I am substitute teaching for the third day today, Tuesday. The parochial vicar is away and I am teaching liturgy and the liturgical year to 8th graders. It’s hard to keep other items straight in my head. I sent the kids home Friday with orders to find out who their birthday patron saint was since not one of them knew. I discovered this by asking how their patron saints fit into the seasons of the liturgical calendar. Now, granted, they could figure that out because it’s their birthday, but the sudden blankness of faces led to the discussion and homework assignment about saints on their birthdays.
We also gave some consideration as to how the Council of Nicaea set the date of Easter, tying it to the vernal equinox. After a thousand years, the Julian calendar plus the hole in the wall in the Vatican, that showed when the vernal equinox actually was, were out of sync by nine or ten days. The hook here was that the Church is serious about the liturgical calendar and year.
I don’t remember when I learned about the calendar troubles though it was before the 8th grade. I do remember learning that George Washington was born under the old calendar, and then the English adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1750, thus moving his birthday from February 11 to February 22. The Catholics adopted the new calendar in 1580 under Pope Gregory XIII , moving from October 4 to October 15 overnight. These kids don’t seem to have learned about the calendar at all. But then, they might just be keeping quiet because if they admitted they knew something, I might ask more!
Two interesting facts about calendars: 1) The Russian Orthodox Church did not adopt the new calendar, and 2) some of the Ukrainian Orthodox celebrated Christmas this year on December 25, rather than January 6. That caused me to question what was actually going on. I thought that the Orthodox celebrated “Christmas” on January 6 because they were celebrating it on Epiphany, because that’s when the kings came. Now I’m wondering if the calendar collision caused someone, somewhere, to see December 25 on their calendar, when we see January 6. Not sure how to check up on that… That is, I know that the Julian and Gregorian calendars are currently about 13 days apart, and they were twelve days apart for a really long time.
We studied the Prayers of the Divine Office on Monday along with continuing the calendar discussion. We planned to visit the church Tuesday, which today.
And it is raining. So that’s not happening…
I’m going to put up Father Roger Boscovich, who was the diplomat who went around trying to convince the Germans and English to adopt the new calendar, which they finally did, as mentioned above. (From the 1908 Catholic Encyclopedia and me …) Father Boscovich was a mathematician, astronomer and priest. He was born in Ragusa (which I think is Croatia? But I don’t have time to check) in 1711 and died in Milan in 1787. He was involved in all the scientific endeavors of his day including the determination of the shape of the earth, thinking about gravity, and the orbit of comets. He was also an important papal advisor on engineering question. He mapped the Papal States. He was instrumental in getting Copernicus off the Index of Books. He was a Jesuit and/but the Jesuits were suppressed at this time. He himself was highly respected.

Rabbit hole also: because I promised my children this link.
https://theridersofskaith.wordpress.com/2024/01/02/midjourney-star-wars-as-samurai/ AI drawing site doing a cross between Star Wars and Japanese samurai… Princess Leia is pretty amazing.

I got to it through Caroline Furlong’s blog, but the link goes directly to another site.