Adapted from Sharon Tillman, ENS
The 79th General Convention has committed to revising Lesser Feasts and Fasts and the entire sanctoral calendar with the adoption of Resolution A065.
The Blue Book Report filed by the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music contains the recommended revisions to the Lesser Feasts and Fasts to make the calendar of commemorations less confusing and more diverse. It is 650 pages long.
A legislative subcommittee substituted new language in the resolution to combine the proposed Lesser Feasts and Fasts 2018, A Great Cloud of Witnesses (2015), and Lesser Feasts and Fasts 2006 into one calendar for use in 2018-21.
But a move in the House of Deputies to revert to the SCLM version of A065 brought debate to a halt until July 12.
The Rev. Jack Zamboni, deputy from New Jersey, and a member of the legislative committee, spoke against the amendment. “One of the challenges for the committee, they also included a secondary calendar within that book that left us with tiers A and B, and it was the sense of the committee to get rid of tiers.”
The Rev. Scott Gunn, deputy from Southern Ohio, spoke in favor of the amendment. He asked for the house to accept the Blue Book report of SCLM [as the resolution]. “These are worthy saints, a balanced calendar, not a perfect calendar, but that this why we have an ongoing revision process,” he said.
In the end, the House of Deputies agreed to go back to the SCLM’s recommended text, and both houses approved the resolution near the end of convention on the morning of July 13.
Moving into the next triennium, Lesser Feasts and Fasts 2006 is still in use, A Great Cloud of Witnesses 2015 is still available for use, and the new commemorations in Lesser Feasts and Fasts 2018 are authorized for trial use.
Convention charged the SCLM with providing the 80th General Convention “with a clear and unambiguous plan for a singular calendar of ‘Lesser Feasts and Fasts.’”
Matthew Townsend is a Halifax-based freelance journalist and volunteer advocate for survivors of sexual misconduct in Anglican settings. He served as editor of the Anglican Journal from 2019 to 2021 and communications missioner for the Anglican Diocese of Quebec from 2019 to 2022. He and his wife recently entered catechism class in the Orthodox Church in America.
