A Day Late
Calming Our Immediacy
Yesterday (February 24th) was the anniversary of the 1582 papal bull Inter Gravissimas, a famous declaration that brought about the Gregorian Calendar. (Consider this a nudge to read my related post from yesterday.) But that was yesterday. Why think about it again today? Well, if we’re a day late for commemorating the papal bull’s anniversary, then it now seems fitting to consider people of the 1500s saying, “I guess I didn’t get the memo.”
The process of calendar reform surrounding Inter Gravissimas was no simple operation: it required diligent study and review, it took protocols for adjusting to the new changes on the ecclesiastical and civil levels, and it had to be flexible enough to account for the limitations of human modes of communication available at that time.
That last aspect I listed—flexibility in light of human limitation—is what I want to focus on right now. The bull was issued in late February and took effect in early October. That’s seven full months for the whole Catholic Church to adopt the change. That kind of notice seems pretty short when we consider that communication wasn’t what it is today. Pope Gregory XIII couldn’t simply call the bishops and civil lords on Zoom or set up Teams reminders for “Remember: New Gregorian Calendar!” (And even if he could, he would have to consider those inaccessible missionaries without signal.)
Yet the brief notice outlined in Inter Gravissimas highlights the importance of the calendar reform for the life and unity of the church. (Consider the fact that even way back in 325 at Nicaea, the First Ecumenical Council, the church deemed setting a unified date for celebrating Easter an important issue to settle.) So this change wasn’t one to be put off unnecessarily. Even so, the problem of communication stood in the way. So, just as any reasonable declaration of such importance might, the bull had a special provision.
Iis vero, qui adeo longinquas incolunt regiones, ut ante praescriptum a nobis tempus harum litterarum notitiam habere non possint, liceat, eodem tamen octobri mense insequentis anni MDLXXXIII vel alterius, cum primum scilicet ad eos hae nostrae litterae pervenerint, modo a nobis paulo ante tradito, eiusmodi mutationem facere.
But for those who inhabit regions so far off that they can’t have awareness of this letter before the time prescribed by us, let it be permitted to make such a change in the way conveyed by us a little earlier, though still in the same month of October but of the following year, 1583, or of the next, whenever first, of course, this letter of ours should arrive.
(This Latin text from Inter Gravissimas can be found in the Bullarum Diplomatum et Privilegiorum Sanctorum Romanorum Pontificum Taurinensis Editio, Tomus VIII, Augustae Taurinorum: Seb. Franco et Henrico Dalmazzo, 1868, p. 389.)
Thankfully, the protocol for implementing the calendar reform could be done with ease even if one happened to get the memo late. The explicitly mentioned window for implementation is of note: not only does the bull anticipate having stragglers who need to catch up the next year (1583), but it even lays out that a second year past the intended time is allowed. That means the bull accounted for the letter taking two full years to make its way to remote regions.
Many of us today probably don’t need to account for time frames as wide as the one dealt with in Inter Gravissimas. In fact, the constraints imposed on many of us by time and space are increasingly being diminished today: you can get to your remote work space by walking a couple of yards from your bedroom, you can get your groceries delivered to your doorstep within a few hours, and you can video call your loved ones at the push of a button. This immediate access to people and things isn’t bad, but it does carry with it the potential for us to foster a negative disposition of immediacy. We can start thinking everything in our life needs an immediate reaction: that email I sent needs a response right now, I have to take advantage of this bargain right now, you need to get on FaceTime so we can talk right now.
Of course, some items on our agendas really are urgent and need to be handled as such. Yet in many cases, especially for the most important tasks (think of your own personal equivalent to reforming the calendar), we need to give ourselves, and also the people we’re interacting with, time: time for handling the practicalities that our request might entail, time for emotions to settle before taking concrete action, time for taking the matter to the Lord in prayer.