A GROUP of business people has called for a break with a 1,683-year-old tradition and for Easter Sunday to be on a fixed date each year, ideally the second Sunday in April. PATSY McGARRY, Religious Affairs Correspondent reports
It has urged that the current arrangement - Easter is celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon following the spring equinox - be abandoned.
The Amicable Society, based in Galway and made up of past presidents of its Chamber of Commerce, has pointed out that in 1963 at the Second Vatican Council the Catholic Church said it had no objection to there being a fixed date for Easter.
The group also noted that in 1975 Pope Paul VI, "in co-ordination with the World Council of Churches", proposed that Easter 1977 be celebrated on the second Sunday of April that year. (It is widely believed among Christians that the actual date of the resurrection was April 9th.)
This did not happen as it was opposed by the Orthodox churches.
"The present fluctuating Easter has a 35-day spread due to its being tied into the Jewish Passover which relates to the obsolete Babylonian oscillating lunar calendar, rather than our stable solar calendar," the Amicable Society has said in a document. This is why Easter Sunday 2000 was on April 23rd, Easter this year was on March 23rd, and Easter 2011 will be on April 24th, it said.
Further, it noted that "at present, 17 weeks of the ecclesiastical calendar are dependent on a variable Easter, which includes 13 movable feasts beginning with Septuagesima Sunday nine weeks before Easter, through the Passion, to Trinity Sunday eight weeks after Easter".
Tracing the origin of the current calculation, it pointed out that the passion and resurrection of Christ coincided with Jewish celebrations of the Passover. "Consequently the resurrection got tied into the Jewish Passover rather than to the anniversary of the resurrection," the Amicable Society has said.
This arrangement was fixed at the Council of Nicea in AD 325.
Meanwhile the Orthodox Easter Sunday this year is on April 27th. It is set according to the Julian calendar dropped by Western Christianity in 1582 when Pope Gregory V1 removed 10 days of that year to bring it into line with scientific reality, thus introducing the Gregorian calendar.
The society believes a fixed Easter would "eliminate the present uncertainty/confusion". School terms could be better planned, as could the start of tourist seasons and "the wasteful energy/power demand surge of an early Easter" could be eliminated.
Which leaves Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting, which is moveable and set according to the lunar calendar.