WORLD NEWS FOR MONTENEGRO DIASPORA
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The NGO Montenegro International has launched an online petition with the intention of collecting as many signatures as possible from believers and admirers of our Montenegrin Orthodox Church to switch to the Gregorian calendar. The text of the petition is presented in its entirety and at the end there is a link to download and sign it:
"Without a doubt, today in Montenegro, Christmas Day and Christmas would be celebrated on the eve and on the day when, according to tradition, Jesus Christ was born, and not 13 days later, if it were not for the violent and illegal abolition of the Montenegrin Orthodox Church in 1918, by the decree of the Serbian regent, Aleksandar Karadjordjević . Both according to secular and church laws!
Montenegro is part of European civilization, the Mediterranean, it would certainly follow the values of the modern world and would not be part of those whose basic ideological premise is to be opposed to European civilization.
The current celebrations of church holidays according to the Julian calendar are a consequence of the obstinacy of the Church of Serbia, which has occupied Montenegrin Orthodox temples since 1920, and its refusal to accept the change in the calculation of time according to the much more accurate Gregorian calendar, which was introduced in 1919 in all spheres of life in the then KSHS. except for the Church of Serbia.
How irrational this refusal is is shown by the fact that, if the current dates for celebrating religious holidays were to be maintained, one day in the future, the new year according to the Julian calendar and January 1 would fall in the middle of summer?!
With the worldwide adoption of the Gregorian calendar, the new year begins on January 1st, and in this way the different customs were harmonized according to which some nations started the new year on Christmas Day, or on March 1st, as in the case of the English, or on September 1st as in the Byzantine Empire, which was later taken over by the Russian Empire...
The Julian calendar, created in 45 BC, had an error that increased by one day every 128 years. That's why it was decided at the Council of Nicaea (325) to remove 3 days from the calendar that represented the accumulated difference. But by the 16th century, the difference had accumulated to 10 days. When they noticed this, astronomers decided to create a new calendar that would be more precise.
At the council in Nicaea, the church accepted the Julian calendar, with 3 days removed, so that on February 24, 1582, Pope Gregory XIII announced its reform with a papal bull that omitted an additional 10 accumulated days from the calendar. So he did something similar to what the church fathers did in Nicaea, with the difference that the reform prevented further accumulation of difference.
In the meantime, a difference of three additional days has been created until today. If the calendar adopted by Julius Caesar in 45 BC was consistently applied, the difference today would be 16 days.
It is untrue that the calendar adopted by Julius Caesar is biblical, which is being tried to be false, because it was created before the creation of Christianity and the gospel. The church fathers themselves realized its imperfection at the Council of Nicaea by subtracting three days, although they accepted it in the church. Therefore, if there had not been a great schism, it would probably still have been corrected by some future ecumenical councils.
There are many arguments in favor of the thesis that the Montenegrin Orthodox Church should adjust the celebration of church holidays in accordance with the Gregorian calendar. There is only one against, and that is that ill-wishers will accuse her of switching to the celebration of "Catholic holidays"! However, this can be easily refuted by the number of Orthodox churches that have switched to the Gregorian calendar, as well as the Protestant Anglican and many other churches that also practice counting time according to the Gregorian calendar.
We, the undersigned, address the top of the Montenegrin Orthodox Church and its archbishop, Bishop Mihail, with an appeal that the Montenegrin Orthodox Church in the future practices the celebration of Christian holidays in accordance with the real time and calendar practiced by the entire modern world."
I.B.
