As time leaps by.

ODDS & ENDS

It's a busy time of year again. Summer and summer vacation have given way to school schedules. Kids are back in class. Many parish projects and committees, dormant in summertime, have awakened once again. And many offices find new enthusiasm for more meetings. Every day counts now.

Imagine jumping 10 days ahead overnight this time of year! That's what happened the night of Thursday, Oct. 4 in 1582. People went to bed that night and woke up the next morning, Oct. 15, 1582. Ten whole days vanished from the calendar because Pope Gregory XIII (1572-1585) decided to fix the Julian calendar, which had become quite out of sync with reality. Set in place by Julius Caesar in 45 B.C., the Julian calendar had become dysfunctional hundreds of years before its official correction.

Gregory XIII finally took the bull by the horns and gathered some of the greatest minds to work on this project. The famed Vatican Observatory was founded during this time. Finally, on Feb. 24, 1582, Gregory issued a papal bull announcing how and when the calendar would undergo correction. So people had seven months to prepare for the loss of 10 calendar days coming up that October.

Popes can issue all the decrees they like, but the whole world does not always follow each and every bull. Since the pope only held sway over Catholic countries, several nations did not go along with this deal. Japan, Russia, China, Greece, and Turkey were among the holdouts. The newly formed groups of Christians known as Protestants weren't very excited about this papal announcement either.

Closer to home, England and her American colonies also chose not to embrace this new calendar. Henry VIII had led the British Empire away from Roman Catholicism in 1534, and his daughter, Elizabeth I, was not about to cotton to any directives from Rome. Not until the British Calendar Act of 1751 did Mother England adopt the Gregorian calendar. This law proclaimed that the day following Wednesday, Sept. 2, 1752 would become Thursday, Sept. 14, Some Brits rioted, demanding these missing days be returned to them, but to no avail.

Other countries eventually came around to the Gregorian calendar as well: Japan in 1873, China in 1912. Russia did not adopt it until 1918, under the leadership of that most famous communist, Lenin. Romania and Greece changed in 1924, and Turkey became the last holdout before it changed in 1927.

One group today, the World Calendar Association, advocates a universal calendar based on an 1834 book written by an Italian priest, Marco Mastrofini. But no one is likely to reorganize our present calendar for quite some time, even though this one is not perfect either. It won't be until the year 4500 that the Gregorian calendar's imperfection will amount to being off by a single day. And not until the year 8000 will the vernal equinox be out of sync by a half day.

So don't count on that tedious homework assignment that is due next Monday, on that boring committee meeting in church, or on that dreaded staff meeting at the office to disappear because of any upcoming calendar reorganization.

Better get back to work.

PETER GILMOUR ([e-mail]) teaches at the Institute of Pastoral Studies of Loyola University Chicago.