From Fr Z's Blog
From a reader…
QUAERITUR:I remember your posts about Space travel and Catholicism, but I’ve been wondering: what about time travel and our obligations? Specifically, what if someone were to be transported to a time before Christ and outside of Judaic influence? If the time-traveller were a priest, would he be able to administer the sacraments and say Mass? Would he have an obligation to preach the risen Christ, or act more like a prophet?
Finally, something important to write about!
Sure the priest time traveller has received the indelible mark of priesthood. An ontological change has taken place. He is a priest forever. This forever suggests that, when he goes back in time, he is still just as much a priest of the new covenant as he was in his own time period.
Moreover, Christ the High Priest is the Alpha and Omega, He is eternal God. For Him, yesterday, today and tomorrow are hardly to be distinguished as a Divine Person. He was always High Priest and always will be. He is High Priest even in the time to which Father travelled.
Preaching: I think that Father should be careful while in the past, that he not initiate one of those pesky chronoconundra that we find so tedious to clean up. Sheesh! Can’t people be more careful when they are in the past?!? It’s just not fair to run about, la la la, creating temporal paradoxes.
And just who was Melchizedek anyway?
I’d better stop before I get worked up.
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