Sabbath, Six days, and the International Date Line

Several of my friends advocate that the 'Sabbath' can only be observed on the traditional hebrew seventh day. They claim this day as, what on modern calendars would be sundown on Friday, to sundown on Saturday.

A short while ago, one of these stated quite firmly "Sundown tonight at 8:16 pm begins Sabbath"

What piqued my interest, was that, since the author of the statement lives in California, U.S.A, and I am in Victoria, Australia, at the time she stated it, it was already around 10AM on Saturday. For her it was still Friday afternoon, but for me, '8:16 tonight' was a two hours and twenty six minutes after sunset on Saturday night.

This got me thinking about time zones, and the International Date Line (IDL)

The IDL is an artificial line based upon where different countries choose to set their time zones an calendars. By convention it is around 180 degrees longitude (directly opposite the prime meridian which runs through the royal observatory in Greenwich England), though it wanders and weaves around individual countries and groups of islands from about +170 degrees to around -150 degrees.

If their argument is right, and the sabbath MUST be observed on THE seventh day, then, if the IDL is not in the right spot, if God's 'date line' is in a different location than that determined as a legacy of the British Empire. Then even they are celebrating the 'seventh day' on the wrong day since a country, in deciding what side of they line they are on, are deciding what day of the week it is.

If we assume that the Jews still hold the correct day, and that God's 'date line' doesn't lie between Iraq (the traditionally held location of the Garden of Eden) and Israel, even still over half the planet could be celebrating the 'Day of the Lord' on the wrong day.

So what does the bible say about the location of God's 'date line'? Absolutely nothing! If we're forced to rely on the bible, we're left floundering with no way of determining whether we (who don't live between Israel and Iraq) were observing the sabbath on the correct day or not.

But what of those who, in our modern day, travel across the IDL? The commandment, as written in the book of Exodus reads as follows ...

Exo 20:8 Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.
Exo 20:9 Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work:
Exo 20:10 But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates:
Exo 20:11 For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.

I see nothing in there that says 'if thou shalt cross the IDL in one direction then thou shalt work only five days and rest on the sixth which is the day CALLED seventh by others, and if thou shalt cross in the other direction then thou shalt work seven days and rest on the eighth, which is the day CALLED seventh by others, unless of course thou shalt cross the IDL from the west in the hour before sunset of the sixth day from either the Line islands or from Tonga, for then thou shalt work twelve days and rest on the thirteenth, which is the day CALLED seventh by others.

As a Catholic, I'm often accused by misinformed people of 'leaving out' commandments or parts of commandments', so I find your dismissal of what the commandment actually says in favor of the appearance of keeping the commandment quite ironic.

Crossing the IDL or not, six days is still six days, and the seventh is the day that comes after six days, not after five, or seven, or twelve.

If their interpretation of the commandment can't be defended by scripture, then either their interpretation of the commandment is wrong, or the principle of Sola Scripura on which their interpretation is based is wrong, or (I think) both.

Mass, Sacrifice, and the Space-Time Continuum

Let me take you on a little journey...

Imagine you're sifting through your 'junk' mail one day, catalogues, brochures, flyers, the vast majority of which will either find there way into the bin, or come in handy for lighting the fire on cold nights, when you come across a flyer of a very different sort.

A monastery, way up in the hills is offering a retreat experience that the flyer claims is like no other. The flyer makes some bold claims "You will have an experience of Christ's crucifixion like no other!" "It will be like you're really there" "So real, you could reach out and touch Mary's tears"

At this stage you're probably wondering if these monks have had a little too much of the altar wine, but something in it draws you in, you make some equiries and eventally sign up for a week long retreat.

On the first morning, you wake up in the cell you were assigned to, find breakfast waiting for you, eat, dress, and upon opening the door of your cell one of the monks silently leads you to another door. He instructs you to enter, and, once on the other side, to take careful note of which door you entered from, so that you might pass through that same door before sunset. During this time you are to observe only, you must interact as little as possible with anyone you meet, and it is vital that you don't say a word.

Still contemplating the possibility that these monks are too fond of altar wine, you pass through the door, and find yourself in what appears to be a faithful recreation of a typical street in Jerusalem, as it was during the time of Christ, seeing doors up and down the street, you turn, and make note of the specific markings on the door you just passed through, recognising that getting lost in this re-creation will make you late for dinner.

At this point you become aware of a commotion down the street, and following the crowd, while taking careful notes so that you can retrace your steps later, you find yourself in a large courtyard where some kind of Roman official is addressing the crowd, beside him, bound in chains, is a figure that you assume to be an actor playing the part of Jesus, though while there is a general resemblance between him and the common artistic portrayals you are familiar with, he seems somehow more earthy, as if he had indeed grown up learing the carpenters trade and working long hours with only hand tools, and his complexion, rather than the pasty white often seen on crucifixes, is more swarthy, like one who had spent the last three years travelling the countryside, living at the mercy of the elements.

As the day progresses, and you follow this 'Jesus' around as he is scourged, mocked, condemned and crucified, you grow more and more uneasy, wondering whether to be amazed or horrified at how lifelike the 'special effects' are, especially when they 'break' the legs of the two theives, and when they pierce this 'Jesus'. Likewise the quality of the acting leaves you dumbfounded, the heartwrenching cries of 'Mary' as her 'son' breathes his last. If you didn't know better you'd swear that it wasn't just an act, perhaps, you wonder, maybe for her it's more of a mystical experience than an acting job.

Finally, exhausted, drained, and more than a little confused, you retrace your steps to 'your' door. The same monk is inside waiting for you, and he silently leads you back to your cell where you find a steaming hot meal. Naturally you 'dig in' as in all the drama you completely forgot about having lunch, and you find yourself able to recognise how good the food is, while drawing little in the way of enjoyment from it. After you finish, you crawl into bed and fall asleep almost immediately.

The second day follows the same pattern, but this time the monk leads you to a different door. Sure enough it leads out to the same street in 'Jerusalem', but there are different markings on the door, so before joining the crowd as you did the day before, you have a quick look to see if you can locate the door you used yesterday, partly out of simple curiosity, but also partly to help you get your bearings, reasoning that you found your way back to that door yesterday, knowing where it is will help you find your way back to this door.

Finding 'yesterdays' door you notice that someone has just exited and is making his way toward the crowd, much as you did yesterday. Naturally you suspect that this person is attending the retreat like yourself, but there is something about him that is eerily familiar. So you decide to follow him to observe his reactions as the day unfolds.

Increasingly the presence of this other individual makes you uncomfortable for some reason, but it's not until you're witnessing 'Jesus' being whipped that you realise exactly what it is about him bothers you. As that first lash strikes he cringes and turns his face away from the sight, just as you did, and in doing so he turns straight towards you. With his eyes closed tight he doesn't see you, but with a start you recognise his face. The same face that you shave every morning... its your face... its you.

After the shock starts to wear off, the implications start to sink in, if that's somehow you, then, by some miracle, you're re-living the same day! And if that's possible, then there's no good reason to assume that these others around you are actors, after all if its somehow possible to travel back in time to re-experience yesterday, then it would seem to be just as possible to travel back to the day of the crucifixion and re-experience that day, which, after all, is pretty much what the brochure promised.

At this point you're startled out of you reverie as a droplet of moisture strikes your face, but no, its not raining, a drop of blood, flicked off the tip of the whip, not fake blood like you had assumed yesterday, from that person who you're now starting to realise might very well be Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is now trickling down your cheek. For the rest of the day you follow much as you did yesterday, and yet, your experience is nothing at all like yesterday's. Now, to you, it is no longer a work of dramatic art, now its real, every footstep, every fall, every cry. Each and every drop of blood reminds you of that first you have left to dry on your cheek. Everything's different.

As you stumble back toward 'todays' door you once again take notice of the other 'you' and see that he is looking rather run down, but you know its nothing compared to what he'll feel this time tomorrow.

The next three days follow the same pattern, each day a new door, each day you become aware of another 'you' joining in the crowd, each day brings a different perspective on the same event.

Saturday rolls around and today is different, there's no door to pass through, this time the monk brings you to a nice contemplative garden.

"You've had an interesting week" he starts, "now its time for your test."

You look up surprised. "I wasn't aware there was going to be a test."

Unperturbed the monk gazes at you serenely and asks "How many times did Jesus die this week?" then quietly rises, and leaves you to ponder.

'This week?' you muse to yourself. 'This week I've seen him die five times, yet each time I saw it, it was the same time. So is the answer 5 or 1?'

Later as you wander around the garden it occurs to you that Christ was put to death some two thousand years ago, so in terms of 'this week' the answer must be 0.

The Monk returns to take you to a communal lunch (your first for the week) and you share your musings that the answer to his question must be 5, 1 or 0, but you can't be sure which without further clarifying the question.

"The question stands," he says, "and you're on the right track." He pauses as if unsure whether to let you off the hook or not, then continues "The answer, of course, is 'all of the above.'"

The next day is Sunday and you attend Mass where, by some miracle, Christ is made present upon the altar under the forms of bread and wine. After Mass, as you're preparing to leave, you say to the Monk "Make that 6, 1 and 0."

He smiles, "Now you're getting it."

Christ, Ignatius, and the Great Apostacy

I just came across something I posted on the CHNI website back in early 2007 and thought I'd share ...

Ignatius of Antioch - "Let no one do anything of concern to the Church without the bishop. Let that be considered a valid Eucharist which is celebrated by the bishop or by one whom he ordains [i.e., a presbyter]. Wherever the bishop appears, let the people be there; just as wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church" (Letter to the Smyrneans 8:2 [A.D. 110]).

If I remember correctly Ignatius learnt his faith at the feet of St. John (The Evangelist and Apostle), and it seems to me that when people say that the Catholic church 'broke away' from early christianity (or some other version of the 'Great Apostacy' theory) they are actually saying that my Lord Jesus Christ deliberatly chose 12 men who were such incompetents that the truth of the faith didn't even survive one generation. What a Guy!!??!!:?

As a couple of friends noted, this view (in light of Ignatius' statement also seems to make Christ an outright liar when he said regarding his Church 'the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.'Matt 16:18KJV

Homosexuality, Catholic education and "Rights"

CNN recently ran an article centered around what it described as "the decision of a Roman Catholic school in Massachusetts to rescind the admission of an 8-year-old student because his parents are lesbians."

Since the article cited does not give the reasons for schools actions, only the reasons assumed by activist groups, it's difficult to comment on the case cited, but let me offer a few general thoughts.

Firstly, this issue is complicated by the myriad of laws surrounding state/religious school funding in each different locality. Accordingly some of these principles may not be able to be applied in a given locality.

In general, Catholic schools should give a priority to providing a Catholic education to the children of local practicing Catholic families. Next in priority, should places be available, would be children of non-practicing familes, children of practicing families from outside the local school district, other Christians, and finally everyone else.

Since it is impossible to be openly homosexual caregivers for a child while being practicing Catholics in good standing with the Church, it's possible that the whole story is simply a beat up because the school is implementing this policy. This is not discriminating against the child because the parents are in a homosexual relationship, but because the parents are not practicing Catholics in good standing. the same criteria might be applied to couples that are divorced and remarried without gaining a decree of nullity, parents who openly campaign for abortion rights etc.

A second principle that might be applied in this kind of case is that the school has a duty of care to those children already enrolled to provide an environment where the Catholic ethos may be nurtured. The school has a responsibility to reject children who will cause undue disruption. No one questions shools refusing to enrol children with a history of violent behaviour toward their fellow students of teachers, children who are not violent, but are constantly disruptive to the school environment are similarly dealt with through suspension, expulsion or simply not being allowed to re-enrol.

Some children can be disruptive through no fault of their own, but rather due to their associations. Childen of celebrities, known criminals, activists, and people whose lifestyles are markedly atypical of their fellows. Naturally the church has no desire to discriminate against chilren for actions and choices that are not their own, but sometimes, particularly where the associates are deliberately acting in direct contravention of church teaching, it needs to make tough choices.

Genocide, Death and Favours

A poster on the CHNI Forums asked about 'atrocities' commited either 'on God's behalf' or 'at God's request' citing 1 Samuel 15:2-3, Judges 11:39, Joshua 6:21, and Joshua 10:40-41 as examples. Essentially the question boils down to how do we understandstand the God of these passages as good and just when he appears to be 'some bloodthirsty, vengeful, monster'

Here's my response...

Death is one of the few certainties of life. (The other being taxes ) Though their may be a few exceptions to the rule, Elijah, Enoch, Mary (?), and those 'who are left' cf. 1 Thess 4:17 at the end of the world.

Given that we shall all leave this existence for the next (one way or another) one might wonder what is the best way to go?

The prevailing secular preference seems to be 'passing away gently in one's sleep' and I can see the appeal there. Indeed the whole euthanasia movement is geared toward giving people the option to do just that. (Either for the benefit of the dying person or for the benefit of those who have to live through it and watch, I'm not sure).

For the Catholic/Christian, in view of the resurrection, their are other perspectives. For myself, if I could choose, I think my top two choices would be …

1. Dying slowly of a wasting disease, with enough time to make peace with my maker, settle my family affairs, offer my suffering for others, and die with my family and priest around me, immediately after having received the ‘last rites’ (Confession, Anointing, Viaticum).

2. Going down in an airplane crash, again with enough time, in view of my impending destruction to ‘make peace’ with my maker.

Why do I say this? And what does it have to do with genocide?

I know that I am a sinner, I know that I tend toward sin even when I would rather not, I know that prayer can help keep me from sin, and even still I sometimes, in light of that, choose not to pray. The point being, while I have ‘absolute assurance’ that God will keep his promises and save me if I am faithful, I know myself enough that I don’t have absolute assurance that I will remain faithful. So if I were given the opportunity to choreograph my demise, I would choose one more likely to keep that choice to remain faithful in the forefront of my mind right to the very end.

God knows our ‘internal disposition’, he knows the state of our souls as they are now, and he knows how they would be in that hypothetical plane crash above. He knows what our disposition would be if our biological father were about to set fire to us and offer us as a burnt offering to his God, and he knows what it would be if a horde of Hebrews, whipped up into a religious frenzy, bent on our complete annihilation were about to descend upon our little town.

To my mind, it seems that God may have been guiding the Hebrews toward their destiny as played out in the New Testament, while simultaneously He was deliberately doing a favor to those ‘victims of atrocities’ in the old testament. That ‘religious nut of a father’ and that ‘horde of Hebrews’ that may have been just the incentive that some of them needed to ‘repent and be saved’.

And at the end, isn’t that what we’re all after?

Blogging, Time Management and Whooping Cough

For anyone who may have noticed that I haven't posted anything here for the last five months or so ... I was diagnosed back on Dec 19 with whooping cough.

In the early hours of Jan 3, the date of my most recent post, I was actually putting the finishing touches on that post when I had a coughing fit. I remember leaning over the kitchen sink, using it to help me keep my balance when I heard a loud 'bang', and had the distinct sensation of being hit over the back of the head with a frypan.

Slowly I progressed from wondering who hit me over the head, to wondering why I was lying flat on my back on the kitchen floor. ( A linoleum covered cement slab ). Eventually I pieced together that I must have 'blacked out', taken a couple of steps backward from the sink, before passing out completely, having no sensation of falling, but regaining some semblance of conciousness to have the delightful sensation of the back of my head engaging the cement floor at high velocity.

My condition deteriorated from that point, (but I at least posted the piece I had just finished) and I resolved to take some time away from this blog, and my meager efforts on the Coming Home Network International Forum 'till I was fully fit again.

So now I'm back :D

Marriage, Annulments, and "What God hath joined"

There are various distinctions that the Church makes between different uses of the word ‘Marriage’.

There is a distinction between what is called a ‘Natural’ marriage of the kind enjoyed by Adam and Eve, and the majority of people in the world since, as opposed to a ‘Sacramental’ marriage as enjoyed by the pairing of two baptized Christians.

There is also a distinction between a ‘Ratified’ marriage, where the couple take vows, and a ‘Consummated’ marriage where the couple, having taken vows, participates in the mutual gift of the marital act.

These all relate to different kinds of marriage. Other distinctions, such as licit vs. illicit refer to whether the ceremony itself was performed in accordance with the laws of the Church, and finally, perhaps the most important distinction, that of valid vs. invalid, which goes to the question of ‘is what appears to be a marriage really a marriage or not?’

The distinction that most closely bears upon a ‘Declaration of Nullity’, (commonly referred to as an annulment) is that last one of valid vs. invalid.

It is easy to think that a marriage is a marriage and that’s that, but when you actually think about it, most people don’t really believe that. Think of the movies – ‘Four weddings and a funeral’ for example. I would suggest that there are very few people on the planet who actually think that those actors were actually getting married to each other. Why? It certainly appeared that they were getting married, despite Rowan Atkinson’s bumbling “Who reigns with you and the Holy Goat … err … Ghost”. They certainly exchanged vows. There can be little question that they intended to exchange vows, no doubt they rehearsed, and took several takes to get it ‘just right’. So why is their marriage not a ‘real’ marriage?, or to use our term, why is it not a valid marriage?

The answer is of course rather self evident, yet at once rather profound. They didn’t really intend to get married. No one doubts that this intent, (or lack thereof), automatically invalidates virtually all weddings performed on stage or screen, yet what of those every day weddings taking place in all sorts of places, in all sorts of forms, all over the world? What if one or both participants is just reciting the lines that they are ‘supposed to’ without willing, or intending, what those words imply.

This lack of intent can exist in a variety of forms. The infamous ‘shotgun wedding’ of (hopefully) times past, is an obvious example. In this case the intent behind saying those ‘lines’ is to avoid getting killed by an irate family member of the bride, not necessarily to enter into a lifelong relationship. Indeed, in more modern times, often the shotgun might be absent, but often the intent has been more along the lines of ‘keeping up appearances’ than actually trying to enter a marriage.

So what must the couple intend when they exchange vows? They must intend to enter a lifelong (‘till death do us part) exclusive (forsaking all others) partnership that is open to life (accept children lovingly from God). (I’m probably missing something in there but you get the idea).

Should the intent on any of these points be lacking, or deliberately excluded then the consent that is given is flawed, and just like those stage weddings, nothing really happens. To the casual observer it would certainly seem to be a valid marriage, but God is more than just a casual observer, and we trust that he knows better.

Other factors that might impact upon the validity of a marriage, are such things as whether the couple are free to marry each other. Should either party be still validly married to someone else, still living, then they are not free to marry another, and no amount of intent can compensate for that. Likewise there are those of us who lack the capacity, either due to lack of development, or mental infirmity, to either understand what a marriage is, or to be able to make such a commitment, and they too are simply not free to marry. So too, close relations are not free to marry, Father/Daughter, Mother/Son, Brother/Sister, indeed not even close canonical relations, such as Godparent/Child (at least not without a special dispensation).

And for those who are already Catholic, there is yet another requirement that impacts upon the validity of a marriage. The Catholic is bound by Canon Law. As such, if the Catholic flaunts the law of the Church, and marries ‘outside the Church’, without gaining the appropriate dispensation, then such a marriage is deemed at once to be both illicit, and invalid.

All of this gets us to the point where we can discuss the injunction, “What therefore God hath joined together, let man not put asunder.” Mark 10:9 cf. Matt 19:6 KJV

As Catholics we understand this injunction to apply most directly to valid, sacramental, consummated marriages. As mentioned earlier, we understand the sacramental marriage of two baptized Christians to be “What God has joined” whereas the natural marriage involving at least one unbaptized person, can under certain circumstances, be dispensed from.

One form of this is know as the Pauline privilege, where two unbaptized persons are validly married in a natural marriage, one subsequently seeks to become a Christian, against the wishes of their spouse, the Church can permit the dissolution of such a marriage for the benefit of the new Christian cf. 1 Corinthians 7:15

The other form, know as the Petrine privilege, as it is reserved to the Holy Father, can apply when a Christian marries an unbaptized person, and later seeks to leave that natural marriage in favor of a sacramental marriage with another Christian cf. Ezra 10:1-14

When it comes to sacramental marriages, it is possible for the Church to dissolve a valid, ratified, unconsummated, sacramental marriage.

All of this leads us to the most common kind of marriage associated with any discussion of ‘Annulments’. Those that appear to be sacramental ratified and consummated marriages between two baptized Christians. When one of these marriages ends up ‘on the rocks’, and so much so that it results in a civil divorce, (in those countries that have civil divorce, or that Christians engage in civil marriages together with Church marriages), the Church allows the separated spouses to petition for an investigation into the validity of their marriage. Note that civil divorce is not a strictly necessary pre-requisite for this process, rather it is, in some countries an administrative ‘requirement’ to ensure that the process is not entered into lightly, so that the process not be abused by those seeking to justify their desire to leave a marriage.

From this point, the process simply attempts to investigate the questions: “Were both parties free to marry at the time they apparently got married” and “Did both parties intend to enter a marriage at the time they exchanged their vows”. If the answer to both of these questions is yes, then what we have is a valid, sacramental, ratified and consummated marriage that nothing short of the death of one of the spouses can end.

If however, the answer to either of these questions is no, then, in the eyes of the Church, the parties were never actually “joined by God”. No sacrament took place. No marriage ever existed. It is probable of course, that at least one party of this putative marriage had no real knowledge that their ‘marriage’ was invalid, they acted in good faith, and there is no sin on their part. Indeed this is possibly true of both parties. Likewise, because of this presumed ‘good faith’ on the part of one or both parties, there is no question of any children of such a ‘marriage’ being illegitimate.