High Crusade

[Rete]

Back in the 1950s, Poul Anderson wrote a novel about aliens who landed in England during the middle ages. The Englishman naturally overpowered the aliens and captured the ship. The baron grabbed all his soldiers, serfs, animals, and other supplies, and inadvertently got the entire group lost in space where they eventually built an empire.

There are some interesting Catholic problems involved, such as determining when to fast (Fridays and Lent), Easter, etc. But what prompted me to ask a question was how they dealt with the faith longterm.

They had only the baron’s chaplain aboard. No bishops. Since Earth was lost to them, and all their efforts at finding Earth were for naught, they suffered from the problem of no contact with the Pope. They somehow argued that by virtue of this fact, the priest was promoted to a bishop, and was able to act as the Pope’s representative to their colony worlds. Thus, after about a thousand years, Earth ships actually found the sprawling empire, with the “Popelet” installed in the imperial city.

But can any of this be possible? If a large group of Catholics end up cut off from the Church, are they essentially forced to wither away as their priests grow old and die?

Christ promised the Church as a whole will survive to the end of time, but not individual diocese and groups of Catholics. What happens if, in our near future, humans get isolated on colony worlds without access to a bishop?

I wonder if the Vatican has begun contemplating how they will be able to spread the faith along with humanity, and ensure people are not cut off from the Holy See. If you were cut off, it might be preferable to not marry and not produce children so that those children are not forced to grow up in an environment without access to reconciliation or the Eucharist. But it’s very likely plenty of people would produce children anyway. Those people would have no access to the Church. No priests. No sacraments.

It occurs to me that there are some parallels in the Catholic community in Japan for many generations, but even they I think were given secret priests just like our English ancestors once had.

edit: I apologize if this is not in the right section. I couldn’t find a section that was for Catholic subjects which are speculative, but not completely off topic.

 

[Aelred_Minor]

Naturally if we colonize other worlds we should send bishops to those colonies even if the population is small. Not just one, but several just in case something happens to the one or something was irregular with his own ordination.

Anyway, the scenario you mention isn’t pure science fiction. It is essentially what happened in Japan for about two hundred years between the expulsion of the missionaries and the re-opening of Japan in the 19th century. During that time a Catholic remnant survived, practicing baptism and professing unity with the bishop of Rome, but without access to priests for the sacraments only they can provide, like the Eucharist and Penance. It was a terrible situation for a part of the Church to be in, but they heroically survived it.

 

[pollynova]

Wow! I had never thought about something like that before! That’s pretty interesting thought experiment!

If people were totally cut off from clergy like that, no priests or anything, they could still obviously baptize each other. If people wanted to get married, the could enter into relationships with the promise of having a Catholic marriage and should a priest become available to them, they would have it recognized by the church.

They could probably organize some sort of worship services too, that would be like a mass, just with out the eucharist, which wouldn’t be a mass, but you get what I’m saying, right?

In the end, I don’t think God would abandon them and would be in favor of the efforts they made to remain christians.

 

[Rete]

I would feel ambivalent about fathering children in a world where they have no access to sacraments other than baptism. If your children grow up into rebellious teens, commit mortal sin, then how can they reconcile with God when they have no priest?

It is interesting to me in the context of the early Church because Christianity could easily have spread faster than bishops and apostles could travel.

Maybe Christ takes the circumstances into account at their particular judgment. Perhaps people could recite an act of contrition and carry out public penance sort of in the same way as things were done in the first few centuries.

I don’t know. It’s an interesting speculation for me, though.

 

[OxygenMan]

Well, in the Catechism 1256:
“In case of necessity, anyone, even a non-baptized person, with the required intention, can baptize, by using the Trinitarian baptismal formula”
So they could at least be baptized.

 

[pollynova]

Maybe Christ takes the circumstances into account at their particular judgment. Perhaps people could recite an act of contrition and carry out public penance sort of in the same way as things were done in the first few centuries.

I think He does. I don’t think God is going to damn a person who is truly sorry if they literally have no access to a priest. We’re not talking about someone who steals and thinks, “Gee, I shouldn’t have done that. I should probably go to confession,” but they keep putting it off and they die before they go. I think it would be a much different story for someone who’s a gajillion light years away from the nearest priest.

 

[Aelred_Minor]

I would feel ambivalent about fathering children in a world where they have no access to sacraments other than baptism. If your children grow up into rebellious teens, commit mortal sin, then how can they reconcile with God when they have no priest?

It is interesting to me in the context of the early Church because Christianity could easily have spread faster than bishops and apostles could travel.

Maybe Christ takes the circumstances into account at their particular judgment. Perhaps people could recite an act of contrition and carry out public penance sort of in the same way as things were done in the first few centuries.

I don’t know. It’s an interesting speculation for me, though.

They could still have perfect contrition for their sins. Even in a case in which no sacraments are available except baptism and matrimony, they would still be in a much better situation than everyone who lived prior to Christ.

 

[SurlyMermaid]

I own this. Time for a re-read.

 

[Arizona_Mike]

I love that book. It would make a heck of a movie.

Have you ever read Anderson’s “Operation Chaos”?

It’s set on a parallel Earth where the Nazis never rose to power but a radical Islamic sect called the Caliphate fought against the allies in WWII. (Shades of al-Qaeda, but this was written back in the 1950s and 1960s.) On this earth, the rules of magic work, and the hero is a (Catholic) Czech-American werewolf, whose wife is a good (Wiccan-type) witch/sorceress. They meet and fall in love while in the Army in WWII, go to college on the G.I. Bill, get married and start a family, while fighting against the power of the Adversary (Satan), who tries to co-opt, neutralize, or destroy them at different points in the lives using a djinn, a salamander (a dragon-type fire elemental), an incubus/succubus, and finally a cultish gnostic church controlled by the Adversary that claims to be based on a secret Johannine gospel (and which bears more than a few similarities to a real-life church started by L. Ron Hubbard), with the hero and heroine finally having to invade Hell itself (with the aid of a Saint and a soul offered parole from Purgatory to help them) after their daughter is kidnapped by a demon and a changeling is left in its place.

The theology of the book is interesting - there is a Heaven and a Hell and Saints and Purgatory (whose existence is revealed and becomes a little upsetting to the Lutheran minister who helps them invade the hell-universe), God is supreme over all the worlds and versions of Earth (including our own) but there are all manner of lesser supernatural beings, including the pagan gods that survived but are not of the same order of being as God, that also play a role. I don’t think Anderson was a Catholic, but he, like James Blish, was very well-versed in Catholic theology.

 

[Rete]

Nope. I had not read that one.

I have read Broken Sword, and Three Hearts and Three Lions. The latter book seems to be from the same metaverse you describe. It’s a parallel world where some universal constants are slightly tweaked and there is magic. But unlike in Broken Sword, which features a common character, this universe has an equal balance of chaos and order. So rather than just a battle between good and evil, there also is another fault line related to chaos and order. As the main character shows up in this universe, the forces of chaos have aligned with each other, despite good versus evil, and are set to destroy the world of Man.

That one is pretty good. I will have to look for the novel you suggested. I also purchased a copy of his novel There Will Be Time, which features a time traveler who goes back to the fall of Constantinople, but have not yet begun to read it.