HL Deb 21 July 1920 vol 41 cc381-93
LORD DESBOROUGH

rose to draw attention to the inconveniences arising from Easter being a moveable Feast and from an antiquated Calendar; and to move to resolve—

That His Majesty's Government be requested to summon a Conference at the earliest possible opportunity to consider the advisability of (1) the establishment of a fixed date for the celebration of Easter; and of (2) the reform of the calendar.

The noble Lord said: My Lords, I should like, in the first place, to apologise to the House for the length of time that this Notice has been on the Paper, but that was not entirely due to me. I had some communication with the Archbishop of Canterbury, and I should like to take this opportunity of acknowledging, with all thanks, his extreme courtesy and kindness in this matter. He asked me to be in no hurry to move this Resolution, as there were coming to this country no fewer than 250 bishops, with whom he would have sonic chance of discussing the matter.

I took up this question not from any personal point of view, but rather as the mouthpiece of a very large number of Chambers of Commerce and other mercantile bodies who, for very many years past, have been carrying resolutions in favour of a fixed date for the celebration of Easter. These different congresses of Chambers of Commerce have been held many times during the last ten years, and the London Chamber of Commerce, the Association of Chambers of Commerce of Great Britain, the Chambers of Commerce of the British Empire, of which I happen to be President, and the International Chambers of Commerce, which, at their last conference before the war, represented 37 nationalities, unanimously passed resolutions in favour of a fixed date for the celebration of Easter, and for fixed dates for the great holidays of Easter and Whitsuntide. During last month the congress of the International Chambers of Commerce met in Paris again and unanimously reaffirmed the resolutions to which other Chambers of Commerce had previously arrived.

I do not wish to place any great church reform on the mere ground of Chamber of Commerce opinion. The only satisfactory solution that could be arrived at would be an agreement among the Christian churches for a fixed date. But though the Easter celebration primarily concerns the Church, the inconveniences arising from an indeterminate date for Easter and Whitsuntide are felt by the community at large. Easter is the central Festival of the Church, and upon Easter depends not merely the Festivals and Holy Days of the Church which follow, but also those which precede Easter. Under the present system for the computation of Easter it would be possible for that central festival of the Church to vary no less than 35 days—that is to say, between March 22, which is the earliest possible date after the spring equinox, and April 25. This variation causes a very great deal of inconvenience, to say the least of it, to schools and to universities and it affects law terms and the great national holidays of the people.

There is, I believe, considerable fear that these inconveniences are so severely felt that there may be a lay Easter as distinct from the Ecclesiastical celebration. We have seen instances of that already. Easter happened to be early this year—namely, on April 4—and a great many schools did not break up for their Easter holidays till after Easter Sunday. Next year it will be still earlier—namely, on March 27—Whitsunday being on May 15. It is quite unnecessary to dilate on the great inconvenience to the whole community of this variation from year to year, which upsets the business, economic and social, of the whole community. But it affects also comparative statistics. If you take the financial year from April 6 to April 5, you will find that in the years 1900 to 1920 only six years have one Easter, seven years have two Easters and seven years have no Easter at all. This is very disturbing to those who are concerned with comparative statistics and the national finances.

I am anxious not to be considered as approaching this subject except in a proper and due spirit of reverence. But it is well known that people do not remember the exact day of these great religious festivals. The early Christians and the Apostolic Fathers did not lay stress on any particular date. The words of St. Chrysostom with regard to this are, I think, very beautiful words. He says, "The whole of time is a festival unto Christians because of the excellency of the good things which have been given." To an early Christian, therefore, the whole of the year was a festival. With regard to the date of Christmas, it is well known that in early days it was celebrated on various dates. The Eastern Church, I think, celebrated it on May 20, and also on January 6, which was the date generally adopted by that Church. The date for the celebration of Christians was not fixed until the fourth century. As sometimes happens in connection with the institution of festivals commemorating great events, December 25 was chosen largely because it coincided with the then existing great festival welcoming the return of the sun after the longest night of the year.

In the same way Easter was also made to coincide with an existing festival which, at that time and in pagan times, was celebrated to welcome the advent of spring. Our name Easter is derived from Eostre, the Teutonic goddess of spring. It is most fitting, it seems to me, that the great events of the Christian year should be made to coincide with those great physical facts. At the Council of Nicæa, which was held in 325 A.D., it was decided, so great were the controversies raging at that time, that in determining the date of Easter, whatever happened, Easter should always be celebrated on a Sunday, and that was brought about largely in consequence of the Arian heresy into which I need not go. It was decided by the moon. But the whole question was how to determine the moon. Finally, it was decided in the time of Pope. Gregory XIII, in 1582, to adopt the Metonic system of calculating the moon. It had been discovered that. every nineteen years the new moon fell on the same day, and that is really why, to find the golden number, we have to divide by nineteen, and perform certain other calculations, which, I admit, I have made during some of the less interesting sermons to which I have listened. But though the moon was adopted for the purpose of fixing Easter, it is not the actual moon in the heavens, nor even the moon of astronomers that regulates it, but an altogether imaginary moon.

My point in saying this is to show that there is nothing irreverent in the Church establishing a fixed date for the celebration of Easter, because it is not supposed to be the actual anniversary of an historical event. If it were so, it would be quite impossible for it to vary as much as thirty-five days. It has been very often lamented that the Council of Nicæa did not establish a fixed date for Easter, and also that Pope Gregory XIII did not do so when he reformed the calendar in the year 1582, though his reform was not adopted in this country until the year 1752, which is not so very long ago. I have been told that the opposition to any reform of this character would come from the Churches, but I have reason to doubt whether any Church is now very much opposed to it, and, with your Lordships' permission, I should like to be allowed to read a letter of some importance, which appeared in the Roman Catholic paper, the Tablet. This letter, I may say, is by far the most interesting article on this subject that I have read. It is written by the Roman Catholic Bishop of Salford, and I think it is important as some indication of the views which are held by the Roman Catholic Church, or the See of Rome, in this matter.

I think we should all of us admit that the Holy See, is a very disciplined institution, and that neither the Tablet nor a Bishop would be very likely to adopt a very strong view in this matter unless there were grounds for considering that it was not opposed to the views of the authorities. This is what the Bishop writes— I am delighted to see that the Tablet has taken up, and with approval, the idea of a fixed Easter. That is a reform that has long been needed, and now that the system of 'Summer Time' has been internationally accepted, it does seem that there is a hopeful outlook for this reform also. The dogmatic dangers and difficulties of the early centuries involved in a change of the Paschal calculation are no longer existent, and there can surely now be no objection from the theological point of view. Of course, the [...]qua non condition must be that Easter Day should always fall on a Sunday, and that being granted the reform appears to me the simplest thing in the world. We have only got to take our missal and breviary—I presume the Anglican liturgical books agree in this—and we find that in what I may call the normal or typical year there should be just six Sundays after Epiphany, and twenty-four after Pentecost. Surely all that s required is a fiat from competent authority that this normal year shall always be observed, instead of the abnormal irregularity which now prevails, when we may have five, four, three, or even only two Sundays after Epiphany, and have to interpolate them at the other end of the year, before the twenty-fourth after Pentecost (even this cannot always be done; witness the 'fourth Sunday after Epiphany' this year; that had to be kept on a Saturday, January 31). By the very simple and obvious method mentioned above, Easter Sunday would just oscillate. within one week and no more, and could fairly be styled a fixed Easter. No alteration in the calendar would be needed; in fact, everything would be normal. Of course, for the Catholic Church, the Holy See could make the change with a stroke of the pen; but I do not anticipate that there would be any difficulty in negotiations to induce the Governments of the various nations to agree, as the advantages are so very obvious. The name of Benedict XV would deserve to go down to posterity side by side with that of Gregory XIII. think this letter really shows that the hostility of the Churches—and I was always told that the Roman Catholic Church would be more hostile to any change of this character than any others—is, at all events, exaggerated. As regards the Anglican Church, I have a great many letters from clergymen who strongly support the institution of a fixed date for Easter. I have also had letters from the heads of various universities and colleges, who have submitted the matter to their various synods and councils arid are unanimously in favour of a fixed date being established for Easter.

I think that goes far to show that there is a very widespread feeling, not merely among commercial men, but among the universities and the law. So far as the I am is concerned a committee was appointed to go into the question aril it was practically agreed that the legal holidays should be fixed absolutely irrespective of the Church festivals. It would be very deplorable, indeed, if the secular holidays were absolutely divorced from the great Christian festivals. It is obvious that if this reform was carried out by consent on the part of the two great Churches, the Anglican Church and the Roman Catholic Church, the consent of the other Churches would, I think, necessarily follow. The matter was widely considered before the war by other bodies, though, of course, the intervention of the war prevented any action being taken. The German Reichstag, before the war, passed a resolution in favour of a fixed date for Easter and a reformed calendar. The Swiss Government has intimated its willingness to summon a conference and the Holy Synods of Russia, Rumania, Serbia and Greece, have sympathetically considered the proposition, as also has the Council of the Vatican. After so much consideration has been given to it I trust His Majesty's Government will lend a helping hand and be willing to do what the Swiss Government was prepared to do so as to ascertain the wishes of the Churches in this matter.

I do not propose to say much about the second part of my Motion, which refers to the reform of the calendar. It has been advocated by commercial bodies for a long time, and it is obvious that you will not have an absolutely fixed Easter until the calendar is reformed. I will not go into this complicated matter in detail; it is one for astronomers. Three Bills have been before Parliament on the point, and I have a fourth Bill in my bag. It is a question which can only be settled by competent authorities. But, whenever Easter Sunday be fixed, some heed must be paid to the. fact that a reformed calendar will have some effect upon the date; it will stereotype the date. The Lower House of Convocation of Canterbury considered the matter as long ago as May 5, 1911, and their suggestions can easily be carried out. The committee which was appointed by Convocation to consider this subject made three stipulations, one of which was that in the event of Easter being fixed it should be. a Sunday in the first half of April. That would narrow the date down to either the second or the third Sunday in April. I hope that in any official reply on behalf of the Government we shall be told that something can be done. I have a somewhat intimate connection with the commercial community as represented by Chambers of Commerce, local and associated, and I can assure your Lordships that the impatience of business men is getting rather acute. It has been working up to a head for the last ten years. Whatever may be said I sincerely trust it will not lead the commercial community, or any other community, to wish to divorce the national holidays of the people from the sacred rites of the Church.

Moved, to resolve "That His Majesty's Government be requested to summon a Conference at the earliest possible opportunity to consider the advisability of (1) the establishment of a fixed date for the celebration of Easter; and of (2) the reform of the calendar."—(Lord Desborough.)

THE LORD ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY

My Lords, the noble Lord has referred to the communications which he has most courteously had with me on this matter and to my request that there should be no hurry in bringing the subject forward. It so happens that this year there is a larger Church gathering in this country of the bishops belonging to the Anglican Church than ever before, and there is at this moment a delegation from the Greek Orthodox Church who have come over in order to confer with the Committee of the Lambeth Conference. I have had an opportunity, which will not occur again for many years, of taking such counsel as may be necessary. I have not thought it desirable to bring the matter before the great assembly of ecclesiastics, but I have had many private conversations with leading men from all parts of the world who are able to speak on behalf of public and ecclesiastical opinion in their own countries.

I will not follow the noble Lord into the ecclesiastical or astronomical portions of his argument. I congratulate him on the care he has taken in searching out the rather obscure and difficult historical records. The astronomical calculations were always beyond me; and they are beyond me now. The practical question is obvious. No one is blind to the inconvenience of the changes (and apparently unmeaning changes from year to year) in the date of Easter and the necessity of looking into ecclesiastical books in order to find out on what date Easter will fall the following year. I may say at once, so far as the ecclesiastics with whom I have been in conference are concerned, that there is no objection at all on their part to the change suggested, provided certain conditions are satisfied. I am speaking now, not on behalf of the Greek Church, but on behalf of the Anglican Church in England, America, Austria, India and elsewhere. We all feel strongly that the holidays should not be divorced from the period of ecclesiastical celebrations. We believe that there are gains in the association which we shall be sorry to lose, and we think it is most important that that should not be ignored in any settlement, if a new settlement be made.

In the next place we think it quite necessary that the Anglican Church throughout the world, in England, America and the Colonies and Dominions of the King, should not be divorced from the other ecclesiastics of Western Christendom—at any rate, that is to say, we should expect. concurrence on the part of the Roman Catholic authorities in any settlement that may be made, and, failing that concurrence, we should have to reconsider our position, because we should not like to have an Easter which differentiated us from other Churches of Western Christendom Further, we should think it to be essential, or very desirable. that the Sunday fixed—of course it must be a Sunday; that goes without saying—should fall within the range of the thirty-five days during which Easter at present falls; it should not be transferred to any other part of the year, although I am not aware that at present there is any such suggestion. It should be upon a fixed Sunday, on which it might. quite naturally fall in any year if no action were taken; that is to say, that within a thirty-five days' range a Sunday should be chosen to which we could agree.

Given those conditions, so far as the Anglican Church is concerned, I have every reason to believe that it would be entirely acceptable to us that Easter Sunday should be a fixed Sunday and not a variable one. That there would be some men with ecclesiastical and archaeological interests who might object to it I do not doubt, but I think they are negligible in number, and not the most authoritative in status or weight of opinion. Therefore, so far as the Church for which I have any right to speak is concerned, either at home or across the seas, I do not think that any opposition should be anticipated to any proposal, if any be made. I say "opposition to be anticipated ". because I hardly think it is the business of the Church to start the matter and to arrange that the thing shall be promoted. We ought to be approached by those who, on practical and business grounds such as were mentioned by the noble Lord, are feeling keenly the inconvenience of the matter, and then they would find, I am sure, the sort of response to which I have alluded.

With regard to the Eastern Church the case is not quite the same. At this moment the calenders of the Eastern and the Western Churches are different, with this peculiar and, to the noble Lord, gratifying fact, that in a formal letter which I have received from the Acting-Patriarch of the Orthodox Church in the East, one of the things which lie said he would desire that we should confer with them about was the obtaining of a reformed calendar. He did not go further and say how it should be reformed, but from private conversation which I have had with distinguished ecclesiastics of the East, I have no reason to anticipate technical opposition to proposals which may he made. But, whether that be so or not, I necessarily do not attach so much importance to concurrence with us on their part as I do to concurrence with us on the part of the Western Church. We mast be identical with the great Church of the West as represented by the Church of Rome. If those conditions which I have specified are met—and they seem to be covered by the noble Lord's observations—I should be disposed to give more titan a willing reply to any suggestion that may be made to us, such as the noble Lord has adumbrated.

THE EARL OF ONSLOW

My Lords, the question which the noble Lord, Lord Desborough, has brought before your Lordships' House this afternoon is one of great interest and of no little importance, and we are indebted to him for the interesting and careful explanation which be has given to us of the history of the manner in which the date of Easter was fixed in the past, both in the able speech which he has just delivered and in the valuable letter which he contributed to The Times of yesterday. I think that we are all of us agreed that the incon- veniences of a moveable date for an important festival like Easter are obvious, and that if all the various interests and opinions were agreed as to a policy, it would be of general advantage if steps could be taken with a view to carrying that policy into effect.

I am, however, somewhat doubtful whether the course recommended by the noble Lord to-day is one which His Majesty's Government could usefully adopt, at any rate at the present moment. Lord Des-borough has told us that at the meeting of the International Chambers of Commerce, held in Paris in June, a resolution in favour of securing a fixed date for Easter was passed unanimously, and that this motion reaffirmed resolutions passed in former years by many Congresses of Chambers of Commerce, both national and international. Thus we may accept the fact, I think, that the views of the commercial community in a large number of countries are in favour of the proposed change. As Lord Desborough pointed out in his letter and this afternoon, the matter is one primarily for the Christian Churches—Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox. Here we have no such definite pronouncement of opinion, as has been passed by the International Chambers of Commerce, but we have had very valuable evidence both from the noble Lord, Lord Desborough, and from the most reverend Primate that the reform would not receive unfavourable consideration from many communions; for instance, the Catholic Church. Lord Desborough has quoted an interesting statement by the Bishop of Salford to that effect.

As regards the Anglican Church he has told us that the Lower House of the Convocation of Canterbury were inclined in 1911 to regard the proposal with a certain degree of favour, and the most reverend Primate pronounced most definitely this afternoon that the change would be favourably regarded on certain conditions. As regards the Orthodox Church, I gather that there is cause to think that the idea might not be regarded at all unfavourably but we have not heard how the proposal is viewed by other branches of Protestant opinion, such as the Scottish Church, the various Nonconformist Churches in this country and elsewhere, the Protestant Churches of France and Switzerland, and the Lutheran Church. Nor have we any knowledge of the views of the Armenian Church—a not inconsiderable body of opinion both in the Old World and the New—and there are various other communions, who perhaps may be less in numbers than those I have mentioned but whose agreement would be none the less of importance.

It is plain that although there is strong cause for belief that whilst many, if not all, Churches would be inclined to give favourable consideration to the proposal, there is no evidence of unanimity such as obtains in the case of the Chambers of Commerce. I therefore think that before any steps are taken in the direction advocated in the Resolution, it would be desirable that the views of the Churches should be ascertained more definitely. This is a matter which would seem to be one more for the Churches themselves than for His Majesty's Government to undertake. Even, however, were the views of the Churches to be as unanimous as those expressed by the Chambers of Commerce, His Majesty's Government would still be obliged to ascertain how the majority of the community of the British Empire would consider the alterations. A change in the date of Easter would, of course, affect the holidays both at Easter and at Whitsuntide, and it would be necessary for His Majesty's Government to inform themselves of public opinion, and especially industrial opinion, on the point. I am not by any means saying that such opinion is hostile to the principle, but it would be necessary to make quite sure that it is favourable before any definite steps were taken in the direction advocated by the noble Lord.

Let us grant, for the sake of argument, that the Churches had expressed themselves as unanimously as the Chambers of Commerce, and that public opinion here was entirely in favour of the change, and definite and unmistakable voice had been given to that opinion. There are still difficulties in the way of following the suggestion of the noble Lord at the present time. I would ask your Lordships if the present is quite the time to consider a change of this kind? Look at the political condition of the world, especially in Eastern Europe. Would it be possible now to summon a really representative Conference, or to arrive at a satisfactory decision on this point to-day? I feel sure that until times are more settled and more normal it would be scarcely be possible to hope for any satisfactory result of an international character from a special Conference summoned to deal with this question.

I hope the noble Lord will not think that I am unduly throwing cold water on his proposal, for I can assure him that we are not unsympathetic to it, and I may perhaps quote to him the action of the Government in 1911 as an illustration. In that year the Swiss Government invited His Majesty's Government, among other Governments, to a Conference to discuss the two questions of the reform of the Gregorian calendar and the date of Easter. His Majesty's Government agreed to take part, provided that other important Powers were represented, but although the Conference was adumbrated in 1911, down to August, 1914, when war broke out, no information had been received by His Majesty's Government as to what Powers had accepted the invitation, and the Conference has never been held. If difficulties were experienced in calling a Conference between 1911 and 1914, I think it is obvious that the difficulties at the present moment would be much greater. I must express my regret to the noble Lord that His Majesty's Government are unable to accept his Motion, which they feel bound to do, not from want of sympathy with the idea which is in his mind, but rather because they regard the method that he suggests as one which at the present time presents difficulties of such a character as to render the proposal impracticable for them to carry out.

LORD DESBOROUGH

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Earl for what he has said. He has alluded to the action of the Swiss Government in 1911, and I may say that the want of diligence of the Swiss Government induced me to. put down the Motion that now appears on the Paper. I am much obliged to the noble Earl for the sympathetic words he has used with reference to this Motion. I rather doubt myself whether it is necessary to consult the very large number of churches he has mentioned. I think it will only require two Churches to fix the conference again, as was done previously. I am still more grateful to the right rev. Primate for the very sympathetic manner in which he spoke of this Motion, and I hope I may have some opportunity of consultation with him as to the manner in which he would most prefer the Churches to be approached. I have done a good deal in the matter, and I have no doubt that I shall be able to do a little more, with his sympathy. I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.