Diary – 21 January 2016

Quarrelling about the date of Easter has been a Christian pastime for centuries. The chief bone of contention is whether Easter should be held on 14th Nisan in the Jewish calendar — that is, at a fixed point of the lunar month — or whether it should be held on the nearest Sunday to this date. The Celtic church(es) evidently had their own ideas on the question. In the year 651, Queen Eanfleda of Northumbria was fasting on what she regarded as Palm Sunday on the very day that her husband, Oswy, King of Northumbria, was celebrating Easter. Behind the seemingly batty arguments lay the world-changing conviction that Christ’s death and resurrection had been a new Passover. Now we discover that Christian leaders are uniting behind the idea of having a fixed date for Easter, regardless of the cycle of the moon. Their reason? If the reports are correct, it is to allow people to plan their holidays. This destroys all the poetry and symbolism of Easter’s relation to the Jewish Passover. Apparently Pope Francis, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Coptic Pope Tawodros II — presumably in consultation with Ryanair, Tesco and Disney World — are all agreed on the plan to turn the central mystery of the Christian faith into a mere spring break.

Meanwhile, the Archbishop of Canterbury last week assembled the Anglican Primates from all over the world to see if they could resolve the vexed question of modern ‘sexuality’. After a token apology to gays, transsexuals et al for the ‘hurt’ caused them over the years, the Archbishop agreed to ‘suspend’ the American Episcopal Church for three years as a punishment for supporting gay marriages: our gentle Archbishop’s substitute for excommunication by bell, book and candle.