feasts in the old calendar, and solemnities in the new; and St Peter Chanel (Protomartyr of Oceania, and canonized only shortly before the Council) has the identical feast (3rd class in old, which is a memorial in the new) in both calendars.

Second, several new saints have been inserted into the new calendar: as optional memorials (to be celebrated if desired), St Bernadette and St Peter To Rot (a native Papuan who was martyred by the Japanese - recall that Papua New Guinea only gained independence from Australia in 1975); and as a feast, Bl Mary MacKillop, "Australia's First Saint" as the media and dear religious sisters like to call her proleptically (a cynic might well ask, why only one blessed after more than 200 years? - whatever has happened in the Antipodes to the universal call to holiness but yesterday reaffirmed by Vatican II?).  To make room for Bl Mary MacK., St Dominic has been transferred to another day in the new calendar - prompting angry ineffectual noises from the Friars Preachers, one of whom rightly noted that "It would never have happened to St Francis!".

Thirdly, several saints have been removed or downgraded, in accordance with postconciliar measures to encourage noble simplicity (such as smashing statues), presumably connected somehow with promoting the universal call to holiness.  Since Australia is no longer a missionary country (!) - in other words, since 1976 its bishops have not been under the jurisdiction of Propaganda Fide - the universal patrons of the missions, St Francis Xavier and St Thérèse of the Child Jesus, no longer have 1st class feasts (solemnities) here, but only 3rd class (memorials).  This does not stop some Traditionalists arguing that the old calendar still applies in their cases, meaning that they are both secondary patrons of Australia, and not, at the same time.  Three saints - all Irish - have been altogether deleted from the new calendar for Australia: St Brigid, St Columba, and St Oliver Plunket.  Presumably it was felt that to fete St Patrick and everything Irish sufficed; surviving Brigidines and Columbans may feel differently.  (If only the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales had been inserted in their place, as an ecumenical gesture.)

Finally, two rather unfortunate new proper Masses have been composed and inserted into the Missal: a Mass for Australia Day, the 26th of January (necessitating transferring SS Timothy and Titus to another day), and a Mass for ANZAC Day, the 25th of April (and therefore moving the feast of St Mark the Evangelist!).  The Australia Day Mass I find downright embarrassing: it seems to be a Mass of thanksgiving for God's benefits received, but is somehow clunky.  As for "the one day of the year", Australia's real national day, ANZAC Day, prior to the Council, a rescript of the Sacred Congregation for Rites had allowed a Requiem Mass for ANZAC Day, when Australia recalls its war dead; now we are subjected to a Mass that doesn't know what its for, as the formulary is a confused mixture of petition for the faithful departed, and sixties-style longings for peace and justice ad nauseam.  Even the entrance and communion antiphons, plus the readings for the Mass can be either suitable for a funeral, or wholly focussed on hopes for peace, and the Preface can be either "of Christian Death" or "of Easter".  What the veterans must make of it I don't know: I find it very unsatisfying, and the civic ANZAC Day services at the cenotaph in every city and town frankly hit the mark better (leaving aside for the sake of argument the Holy Sacrifice truly reënacted at Mass).

What Reform of the Reform is called for?  For a start, an improvement in the texts of the Australia Day and ANZAC Day Masses.  Probably it is not necessary to restore the feasts of St Brigid et al., since with the dilution of the Irish strain in the Australian milieu they are no longer as popular saints as of old.  Arguably, given her great prominence in (remaining) Catholic statuary - and piety - St Thérese could have her feast day upped in importance as formerly.  Similar considerations would apply in having Our Lady of Perpetual Help given a nationwide feast day - dare I suggest Our Lady Help of Christians make way?

Vicariate Apostolic of Mars

I am grateful to the inestimable (not to say unidentifiable) cœtus behind Coo-ees from the Cloister for noising abroad news of the Papal erection - of the Vicariate Apostolic of Mars of the Latins...

As I have suggested to them, it is of course most necessary speedily to give succour to any Martian natives or intending settlers dying of thirst and inanition for want of the one thing necessary: liturgical books.

Mars, as all men know, has a year of 668.6 sols (Martian days), and hence, as the good guys at NASA suggest, the most appropriate calendar for the planet is one of years alternating in length between either 95 or 96 weeks. This means that the calendar is perpetual, with the same day of the week falling on the same date ex hoc nunc et usque in sæculum.

(Remember: on Mars, June hath 10 weeks; April, May and July each hath 9; March and September, 8; January, February, October, November, 7; December hath 6; while in even years, August hath 8, but in odd years, 9. A prize to anyone who can versify this!)

Since over 70 weeks of Ordinary Time manifestly would cause insuperable psychological difficulties, and encourage the growth of atheism, it is agreed that only the Missal and Breviary of the Extraordinary Form, supplemented with extra feasts and fasts, can plug the present lamentable gap in Martian spiritual life.

Indeed, a moment's consideration will shew that many Traditionalists are all-too-adapted to life in outer space; indeed, some may as well be living on Mars already.



(To avoid any confusion: Traditionalists are from Mars, Modernists are from Venus. The latter is, after all, a planet closely resembling Hell.)

The skeleton of the Martian calendar reform needed to be applied to Missal and Breviary is as followeth.

First, as Vatican II permitted, it will be well to fix the date of Easter on Mars to a given Sunday there, since else the date, if tied to the Earthly, would wander all through the year, causing endless confusion (after all, what to do when Christmas and Easter coincide?).

Second, since the day and date always coincide, the first of each month always being a Sunday and so forth, all feasts of saints shall be permanently assigned to weekdays, as St Pius X's reforms clearly intended to keep Sundays free for, well, Sundays.

For utterly the same reason, all Saturdays shall be at the least commemorations of Our Lady, if not Marian feasts.

The season of Lent shall likewise, as recent Papal reforms have indicated, be kept free of saints' days.

These measures still leave over 440 days free for Mass and Office of saints: an increase over the allowance for them at present, and making possible the feasting of many obscure figures, to the joy of their votaries and clients on all worlds.

It will be well, in order to fill in the time, to extend Advent (as in the Ambrosian Rite) to six full weeks before the Solemnity of Our Lord's Temporal Nativity.

For much the same reason, Christmastide shall last a full forty days until Candlemas; ransacking of liturgical books shall provide suitable Propers.

Septuagesimatide, Lent, and the Paschal Season (including Whitsuntide) remaining the same - but for the fixing of Easter Day - there shall be the restoration (as in the Carmelite Rite) of the Octave or rather Triduum of the Trinity, but Wednesday before Corpus Christi shall be made the Vigil of the latter. The Octaves of Corpus Christi and the Sacred Heart shall likewise be restored, and the first three Sundays and weeks after Pentecost moved wholesale until after the end of the last such Octave, pushing back all the post-Pentecost green season.

Since the great length of the Martian year will still not be filled up, recourse is to be had to the Ambrosian Rite to provide extra Proper Sunday Masses.

Many cœtûs are even now convening to begin this valuable work, an offworld presage of the Reform of the Reform - that is to be, as is the only sensible and organic option, a supplementation, not a destruction, of the classical terrestrial liturgy of Rome.

It is anticipated that these liturgical forms will be available online, to save valuable space and mass on interplanetary vessels.

Finally: beware! An heretical sect trumpeting itself as the Universal Church of Mars is already active! Let Catholics crusade against such wickedness!