Happy Reformation Day!

Today is Reformation Day—and not just any Reformation Day, but a very special one. That's right, I'm going to take you on a tour of no fewer than seven different "reforms" that have been attempted in the Orthodox Church. (What do you mean, that isn't what Reformation Day means?)

Images of the Holy

Icons are a ubiquitous and central part of eastern worship, as spending any amount of time in a Orthodox church will make clear. The main part of the church will be full (in some cases practically covered) with images of the Lord, the Mother of God, the saints, angels, and significant events from biblical and church history. Orthodox homes will have a corner with icons for prayer and the reading of Scripture. Of course, this is a matter of considerable diversity among Christians; Catholic Churches tend to have not only images but statues, and most Protestant churches use no images in their worship besides the cross (and, perhaps, a smattering of "inspirational" stock photos).

This ambiguity has something of a parallel in the early Church. The use of images in worship developed largely organically in the early church and there are only brief mentions of it in the writings of the early fathers. After the conversion of Constantine and the subsequent spread of Christianity through the empire, it became commonplace for churches to be decorated with many religious images—along with images of the emperor. This may have been a Christianization of the pagan practice of depicting the divine in human form, which doesn't mean the Christian faith was being compromised; the church has a long history of selectively appropriating the best of the faiths around it, a reflection of the fact that though it uniquely proclaims the Truth in its fullness, the Church does not have a monopoly on truth. Early apologists like Justin Martyr applied this with regard to Greek philosophy, and later the pagan feast of Sol Invictus, the unconquered sun, was "Christianized" into a celebration of the nativity of Christ, the true Light of the World and fulfillment of the feast.

So when the church borrowed from the practices and ideas of the world around it, it never did so uncritically. But inasmuch as icon veneration was borrowed in this way, it was unusual in that there was no systematic defense or condemnation of the practice for the first seven centuries after Christ, only scattered expressions of approval or disapproval, such that both supporters and detractors of icons could find plenty of material in the writings of the Fathers to support their positions. This began to change in the eighth century when a series of Byzantine emperors, starting with Leo III, began trying to reform icons out of the Church. Leo's position on icons was somewhat obscure (letters by Patriarch Germanos refer to him as a friend of icons), but he seems to have raised concerns that their veneration was idolatry and to have taken measures to remove them from public places and ban their use in worship.


Leo's son, Constantine V, was much more unambiguously opposed to icons and more theologically literate in his stand against them. In 754 he summoned to the palace of Hieria a council of 338 bishops to (but not including representatives of any of the five patriarchs), which condemned the depiction of the saints "in lifeless pictures" as "vain and introduced by the devil". Still less could the "divine image of the Word" be represented with material colors; how could mere wood and paint possibly do justice to the Incarnate God? Supporters of Constantine's stand against icons, the iconoclasts ("image-smashers"), cited the second commandment (Exo 20:4-5), which prohibited the making of "graven images" or likenesses of created beings as a form of idolatry, a return to paganism. Christ was suppposed to have inaugurated an hour in which the faithful would worship "in spirit and in truth" (Jhn 4:23); the adoration of images represented a regression back to pre-Christianity, the worship of material creature rather than bodiless Creator.

There was also a Christological component to the argument against icons; material images would necessarily either depict only Christ's human nature, separating it from his invisible divine nature (a form of the heresy of Nestorianism), or else conflate and confuse his natures by attempting to circumscribe the divine nature in a portrait along with the human (the heresy of monophysitism). Constantine, something of an armchair (throne?) theologian himself, considered a true image to be "identical in essence with that which it portrays", a definition repeated by his iconoclast supporters; of the "images" of Christ, only the Eucharist met this condition. In light of all these dangers, the iconoclasts called for the end of Christian religious imagery except the cross and the Lord's Supper. The Hagia Irene Church in Istanbul remains as an example of the changes wrought by the iconoclasts; instead of an image of Christ or the Theotokos in its apse as is now considered normal, it has only the stark outline of a cross. No church would again be gutted in such a way until the rise of Reformed Protestantism.

The Council of Hieria was considered ecumenical (expressing the mind of the whole church) by its participants, but was summarily rejected by the wider Church as a "robber council". It was condemned in 769 by a council held by the Pope (who had not even been invited) and thoroughly overturned by a council held in Nicea in 787, which is now recognized by Orthodox and Catholic Christians as the seventh ecumenical council. This council heartily approved the Church's long-standing use of images and rebutted the anti-icon arguments of the preceding council. To the objection that it was demeaning to portray Christ with material paint and wood, it was rejoined that Christ made himself material by taking on flesh. What an icon does is not to circumscribe Christ, but merely to depict him as he manifested himself to us. And what is depicted is not Christ's natures in isolation, but his person in which both natures come together. Against Constantine's definition of an image, the orthodox presented a variety of alternate definitions which did not mandate that images be identical in essence with their subject. They drew both a close relation and a precise distinction between image and subject. St. John of Damascus, the most influential supporter of images in the years leading up to the council, defined an image as "a mirror and a figurative type, appropriate to the dullness of our body." He likened their veneration to showing affection to the garments or image of a departed loved one—for that is what the saints are to the Church.

Similarly, the second Council of Nicea drew a careful distinction between veneration and worship. It is possible to show honor to images without worshipping them, just as it is possible to honor friends, family, or teachers without making them into idols. St. Basil the Great was quoted as saying that "the honor that is paid to the image passes over to the prototype." Added to this was a healthy appreciation for the role of the material in our salvation, which began with the Savior taking on material flesh. Iconoclasm seemed to deny this role, coming dangerously close to the old material-denying heresy of Gnosticism. Saying it was blasphemous to depict Christ in a portrait seemed like docetism; if Christ truly became one of us, how could his body not be pictured like anyone else's? The distinction between pagan and Christian worship, the iconophiles insisted, was not one of matter versus spirit, but false realities versus true ones. Pagan idolatry is idolatry because of the ultimate unreality of the objects of worship, whereas icons depicted real people worthy of real honor, and the real Savior worthy of worship. The veneration of icons, far from a regression to paganism, was a celebration of Christ's triumph over the "elemental principles" of this world.

As for the iconoclast's protests on the basis of the second commandment, the supporters of icons followed an increasingly common Orthodox practice in referring it back to the first commandment: "You shall have no other gods before Me." Icons per se are not objects of worship, but representations and symbols of the One truly worthy of worship; still less are they analogous to pagan idols; therefore the second commandment prohibition does not apply against them. It should be noted that the second commandment in the Septuagint prohibits the making of eidola (that is, idols), not eikona (that is, images, as in Gen 1:26 or Col 1:15); the common King James translation of the prohibition to "graven image" obscures this distinction. This interpretation is bolstered by the fact that later in Exodus God instructs the Israelites to make the Tabernacle with images of cherubim (Exo 25:18-22, 26:1,31, 36:8,35). And finally, icons were and continue to be valuable teaching aids for presenting the content of the faith, to the illiterate and those unable to afford books (in the earlier church), to children, and to converts like myself. Just as preaching and the liturgy bring the words and teachings of Christ and the apostles to us in the present day, icons make them visually present to us.

A second period of iconoclasm began in the early ninth century. Emperor Leo V may have been influenced by a series of defeats at the hands of the radically iconoclast Muslims as a sign of divine displeasure. For inspiration he looked back to Constantine V who, besides his campaign against images was also remembered for his successful conquests against the empire's enemies, and rediscovered the acts of the council of Hieria. Despite the more recent memory of the second Council of Nicea, he became convinced of iconoclasm and once more began to roll back the veneration of images. This second phase of the controversy continued until icon adoration was restored once and for all in 843, a day which is still celebrated on the first Sunday of Great Lent as the "Sunday of Orthodoxy".

Like the heresy of Arianism centuries before, the iconoclast controversy found prominent leaders in the Church arrayed against a movement led and emboldened by a series of emperors determined to push the doctrines they had come to believe in upon the faithful. Whereas in the western churches the accumulation of excessive temporal power by bishops became a serious problem, the Christian east has struggled more with "cesaropapism", the appropriation and exercise of spiritual authority by secular rulers. This was especially true of the Byzantine emperors, but later on the Russian tzars (the word "tzar" coming from "Caesar") and their successors would follow in their footsteps.

An ill-fated truce

By the 1430s, the situation of the Byzantine Empire had become truly desperate. It had shrunk from once encompassing the entire Mediterranean to a few scraps of land on the west side of the Bosphorus, the Peloponnese peninsula, and some scattered Aegean islands. The Ottoman Empire surrounded it on all sides, and the Muslims continued to close in. Emperor John VIII Palaiologos knew that the Empire's only hope of survival lay in timely assistance from the Christian west. In 1438 he accepted an invitation from Pope Eugene IV and sailed with seven hundred diplomats, scholars, and representatives of the Church to Ferrara (later Florence), where what the Catholics consider their 17th ecumenical council was in progress, to negotiate a reunion of the eastern and western churches as a prerequisite for military aid. In the formula of union that was drawn up, the Orthodox would accept the filioque clause (a western addition to the Nicene Creed stating that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, which was a major factor in the east-west schism four centuries earlier), papal supremacy, and the doctrine of Purgatory. In exchange, they would keep most of their distinctive rites of worship and traditions, such as married priests and the use of leavened bread in the Eucharist, while in communion with Rome (these are basically the terms by which the Eastern Catholic Churches would later reunite with Rome).

At last, this was it! The Great Schism of 1054 finally ended by consent of the Pope, Emperor, and Ecumenical Patriarch! All the bishops present, knowing that they had little choice, signed the formula—except for one: Mark, Archbishop of Ephesus. Mark, who is today commemorated as a saint and a "pillar of Orthodoxy", turned out to have the broad support of the Church on his side; the union was widely rejected by monks, civil authorities, and laypeople; many of its signatories revoked their signatures when they returned home; the emperor did not dare proclaim it publicly in Constantinople until 1452. Byzantine Christians would rather suffer under Islamic rule than compromise their faith. The Russian church angrily rejected the union upon hearing of it, and prelates who showed any sympathy for it were ousted. Despite the emperor's best efforts, little western aid came to Constantinople, and it fell to the Turks on May 29, 1453.

The failure of the "union of Florence", like that of the "union of Lyon" in the thirteenth century and the Council of Hieria in the eighth, is demonstrative of the nature of authority in the Orthodox Church. Authority is not simply top-down, residing in any one leader or even a ruling council; nor is it simply bottom-up, with prelates ultimately subject to the will of the laity. The final authority is rather the whole Church, the apostolic consensus that has always been the core of Holy Tradition. The Church is the pillar and ground of the truth (1 Tim 3:15), the true temple in which the Holy Spirit dwells (1 Cor 3:16), and this Church always gets the last word on the acts of the hierarchy. The difference between an ecumenical council and a "robber council" like Hieria or Florence is whether its rulings are received or rejected by the whole Church.

St. Nilus and St. Joseph

A major critique of the Protestant Reformers against the Roman church was its excessive wealth and opulence, which compromised the church's intended role as defender of the poor and its ability to truly be "in the world, but not of the world". This problem was somewhat mirrored in the Christian east, though more with land than with riches; by the turn of the sixteenth century, about a quarter to a third of the civilized land in Russia belonged to monasteries. In 1503, at a synod in Moscow, the monk St. Nilus of Sora (or Nil Sorsky) raised the question of whether this should be so. Similarly to the Reformers to the west, Nilus and his supporters (who came to be known as "Non-Possessors", due to their belief that monasteries should not possess land) argued that such excessive landownership made monasteries too worldly, compromising them in their calling to prayer and piety. Monks were supposed to support themselves with the work of their hands, not act as wealthy landlords.

Responding to Nilus at the synod and in the wider controversy that followed was St. Joseph, abbot of Volokalamsk, who emphasized the social role of monasticism: caring for the poor and the sick, showing hospitality, offering religious instruction; these tasks require money, and therefore land. Monks do not use their land or money for themselves, but for the benefit of others. His followers, the Possessors, had the saying: "The riches of the Church are the riches of the poor."

Besides their disagreement over monastic holdings, Sts. Nilus and Joseph clashed on a few other subjects centering around the relationship of Church and state. Joseph, like most Christians of his time, supported the imposition of civil penalties on heretics (the burning of heretics has historically been much rarer in Orthodox than in the western churches, but it was sadly in practice at that time), whereas Nilus thought the state should take no part in the punishment of heretics. The Possessors believed in a closer partnership between Church and state, whereas the Non-Possessors were more aware of the other-worldliness of the Church. Joseph the abbot focused more on rules and discipline, Nilus on in the inner life of prayer and personal relationship with God. Joseph celebrated the role of beauty and the material in worship (in this he was largely in line with the second Council of Nicea); Nilus emphasized the need not to be ensnared by the material, but to look beyond to seek knowledge of the invisible and indescribable God.

The fact that both participants in this debate are now recognized as saints shows that it was not as one-sided as the other controversies I've been describing. The Russian church recognized that both saints placed stress on valuable and real parts of the Christian faith—although the Non-Possessor movement per se did not do so well, and Russian monasteries continued owning land until the Russian Revolution in the twentieth century.

The tragic tale of Cyril Lucaris

Cyril Lucaris (1572-1638), Patriarch of Constantinople, was a brilliant man born into a very difficult time for the Church. When Lucaris was born, the Reformation was convulsing western Christendom, with opposing Catholic and Protestant foes exchanging verbal if not physical blows. As a resident of Crete, part of the Venetian Republic, Lucaris had a closer view of this enmity than most Orthodox, especially as he studied at the university in Padua (discreetly hospitable to Protestants), and later in Wittenberg and Geneva. Caught in the crossfire between Catholicism and Protestantism, he began to develop sympathies for Reformed Christianity. These sympathies were bolstered by his intense hostility to Catholicism, which may have led him to feel an affinity for Reformation leaders also struggling against Rome.

This hostility was bolstered when, at the age of 24, he was sent to lead the Orthodox opposition to the Union of Brest-Litovsk, a union between Polish-Lithuanian Orthodox and Rome similar to the one attempted at Florence—only ultimately successful. Lucaris was appalled at the capitulation, attributing it to the inferior education of Orthodox clergy compared to the erudite and missionary-minded Society of Jesus. In 1601 he was elected Patriarch of Alexandria, and in 1612 he became the Patriarch of Constantinople. With this authority, he set out to reform the Church to better withstand Catholic influence—along increasingly Reformed lines.

As Ecumenical Patriarch, Lucaris reopened the old Academy in Constantinople and provided it with a printing press to publish instructional materials. He sponsored the first translation of the New Testament into modern Greek. He corresponded with English and continental Reformed leaders, and sent Orthodox clergy to their schools for training. Fatefully, he authored a Confession of Faith (as numerous Protestant groups were had been doing), first published in Geneva in 1629, which expounded a synthesis of Orthodox and Reformed theology. Among other things, it espoused justification by faith alone, unconditional predestination, a rejection of icons, a rejection of the infallibility of the Church, and acceptance of only baptism and the Eucharist as sacraments.

Most other Orthodox were livid at Lucaris' Confession (no doubt encouraged in their rejection by the Jesuits, though there was plenty in the Confession to reject anyway), and he spent his later years embroiled in controversy not just within the Church but also as Constantinople became another front for the Reformation; he was forced to resign five times at the influence of Catholic diplomats and reinstated at the influence of Protestant ones until finally being sentenced to death in 1638, strangled by Ottoman Janissaries and thrown into the Bosphorus. His Confession was repudiated by six local councils in the following decades, and two other Orthodox hierarchs, Peter Mogila of Kiev and Dositheus of Jerusalem, composed their own confessions to oppose Lucaris' and reiterate Orthodox doctrine. Dositheus' Confession in particular is regarded to this day as an apt exposition of the Orthodox faith in distinction from both Catholicism and Protestantism, though written in a Catholic tone.

Two fingers or three?

Nikon, who became Patriarch of Moscow in 1652, was not a very humble man. He sought to reverse the decline in the Patriarch's power relative to the Tsar's, assuming the Tsar's title Veliki Gosudar (Great Lord), and even claimed the right to intervene in secular matters like the popes had done centuries earlier. This eventually earned the resentment of the Tsar, who called a council that deposed him in 1666. But Nikon undertook another initiative which would have more lasting consequences. A strong admirer of all things Greek, he was concerned with how Russian liturgical usages deviated from the Greek ones. So he had Greek service books translated and set out to impose them on his flock.

The reforms Nikon proposed seem trivial to us today (saying three alleluias instead of two, spelling the Lord's name slightly differently, removing a few superfluous words that had been added to the creed), but they provoked fierce opposition. A particular sticking point was his attempt to change how Russian Orthodox made the sign of the cross: not with two fingers extended (representing Christ's two natures), but three (representing the Trinity, as all modern Orthodox make the sign). The ubiquity of the sign, not just in church but in everyday life, and its deep symbolic connection with the dogmas at the very center of the Orthodox faith, made changing it feel like changing the faith itself. The old two-fingered sign became a symbol of conservative resistance to Nikon's reforms.

Compounding this was the heavy-handed, characteristically authoritarian way in which Nikon tried to make his changes. He did not consult parish clergy or call a council, he continued to press on even as opposition arose, and he persecuted resisters fiercely, repeatedly imprisoning their leader, Avvakum, who was eventually burned at the stake in 1682 (a practice which, it should be remembered, is historically rare in eastern Christianity, and which had already ceased in the west). He even had churches whose architecture he deemed nonconforming demolished and rebuilt in a more suitably Byzantine style, and had soldiers search houses for icons whose style was deemed too "western" and destroy them.

Given all this, it's not too surprising that a vehement resistance to Nikon's reign developed. Despite persecution at the hands of church and state, the movement persisted, eventually going into full schism with the Orthodox Church while continuing to suffer persecution. They remain in schism to this day, and are known as the Old Believers.

Russian Meddling

Tsar Peter I "the Great" was determined to prevent any more Nikons from challenging his authority. When Patriarch Adrian of Moscow died in 1700, he declined to appoint a successor, instead having another bishop administrate the church in his stead. In 1721 he abolished the patriarchate and organized the twelve-man "College for Spiritual Affairs" or "Holy Synod" to rule in the stead. His aim was to make the Russian church subservient to the Russian state; the arrangement was unprecedented in Orthodox canon law but similar to that of state Lutheran churches in northern Europe (where Peter had gone to study how "enlightened" western states were run). The Synod's members were nominated by the Tsar, and could be dismissed by him if they got out of line. Even more radically, a 1722 decree obliged clergy to break the confidentiality of confession if they heard any plans against the government. Monasticism was restricted; westernizing reforms were imposed. It was not an attempt to destroy the church but rather to make it an arm of the state.

Perhaps the most distressing thing about the two hundred-year reign of the Holy Synod was how little opposition there was to it. Protests within Russia were stamped out, and the rest of the Orthodox world, mostly living under Ottoman oppression of their own, were not in a position to stop the reforms. It was a time of relative stagnation and westernization for the Russian church, but all was not lost. St. Tikhon of Zadonsk had a mystical streak like that of St. Nilus, and he drew upon western theology without abandoning Orthodoxy. Under the imperial radar and in reaction to the church's domination by the state, the tradition of the Non-Possessors was increasingly reintegrated into Orthodox spirituality and teaching. The nineteenth century saw the rise of the starets (elder), through whom the continuing vitality of the monasteries influenced the life of lay people; the extraordinary monastic St. Seraphim of Sarov is the best example of this. There was also an increase in mission work (including the spread of Orthodoxy to North America, by way of Alaska); later in the nineteenth century, Russian theology increasingly broke free of its western influences and saw a revival both within the empire and beyond which arguably continues to this day.

The Synod remained until 1917, when the Patriarchate was finally restored after the collapse of the old Russian regime. But there was little time to celebrate before the church entered into seventy years of persecution by a militantly atheist regime without historical precedent.

What's the difference between eastern and western Christianity? Thirteen days

For the first fifteen centuries of the Church, all of Christendom used the Julian calendar, introduced before Christ by Emperor Julius Caesar, which adds a leap day once every four years. During the Middle ages, Catholic scholars realized that this calendar was inaccurate, drifting backwards one day relative to the true astronomical time every 128 years. As a result, the calendar date had drifted over a week back from the "true" date. In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII decreed a new calendar, in which every year divisible by 100 but not 400 would not be a leap year. This mostly fixed the problem of the calendar drift. To correct the drift that had already happened, he also decreed that October 4th of that year would immediately be followed by October 15th, which must have been an extremely disorienting change. The Protestant churches at first rejected the new "Gregorian Calendar" as a papal innovation, but eventually came to accept it, as has most of the world.

Such a jarring reform needed the authority of a pope to make it happen, which may be partly why the Orthodox world never adopted the Gregorian Calendar (except for the Finnish Orthodox Church). By the early 20th century, the gap between calendars had grown to thirteen days. Finally, in 1923, Patriarch Meletios of Constantinople gathered a council which called for the adoption of the Revised Julian Calendar (RJC), developed by Serbian astronomer Milutin Milanković. This calendar would be slightly more accurate than the Gregorian Calendar (though remaining identical to it until the year 2800) and come with a time jump of thirteen days to get back on track. The "new calendar" proved controversial; some churches adopted it for fixed feasts while others rejected it, and no one has adopted it for reckoning the date of Pascha and all the feasts dated relative to it. Some small groups have gone into schism over the matter of the calendar, and others, while remaining in communion with the Church as a whole, regard those who have adopted the RJC as having compromised the purity of the faith.

Before you conclude that Orthodox are inflexible grumps who hate any change, no matter how small, some context is in order. Patriarch Meletios called the council a "Pan-Orthodox Congress" (an unusual and unprecedented title), but in reality only Constantinople, Cyprus, Serbia, Greece, and Romania were represented. Conspicuously missing were representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church (the largest one) and the other three ancient patriarchates, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem. His own canonical status was in question; he was allegedly a freemason, which is forbidden for Orthodox; a meeting of clergy and laymen even sought to depose him during the Congress. Much like with Patriarch Nikon, there was a good deal of attempting to push well-intentioned reforms through in an underhanded and one-sided manner.

The content of the reforms sought was also problematic. The congress was called in response to a 1920 encyclical which marked the entrance of the Orthodox Church into the ecumenical movement and called for the rekindling of love among the churches, "so that they should no more consider one another as strangers and foreigners, but as relatives, and as being a part of the household of Christ and “fellow heirs, members of the same body and partakers of the promise of God in Christ” (Eph. 3:6)." The first measure the encyclical called for was the acceptance of the RJC. Other measures included allowing priests to wear lay clothing outside of church and marry or remarry after ordination. Most troublingly, representatives of the Anglican Church were invited to one session of the Congress and given seats of honor. They bore a petition by 5,000 Anglican clergy calling for union with the Orthodox (a dream of Patriarch Meletios'); the reform of the church calendar to match the Anglicans' was explicitly construed as a first step toward that union. Of all these measures, only the calendar reform was accepted, and even then only for fixed feasts (those not dated relative to Pascha, which is why Orthodox usually celebrate it after western Christians have had Easter).

The result of all these reforms being introduced at such an unusual council by such a controversial patriarch was that the matter of calendar reform was poisoned in the minds of many Orthodox, especially those belonging to churches not represented at the Congress. The rejection was an example of a staunch opposition to the great heresy of "ecumenism" (i.e. the compromise of Orthodox faith and tradition in order to get along or achieve "union" with other Christian communions) that still exists in the Church today. This article expressing the "old calendarist" view describes the association of the RJC with ecumenism: "The basis for Church Calendar reform obviously does not have its roots in tradition, theology, liturgical life or the canonical rules of the Orthodox Church, but rather in the one-sided, semi-religious, semi-social approach of the ecumenical cult which is grounded in a political-religious ideal of 'Christian unity.'" Opponents of the RJC also point of that the reasons given for changing the calendar tend to be social or worldly (getting along better with other Christian communions, better scientific accuracy) and not theological, and that since the Julian calendar was officially adopted by the Council of Nicea, only another ecumenical council can replace it.

Proponents of the RJC argue that there is nothing sacred about the Julian calendar (which was, after all, developed by a pagan); that the Council of Nicea did not intend to sacralize the Julian Calendar in particular but simply to adopt the civil calendar of its time for church use; and that calendars are ultimately just manmade tools and not articles of revelation or doctrine. A calendar is a system for measuring time based on the motions of astronomical bodies, and the fact is that the RJC simply does this task better and more accurately than the Julian Calendar; therefore it should be preferred. To the "new calendarists", the old calendarists display the same kind of dogmatism on peripheral points and usages as the Old Believers, and a tendency to denigrate the importance of the Church's relationship with the world (as both creation and mission field) in favor of her spiritual relationship to God. They also tend to conflate the matter of calendar reform with the compromises of early 20th-century ecumenism rather than consider it on its own merits; changing the calendar is seen as a prelude to changing any number of things and ultimately capitulating to western errors. But is the Church really taking the same approach to ecumenism today as she was 100 years ago?

We should, after all, earnestly hope for the reunion of Christians; this is not a goal to be scoffed at, and we already pray for "the peace of the whole world...and the unity of all" in every liturgy. And there are other ways to frame the question of calendar reform besides the first step toward the kind of formal union-by-majority-vote the early ecumenical movement seemed to think was imminent. We are not nearly so close to this union as some of the early ecumenists seemed to think and there are plenty of legitimate obstacles to it, but need the calendar be one of them?

Though I disagree with the Old Calendarists, I find it more comforting than discouraging to belong to a church that can't even update its calendar. For we it can't do this, it's hard to imagine our forebears radically changing the faith once delivered to the saints.

In Quest of Reform?

A basic definition of "reform" is making a change to something in order to improve it. In the modern, progressive world, reform is generally considered a Good Thing. We want reform for our healthcare system (though there are wildly differing visions of what kind of reform), for our educational system, for our economic system, for the government itself. And we as modern people celebrate the Protestant Reformation for ushering in the world we know, if not for its liberation of the true gospel from papal tyranny. When a system or institution has become corrupt, mired in abuses or stubbornly clinging to outmoded ways, reform is usually the go-to solution.

But as history shows, reform can just as easily be the means by which something is corrupted, rather than how institutional corruption is corrected—especially for the Church. Attempts to impose heresy on the Church (as with iconoclasm, Arianism centuries earlier, the ill-fated Union of Florence, or Cyril Lukaris' Reformed reforms) are obvious examples of the former.

Reform can still be risky even when the change desired is not outright heresy. Patriarch Nikon's goal of bringing Russian and Byzantine liturgical practice into sync was admirable, but the authoritarian way in which he tried to do so caused a tragic and entirely avoidable schism. If the Revised Julian Calendar had been proposed at a more inclusive council by a less controversial patriarch, it might be in use by all Orthodox today. For a western example, the repeated about-faces in the direction of the English Reformation depending on the convictions of the current monarch engendered hardened dissent and numerous schisms that are responsible for much of the present-day diversity of Protestantism.

By nature, reform tends to be centrally imposed by a visionary individual or small group. It is self-consciously inorganic change. Sometimes this is necessary to end abuses, but when Christian reformers seek to alter the structure or faith of the Church according to their convictions (or nefarious schemes), the universality of the faith is endangered. No individual, whether Pope, saint, or brilliant theologian, can possess the fullness of the Christian faith; it is the property of the whole Church. If a reform is the expression not of the broad consensus of the Church but merely of the mind of a reformer seeking to reshape it according to their will, it will fail, or worse, lead to a schism. This pattern is borne out time and again in the history of Christianity, both eastern and western.