consequential exclusive, or excessive, focus on the calendar issue: it has been observed, anecdotally, that some Russians cannot cite any difference in belief or practice between their faith and the faith of western Christians, except for the 13-day calendar difference. Against the new calendar, the argument is made that inasmuch as the use of the Julian calendar was implicit in the decision of the First Ecumenical Council at Nicaea (325), no authority less than an Ecumenical Council may change this decision. However, the fact is that that Council made no decision or decree at all concerning the Julian calendar. Its silence constituted an implicit acceptance not of the Julian calendar, but of the civil calendar, which happened to be, at that time, the Julian calendar (the explicit decision of Nicaea being concerned, rather, with the date of Easter). By virtue of this, defenders of the new calendar argue that no decision by an Ecumenical Council was or is necessary today in order to revise (not abandon) the Julian calendar; and further, that by making the revision, the Church stays with the spirit of Nicaea I by keeping with the civil calendar in all its essentials—while conversely, failure to keep with the civil calendar could be seen as a departure from the spirit of Nicaea I in this respect. Lastly, it is argued that since the adoption of the new calendar evidently involves no change in or departure from the theological or the ethical teachings of Orthodox Christianity, but rather amounts to a merely disciplinary or administrative change—a clock correction of sorts—the authority to enact that change falls within the competency of contemporary, local episcopal authority. Implicit acceptance of this line of reasoning, or something very close to it, underlies the decision to adopt the new calendar by those Orthodox churches that have done so. It follows that, in general, the defenders of the new calendar hold the view that in localities where the Church's episcopal authority has elected to adopt the new calendar, but where some have broken communion with those implementing this change, it is those who have broken communion who have in fact introduced the disunity, rather than the new calendar itself or those who have adopted it — although most would agree that attempts at various times to mandate the use of the new calendar through compulsion, have magnified the disunity. To the objection that the new