A reader writes:
You asked for more Sci-Fi questions to blog about, so I’m happy to be able to help. 🙂
1. Assume that a group of people who can time travel journey back to the Jurassic period. Among their number are some Catholics. Barring any other impediments (rampaging dinosaurs, etc.), are those Catholics still obliged to travel forward in time to attend Mass at some point?
The way the law is written now, the answer would be no.
The current Code of Canon Law (the one binding on the time travellers when they left–unless a new Code comes into existence before then) was promulated on January 25, 1983. Laws do not pertain to things prior to their promulgation unless the law in question expressly provides otherwise:
Can. 9 Laws regard the future, not the past, unless they expressly provide for the past.
The current Code makes no provision for creating a legal obligation to attend Mass prior to its own promulgation, so there isn’t one.
The same goes for the 1917 Code of Canon Law (which previously was in effect). And, in fact, the New Law (a.k.a. the Law of Christ) that was promulgated in the first century did not (so far as we know) contain any provisions on this topic.
Therefore, it would seem to me that if you travel back before the Mass obligation was legally binding that you simply are not bound by it.
There also, in the same manner, is no provision in the Codes of Canon Law requiring you to travel forwards in time to attend Mass.
Of course, it would be a very good thing to do so–assuming that you are reasonably able to do so–but not a legally required thing.
All of this applies to one’s ordinary Sunday obligation. The same would seem to apply, though, to one’s annual obligation to receive Commuion, at least during Easter time. It’s especially hard to enforce that if Easter hasn’t come into existence yet.
This is not to say that there are no religious obligations that would attach to time travellers. Anything that is part of human nature and thus natural law would continue to bind them (e.g., that we must worship the one true God, that we must devote adequate time to rest and worship, that we must not break the Ten Commandments).
So would any particular obligations arising directly from their reception of baptism, confirmation, marriage, and ordination–since these involve the entry into states of life that have obligations that are not temporally specific.
(The general duty to receive the Eucharist arising from baptism might oblige people to return to the future for the Eucharist in a general way, but not at any specific point in time–no pun intended.)
But matters specified by ecclesiastical law would not be specified if one travels to a temporal environment before that law comes into existence–unless it makes provision otherwise (which it doesn’t).
As a proof of this, note that ecclesiastical law does not bind AFTER a law ceases. Once you move FORWARD in time past a law’s existence, it is no longer binding. (This happens entirely naturally as time carries us forward.) In the same way, if you move BACKWARDS past a law’s existence then it also is no longer binding. Thus ecclesiastical laws do not bind BEFORE they are promulgated because they do not exist prior to promulgation.
Can. 7 A law is
established when it is promulgated.
If no ecclesiastical law exists when you happen to be then you are not bound by any ecclesiastical law.
2. If so, should they do so on their own personal timeline’s Sunday, or on Sunday according to the Jurassic’s calendar?
Since there is no binding law on this point, the question is moot.
3. Now imagine that a Catholic priest was among their number. Could he say Mass or offer any of the other Sacraments?
This is an interesting question. It is not clear whether priests who have time travelled to before the Incarnation, Death, and Resurrection of Christ would have the power to perform the sacraments.
We do have some indication that these graces can be operable before the Christ Event (as some theologians call it). For example, from the first moment of her conception Mary received graces that were not usually given until the Christian age began (and, for many, before the end of the history).
Christ also confected the Eucharist before his Death and Resurrection.
But the matter is not 100% certain, and in doubtful cases it is advisable to administer the sacraments conditionally (e.g., "If it is possible to baptize you in this time zone, I baptize you . . . ").
4. If the group also included a bishop, would that change anything?
Yes. They could conditionally set up apostolic succession in the Jurassic and have a Church-before-the-Church–at least conditionally.
They might also be able to conditionally elect a Jurassic pope, though this is also uncertain and would have to be done conditionally.
At that point it would be advisable to send someone Back To The Future to consult with the known Magisterium to ask for rulings on the feasibility of all this.
And they’d need to listen to what the known Magisterium has to say.
We’d hate to have to heal a cross-temporal schism.
(NOTE: All this could change if a liturgical dancer accidentally steps on a butterfly.)
I was thinking about the “stepping on a bug” problem just before you said it. I was wondering if it is even licit for a Catholic to go back in time, possibly altering history or inadvertantly (or “vertantly”) preventing a whole group of people from even being born!
Don’t the potential dangers of time travel present a sufficient challenge to the morality of it?
I don’t know the answer to Jamie’s question, but I suspect that if physicists were to discover a way to change one’s temporal “direction,” they would also be well on their way to figuring out whether the problem of “changing the future” could be overcome, and if so how.
But I also think that the answer to the original question depends on the nature of the proposed time travel. The questioner recognizes the existence of two “timelines”: the “natural” timeline occupied by most of history, and the “personal” timeline occupied by the time traveler (it seems that if we couldn’t have our own personal timelines, then time travel would be mostly impractical, since if you tried to travel back to before you were conceived you wouldn’t exist).
So the key question here would be whether the provisions of the law operate only on the historical timeline, or whether they extend to personal timelines as well. If the latter, then although the time traveler was *existing* in the Jurassic period, for him the “real” time would be the date of his birth plus his age and the laws might bind him.
Either way, until time travel becomes REALLY easy I expect you’d be excused from your Sunday obligation if you were existing in a time where it didn’t exist.
I presume the same question would apply to priestly capacities. Of course, when you start talking about the “anticipatory magisterium” you’re getting into really serious changing-the-future concerns, and I don’t know how to properly address those. In fact, I don’t know if anybody knows how.
But if God exists outside of time, aren’t all these questions about the validity of a Jurassic eucarist a moot point?
–arthur
What a great post.
lol…coming soon from Dreamworks… Jurassic Pope…
Perhaps I have no sense of humor. But I don’t see what is possibly accomplished by this post, except perhaps to trivialize Catholic canon law in the minds of passers-by. Consider: Suppose one were to drop “Code” from the question and replace it with “Sacred Scripture”. Would anyone besides me be uncomfortable trying to figure out the binding nature of Scripture under such an absurd “if the Jurassic period were invaded by time travellers” premise? There are enough real questions out there (at least, ones I don’t know the answer to) needing real answers to have no need to play around with sci-fi scenarios.
As I said, it’s probably me.
PS: Please, no replies about how Jimmy never intended to ridicule canon law (obviously) and about how many times he has made canon law understandable to others (obviously) and about how such crazy premises can serve to illustrate important points (obviously). In this case, IMHO, none of those apply.
Maybe its a slow day.
“that we must not break the Ten Commandments”
How can you break a commandment if the Ten Commandments have not been given?
Perhaps I have no sense of humor.
That’s how it looks to me.
Also, Jimmy wasn’t trying to ridicule canon law, and he’s done a lot to explain it to people, and crazy premises can serve to illustrate important points – like the fact that laws don’t affect the past and don’t exist if they aren’t “promulgated.”
Love it Jimmy! You’re establishing an early lead in next year’s awards! ;->
Perhaps I have no sense of humor. But I don’t see what is possibly accomplished by this post, except perhaps to trivialize Catholic canon law in the minds of passers-by.
I respectfully disagree. I have profited from theological speculation on these types of seemingly unlikely events. What may happen if life is discovered on other planets? What happens if intelligent life is discovered on other planets? What happens if intelligent biological/technological non-human life is manufactured here on earth?
Before I came into the Church, I viewed Christianity as somewhat “fragile” as I did not believe it had answers for these types of scenarios which I (at the time) considered likely or even inevitable. When I saw that Christians actually did speculate about the issues (particularly the possibly of extra terrestrial life), it actually increased my esteem for Christianity. Had I stumbled upon this post at that point in my life, I would have been impressed.
One thing that I have always wondered about concerning time travel is whether there is any moral obligation to prevent evil that you (being from the future) know is going to happen. I’m very skeptical of whether or not time travel is even possible, but let’s assume that it is.
You travel back in time to September 10, 2001. You already know what will happen tomorrrow. Should you alert the relevant authorities and prevent the disaster of 9/11? Or let’s say you travel to the week or even the month before 9/11/01, giving you plenty of time to alert the government, military, and other folks so they can adequately prepare and prevent the attacks.
If a person had knowledge of the planned attacks prior to 9/11/01 via more ordinary means, perhaps by spying on the conspirators, and did nothing to alert the government and military and prevent the imminent attacks, he or she surely would have done something morally wrong. Would the same apply to the time traveler?
What if the time traveler refuses to do anything about the coming attacks because he or she is afraid this will alter time and perhaps prevent the existence of other people? For example, the “terror babies” born nine months after the attacks. Presumably some children never would’ve been conceived had their parents not been motivated by the horror of 9/11 to “comfort” each other in a particular way.
It would seem that preventing these new lives from coming into existence would be an evil. Yet it would also be evil to not save the lives of the people who died on 9/11 if one could do so. But to save their lives would be to annihilate the lives of the terror babies. To preserve the terror babies’ lives would be to allow 3000 other people to be murdered. I know that Catholic ethics does not condone doing evil to avoid another evil. But in this case it seems unavoidable. By doing nothing about your knowledge of the attacks, you let 3000 people die. If you prevent the attacks, you cause an unknown number of children to never be conceived and you might cause many other negative consequences as well.
So what do you think Jimmy?
I think that this post helps to clarify what canon law is and isn’t, specificially how it is different from natural law and divine positive law. I’m not swallowing all of Jimmy’s conclusions in this hypothetical situation, but it’s more a more worthwhile thought experiment than one might think. This is perhaps not the case from a canon law perspective, but from a larger theological one, the apparent triviality alone doesn’t mean much.
The answers, however, will ultimately depend upon one’s conception of time. I would make a distinction between objective and subjective time, such that a time traveller would still be bound by laws enacted before their subjective time. Also, there is the entire question of whether the Church would be made present by the presence of baptized Christians, even before it was made fully and historically manifest, just as the presence of Christ made the Kingdom present, before it was made fully and historically manifest.
Jimmy hit on the difference between divine positive law and canon law as regards a general obligation to receive the sacraments as opposed to a specific timeframe as described in canon law. The whole issue of divine positive law versus canon law would need to be explored in more detail.
When someone asks about an obligation, we can’t always assume that they are asking about canon law. The question at hand asked “are those Catholics still obliged to travel forward in time to attend Mass at some point?” The obligation of canon law will only be part of the whole question.
Just some thoughts..
One thing about time travel. You never travel back in time to your own universe. It’s always to another one that is either in existence or is created through the act of time travel. This way there are no paradox problems. You can go back in time and kill your Grandfather when he was a child and still travel forward in time back to your universe and still exist. Or you can stay in the universe you currently inhabit and not worry with the fact you won’t actually be born later in time (since you killed your grandfather). Got that?
By doing nothing about your knowledge of the attacks, you let 3000 people die. If you prevent the attacks, you cause an unknown number of children to never be conceived and you might cause many other negative consequences as well.
I would think that, from your frame of reference in the past, you would need to alert the authorities.
The people who would be murdered are actually alive at the time. The children who have not yet been conceived are not yet alive, as life begins at conception. So we would need to choose those who are alive over those who are not.
Not that this would be easy. If I went back in time before my children existed, I would (presumably) still have memories of them. So they would still have some sort of contingent existence within me, and I would experience grief. But I don’t see how this contingent existence could trump the actual existence of the people “currently” alive. Especially since it would be impossible (or very, very improbable) that we could ever duplicate the necessary chain of events required to “recreate” those same children.
One thing about time travel. You never travel back in time to your own universe.
Maybe. Maybe not. We really can’t speak definitely about it at this point, since the technology doesn’t exist (as far as we know). Although I tend to agree with A.J. in that I’m skeptical that it’s possible.
Steve, time-travel works that way unless it works one of the other ways. Sometimes you return to the future and find your “home time” altered because of what you did; sometimes you find that any efforts you make to change the past were a part of the past all along, and therefore ineffective; sometimes, as you say, you’re just jumping back in a universe that looks like ours but actually isn’t. It depends on who wrote the story.
As to how being in a different time would affect Catholics — I don’t even think this necessarily calls for a sense of humor! There’s value in “thought experiments,” in speculating how reality would be, in extreme-but-conceivable situations! I like Brent’s point, that it’s not wasted time to speculate on how intelligent extraterrestrial species would fit into the picture. If they fell too, how might God redeem them? What might they be like if they didn’t fall? Etc. C.S. Lewis goes into this in several of his books.
I’ve always wondered if a time-traveller to a B.C. time would be able to sense a difference — or even overtly see a difference — in that still-lost world. It’d be like travelling outside the United States and being aware that the Bill of Rights doesn’t edxist where you are. If you were in a state of sactfiying grace in 50 B.C., you’d be the only person in the world who was.
Assume you have just converted as an Adult to Catholicism, and have just been baptised. You have no sins on your soul as you immediately enter the time machine and go back in time.
Because Baptism takes away all sins, original, mortal and venial, does this mean you can therefore commit mortal sins without number and still go to heaven after you die?
“(NOTE: All this could change if a liturgical dancer accidentally steps on a butterfly.)”
BAAAAWAAHHAHAHAHAHAHA! What happens if it’s a chubby nun in a leotard with a clay pot/incense bowl?
Obviously, some qualified experts are going to need to work on the language to express such temporally convoluted situations.
“I have was been baptized”…
“He used will have being a priest”.
Ooh… my brain will is been hurting.
(NOTE: All this could change if a liturgical dancer accidentally steps on a butterfly.)
One more reason to oppose liturgical dance!
tim: Presumably the effects of the Sacraments have to be with respect to one’s own timeline. The alternative wouldn’t make sense, simply on the grounds that (as far as we can tell) there is no absolute external reference frame for time.
Lesson: engaging in time travel without first comprehensively dealing with the theoretical and practical problem of divergent personal and natural timelines can cause severe moral, sacramental, legal, and ecclesiological problems, and well as result in a confused and inadequate subjective understanding of the economy of salvation.
For that reason, we shouldn’t go time travelling under we figure out these problems.
Fortunately, we don’t know how to go time travelling. Also fortunately, it would seem that if we ever figure out how we will necessarily have also learned more about this “timeline” problem, and perhaps have figured out a way to deal with it.
Perhaps I have no sense of humor.
Ed, here is a quick test of your sense of humor:
Did you enjoy Johnny Depp in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory?
If you answered yes, rest assured you have no sense of humor 😉
Take care and God bless,
Inocencio
J+M+J
It would seem that preventing these new lives from coming into existence would be an evil. Yet it would also be evil to not save the lives of the people who died on 9/11 if one could do so. But to save their lives would be to annihilate the lives of the terror babies. To preserve the terror babies’ lives would be to allow 3000 other people to be murdered.
Let’s mess this up even more. You yourself are a “terror baby,” or 9/11 triggered the series of events that caused your parents to meet. If you prevent 9/11, you’re preventing your own existence. Is this true self-sacrifice? Will you even make it to heaven?
This sounds like a plot for a Jorge Luis Borges story.
On another note, has anybody related the aristotelian concept of “final causation” to time? A “Final cause” is something like a future event affecting the present. I mentioned this in a throwaway fashion to a prominent theologian friend, and he seemed to approve of my phrasing it this way. I haven’t followed up on it yet.
I at first wrote ” Final cause has nothing to do with a future event affecting the present.” Then, immediately, I thought of certain situations in which one could say that was true. If I am writing this paper,essay, or dissertation because I want to graduate from college, then the future event of my graduation is the final cause of my writing the paper. That event is exerting a pull on me-that’s what I am writing the paper FOR.
Of course, if I am writing the paper because I want to know or understand something, the final cause of my actions is knowledge, in fact, the knowable objects themselves. As Aristotle said, “Thought is moved by the objects of thought, as love by the objects of love.”
Susan Peterson
Tim Powers: Interesting-are you talking about the problem of not knowing what hasn’t happened yet (ala Quantum Leap), or about the problem of spiritual insight and sanctifying grace in the time before Christ? I rather think the latter would be a situations *somewhat* similar to that of the Judaic tribes: one’s birthright would give one a different soteriological status from those around you, but unless you were some kind of mystic or person gifted with the power to sense evil in our own time, I don’t know how obvious the spiritual difference would be-a sense of inner aridity, like the “spiritual troughs” some saints talk about?
If they had a priest with them, would he need an indult to celebrate the Tridentine liturgy, or could he do it without an indult?
Inocencio: No fair. I like Johnny Depp in anything, even movies I don’t like. Between you and me, can you beleive all the brain power being poured on this line of posts?
If it bothers you so much, Ed, get cracking on the marriage/hysterectomy thread so that Zhou’s latest has more responses than just me flinging Tolkien references about 😛
Since liturgical law would also be non-operative, as well as canon law, no dispensation would be needed.
Liturgical law and canon law both non-operative…. Then, about those dancers….
derringdo: i’m fighting a lonely battle over there. but, is there more since i posted last? yikes, gotta check. civilization hangs in the balance…well, maybe.
😀 Thanks, Ed 🙂
The main thing the scenarios envisioned above demonstrate is the ability of the human mind to manipulate logically self-contradictory notions as though they described something actually possible.
If time travel were possible the future would have already leaked out.
PVO
I’ve always been annoyed by time travel stories for the same reason I get annoyed by reincarnation stories (with the notable exception of that film “Dead Again”). The true problem of time travel is that it’s nonsensical. I always lumped it in with other hobbyhorses of otherwise decent scientists (like those nutters wanting to create an artificial “heaven” by “downloading personality” into some sort of database). Time is an artificial construct in that we measure it with clocks and so forth. We can count backwards into B.C, but we can only travel in “time” forward from this point. I liken it to using negative numbers in accounting but not being able to show a negative beyond zero in reality. (Or show me something nonexistent minus twelve to the nth power, please.)
Or as my creepy older brother once told me when I was young enough to freak out over it, if time travel was possible, our lives were already completely messed up by it. 🙂
The main thing the post envisioned above by mulopwepaul demonstrate the ability of his mind to manipulate logic into self-congratulatory notions as though they described something actually pertinent.
Aw! Mulopwepaul stated it better and more succinctly while I was working on my tome. 🙂
You’re attaching “pertinence” to an analysis of time-travel?
That’s like arguing over who has the most mature whoopie cushion.
PVO
As much as I have always enjoyed time travel stories and movies- in reality- I think it would be disasterous- even well meaning, well intentioned people could cause a great deal of damage- never mind evil people ( who wanted to prevent say- the winning of WWII by the allies)
I would hope God would prevent us to discover how to do this in our current sinful,fallen state.
Just my 2cents.
Derringdo, I suspect that a person in a state of sanctifying grace who went back to B.C. times would stand out, to certain parties! — Though of course Mary doesn’t seem to have attracted attention, even in visits to Jerusalem. And of course even the young Christ apparently drew no particular notice among his neighbors in Nazareth. Oh well, never mind.
Jean, you only like stories about stuff that could actually happen?
Divine Providence can handle even time travel.
I note that various Old Testament accounts have God appearing bodily. I have heard one interpretation is that this is indeed Jesus’s physical form, and so God the Son is appearing as God-And-Man.
He is, after all, the Lamb Who was slain from the beginning of the world.
Like some others, I have some problems with the consistency of time travel at all. However, while I think I can dream up ways for it to be theoretically possible, I’m pretty sure that if it were changing the future would still be impossible. No Back to the Future scenarios. That just seems like a flat-out contradiction. Marty McFly has memories, experiences, a whole personality formed by things that NEVER HAPPENED. His family is not the one he remembers. They presumably were influenced and formed by a Marty that never existed either. It just dosn’t seem to work (and I don’t buy the alternate universe/parallel dimension copout. The whole point is that THIS universe is different).
I think Connie Willis has done a pretty decent job of figuring out time travel without changing the future. “Doomsday Book” is good but her novel “To Say Nothing of the Dog” is borderline great for exploring these issues. Also very Catholic in its sensibilities, in my opinion.
Though of course Mary doesn’t seem to have attracted attention, even in visits to Jerusalem. And of course even the young Christ apparently drew no particular notice among his neighbors in Nazareth. Oh well, never mind.
Tim, I think that may be due to the fact that there is both an objective and subjective element to perceiving the Kingdom.
Take for example the appearances of Jesus after the resurrection. The appearances were objective by the fact that Jesus is a cause external to the person perceiving him. But sense experience was insufficient to recognize the Lord. The disciples on the road to Emmaus did not recognize Jesus until the breaking of the bread. Only John, of the seven disciples on the boat, recognized Jesus in 21:7.
So it seems that even in the case of the Glorified Lord, faith is still required as a mediation to correctly perceive reality. Which makes sense since folks still need to be free to believe or not. In Old Testament times people would not, normally, have access to the supernatural virtue of faith. So we wouldn’t, as a rule, expect them to be perceptive in this way.
Of course, it doesn’t have to be that way. Simon is a clear exception, and Saul’s experience clearly shows that the Lord may reveal himself as he chooses. 🙂
But this seems to be the norm. And it ties in nicely with the perception of Sacramental reality, etc.
I note that various Old Testament accounts have God appearing bodily. I have heard one interpretation is that this is indeed Jesus’s physical form, and so God the Son is appearing as God-And-Man.
Mary: Roch Kereszty, who is a pretty heavy hitter in Christology, would agree with you:
“In other words, according to John, the name ‘Yahweh’ seems to designate directly the Son. John declares that no one, not even Moses, has ever been able to see God. This has always been the privilege of the Son who alone reveals him (1:18). Thus, in John’s perspective, it is the Son whom Moses has encountered, and it is the Son who identified himself as Yahweh for Moses in Ex 3:14, and whom Israel has worshiped as her own God throughout her history.” Jesus Christ: Foundamentals of Christology, pg. 167
The first time I read that, I had to go sit in a dark room for half an hour… lol
Tim Powers (sorry for the full naming, but since there’s other Tims in the thread…): Well, I’m sure any possessed persons in the area probably wigged out (discreetly, if God/nearby good angels rebuked them) when the Holy Family passed (vide the devils who recognize Our Lord when He approaches their victims in the Gospel sand Satan in the desert temptation could conceivably not have understood the way the whole One-Person/Two-Natures things works, and thought he could get Christ to fall as a Man). I assume (though you would know better than I 😉 that djinns/silicate-vampires/etc. would wig out too, under those circs. And from that POV, yes, possibly any baptized person would provoke some kind of a reaction from those parties (and would not have Christ’s capacities for…muting the guard dogs, so to speak).
Has anyone ever read “A Canticle for Leibowitz”?
It was written in 1959. The story is set in the future, after atomic war has toasted the earth. The main locale, I seem to recall, is a monastery. The Mass is still the Latin Tridentine.
There is a character named Lazarus. You get a hint of who he really is when a woman in the story says something like, “Whatever the Lord Jesus raise up stay raised up.”
There’s also a strange instance of someone in the future born without original sin.
However, don’t depend on my memory. I read the book perhaps twenty years ago.
Fr Stephanos,
Canticle for Leibowitz is an excellent example of Catholic sci-fi. I loved it as a teenager, especially the first part (in the monastery). No time travel, though.
I just looked up the book on amazon.com since it’s time for me to re-read it. In doing so, discovered that it has some sort of sequel, “Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman.” I bought both books.
Unfortunately the Canticle sequel isn’t anywhere near as good…
Tim Powers, that’s a rather odd question, considering that I said in the same response that I like “Dead Again” which is about a double reincarnation. But assuming that your question was serious and not snotty, I’ll answer it!
I enjoy reality in my fiction. It doesn’t necessarily have to be something that COULD happen, but the internal reality of the story has to be consistent. For example, I enjoyed Piers Anthony’s improbable Xanth novels because no matter how odd (the moon really is made of green cheese), his fantasy land had a system of natural laws. He didn’t write himself into a corner and then break his rules. For example, when beloved characters grew old and unable to participate in events, he didn’t write in a magical fountain of youth to get around that. But I became quickly disgruntled with a fantasy series that had the otherwise normal heroine suddenly developing superhuman powers about midway through and characters that suddenly acted out-of-character in order to advance the plot.
I also have a great fondness for Delaney’s “Babel-17” which used the idea of a language that worked like a virus that passed from person to person. Although I am well aware that language can be used as a weapon, this took the metaphor literally!
Unfortunately, time travel tends to be a cheap escape for the writer. Same thing with the “alternate reality” fiction that seems to be cropping up everywhere from half-cocked historians. Kind of like the “it was all a dream” ending or the overuse of the Holodeck in the Star Trek franchise.
Another excellent Catholic/SF story is the short story “The Quest for Saint Aquin” by Anthony Boucher.
Like Arguing About A Fight Between a Kligon and a Kzin
Fun, as long as it’s all recognized for the made-up stuff that it is:1. Assume that a group of people who can time travel journey back to the Jurassic period. Among their number are some Catholics. Barring any other impediments…
So, while you’re resolving theological questions about time travel, if someone bring a Homo Erectus forward in time, and he expresses interest in baptism, can he receive conditional baptism if you’re not sure if he is from before or after Adam and Eve?
Actually, I think there was a novel in which an Austrolopithecine (sp?) showed up somehow or other, and the question of his baptism was one of the minor themes in the novel… Can’t remember the title, author, or resolution, though.
Jean, I thought your comments were interesting, and I definitely share your frustration with time travel as a sort of sci-fi deus ex machina. This is especially irritating in poorly written sci-fi t.v. shows, which so often use the ‘reset the clock by going back to the past to fix our current problem’ cliche. (Though I loved the humorous take on this in GalaxyQuest).
Still, when a time travel story is done well, I enjoy it. It seems to me that the use of time travel in a well-written story often expresses the thematic element of redemption. The characters want a chance to do something again, or fix something they’ve ruined, or undo some damage they’ve caused. In the best stories they learn that merely travelling to the past won’t help at all because they themselves haven’t changed enough to create a positive outcome: they want to fix the past, but they haven’t rooted out the seeds of destruction within themselves that caused the problem in the first place.
What a wonderfully thought-provoking thread, and although I am neither Catholic nor a theologian (too many complicated terms for me to remember), I thought I would weigh in with my two-cents worth anyway.
As I see it, I am who I am. I am a product of my life experiences up to this point. Wherever I travel in the world, I am still me. My home is still in Texas. I am still my childrens’ father. If, God forbid, there should be a giant earthquake while I’m away that causes Texas to slide into the Gulf of Mexico, I’m still “from” Texas, wherever I end up.
Why would it be any different if I “traveled” in time? My name, gender, height, weight, and the language I speak wouldn’t change, even if that language had not yet been developed. My date of birth would not change, either. I didn’t cease to be born just because that date has not yet occurred, because for me, it did.
If I am traveling in a Muslim country, I don’t cease to be Christian. Likewise, I would not cease to be Christian just because I traveled in time. The events which led to my being a Christian still occured in my past. These “events” include the life, death, and resurection of Christ. I would still be who I am, regardless of the circumstances in which I find myself.
It also seems to me we would be morally bound to the same set of rules (for lack of a better term) applicable to the present. If you are currently married, and you traveled back to One Million B.C. and hooked up with a really hot cave-girl who looked like Raquel Welch, I suspect your wife would still look on it as infidelity upon your return. (“But honey, that was in the past, before I met you!”)
As for Canon Law, that’s something about which I know almost nothing. Aside from my speculation there must be exceptions for those lost in the wilderness, adrift in a lifeboat, etc… I would think that anyone who is a practicing Catholic in 2006 would be bound by the rules in effect at the time you began your journey through time. Just because you traveled out of the state in which you were born didn’t nullify your birth certificate, traveling through time shouldn’t nullify your faith or the requirments thereof.
All that having been said, I didn’t really answer questions 1 through 4, did I?
“are those Catholics still obliged to travel forward in time to attend Mass at some point?”
You stated “The way the law is written now, the answer would be no.
The current Code of Canon Law (the one binding on the time travellers when they left–unless a new Code comes into existence before then) was promulated on January 25, 1983. Laws do not pertain to things prior to their promulgation unless the law in question expressly provides otherwise:
Can. 9 Laws regard the future, not the past, unless they expressly provide for the past.
The current Code makes no provision for creating a legal obligation to attend Mass prior to its own promulgation, so there isn’t one.”
I disagree, for the reasons expressed above. The Code may not be in effect for the cave-people you encounter, but it is in effect for you, because you are a product of 2006, not 1,000,000 B.C.
Later, when discussing the obligations at Easter, you state “It’s especially hard to enforce that if Easter hasn’t come into existence yet.”
By this logic, it seems you might as well say that if you travel back to a time before Easter, you can no longer be a Christian, so the whole exercise is moot. Actually, Easter HAS occurred for you. Isn’t that why you’re a Christian?
“This is not to say that there are no religious obligations that would attach to time travellers. Anything that is part of human nature and thus natural law would continue to bind them (e.g., that we must worship the one true God, that we must devote adequate time to rest and worship, that we must not break the Ten Commandments).”
If you argue that Easter has not yet occurred, then the Ten Commandments would not have been handed down yet, either.
You also stated “…note that ecclesiastical law does not bind AFTER a law ceases. Once you move FORWARD in time past a law’s existence, it is no longer binding. (This happens entirely naturally as time carries us forward.) In the same way, if you move BACKWARDS past a law’s existence then it also is no longer binding. Thus ecclesiastical laws do not bind BEFORE they are promulgated because they do not exist prior to promulgation.”
The difference here being that you moved forward in time “naturally”.
“2. If so, should they do so on their own personal timeline’s Sunday, or on Sunday according to the Jurassic’s calendar?”
You stated the question was moot, since no obligation existed. Assuming for a moment that was not the case, what would the correct answer be? For me, this goes back to the “adrift at sea” in the lifeboat and lost track of the days scenario. I like to think God would recognize an honest effort to comply.
3. Now imagine that a Catholic priest was among their number. Could he say Mass or offer any of the other Sacraments?
“This is an interesting question. It is not clear whether priests who have time travelled to before the Incarnation, Death, and Resurrection of Christ would have the power to perform the sacraments.”
At the risk of beating a dead horse, I disagree for all the reasons mentioned above.
4. If the group also included a bishop, would that change anything?
You stated “Yes. They could conditionally set up apostolic succession in the Jurassic and have a Church-before-the-Church–at least conditionally.”
Okay, wait a minute… here you seem to contradict all your earlier reasoning by talking about apostolic succession… how is this “succession” possible if none of the people in this line of succession have been born yet?
“They might also be able to conditionally elect a Jurassic pope”
That would really screw up the numbering system, wouldn’t it?
God is beyond time. The Paschal sacrifice transcends time.