'How Long It Was and How Far'

The pursuit of a common Easter date for all Christian Churches is both long-standing and laborious. On the one hand, compromises have been achieved with great toil; on the other, there are new setbacks and a tenacious holding fast to familiar confessional practices. The Roman Catholic Church, for example, once clung to her own customs, then played a pioneering role in introducing the Gregorian calendar - however, at the cost of new division - and now looks for compromise, even to the point of adopting, in certain places, the use of the Julian calendar. Plainly, the issue of the Easter date is not just an academic one but has far-reaching practical implications.