We are nearing the end of the feast of Theophany (8 days) and I’m sitting down to put together the Theophany insert for the web site. While doing this, I’m also working on two other projects including our community’s ongoing reform of the liturgical calendar.

A week or so ago on one of the OC/IC discussion groups someone else raised the issue of the calendar asking if other communities had made alterations to better reflect the vision & values of their respective community. I mentioned at the time that for the past year in my community we have been conscientiously doing just that.

You might ask why? The answer is simple. Our faith community ought to have a festal cycle that reflects our identity, and values. If we merely “copy” or “mimic” the festal calendars of another church – are we truly expressing the theology, and identity of our own heritage? No, of course not. We are expressing that of another tradition – and as I have previously pointed out, without consciously choosing their method for “our” own reasons – but merely because its already there, and “inherited” – lacks integrity.

Also, lets face it – the accretions of saints and martyrs (some having multiple commemorations) in many festal calendars is . . . well. . . mind-bogglingly confusing! A little streamlining is I think a good thing.

As part of my contribution to the discussion I mentioned the working “criteria” for our own programme of development and reform of the festal cycle. I thought it might be interesting to reproduce it here.

Notes For Selecting Saints For Calendar:

1) Old Catholic Figures, or those figures who exemplify some aspect of the Old Catholic ethos. (Döllinger, Sr. Augustine, Varlet, Loisey (??), etc.) on the condition that they did not “pope”.

2) Patristic saints & teachers (they transend E & W)

3) With all figures – they should have exemplified some aspect of the Grace Catholic ethos – having been found dead covered in lice does not qualify one as holy!

4) Political figures are to be avoided – z.b. Thomas Beckett – unless their campaign exemplified the Gospel.

5) Broadest possible examples – the church is not “Greek” “Russian” “German” “Italian/Roman” “English” thus we should commemorate examples of faithfulness, charity, holiness, from as many peoples as is reasonable.

6) Existing modern saints should be dead for at least 100 years.

7) Broad spectrum of time scale – holiness did not end in the 6th century!

Saints for whom there is no story – no history will not be included (this is not to say they were not saints, but the festal cycle does not inspire if all we have to go on is that Martyr X was brutally murdered for the faith).

9) “translation” of relics and icons – unless particularly noteworthy ought to be dropped – especially if the saint in question already has a dedicated feast day.

We initially made the mistake of thinking we could have a working draft within a few months – experience has proven otherwise. We’ve found that while other communities – notably the Lutherans (ELCA), whose proposed reform is excellent by the way, were also working on similar projects, finding a broad range of useful resources has been rather tricky. It is relatively easy – given our criteria – to go through a month’s feasts and eliminate or “edit” existing ones on the base calender (we use the Byzantine) but finding suitable replacements for those empty slots – now that’s were the fun begins. Any suggestions?