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I thought we were going to go separate ways? It was YOU who said you wanted to go YOUR way, not I.

Yeah, I'll cop to taking a cheap shot, but golly, when you lob one over the plate like that, it's hard to resist.(Footnote: It's actually a paraphrase of the punch line of an old joke about a Catholic and an Anglican archbishop)

Once in early 1973, I was in the hospital with a virus in my heart lining. I was having bouts of quite excruciating pain and was zonked out of my gourd on whatever they were giving for pain in those days. It was in the days where nobody told the patient anything for fear he might have and dare to express an opinion. And we had yet to learn that I have a very weird set of responses to drugs. If your agenda for the evening is anesthesia I am your cheap date. I had an arrest once under a a low dose of Sodium Pentathol (or is it Pentothal, I never can remember). I hope Jack Bauer reads my medic-alert bracelet before he tortures me. If not I'll just die-- and GO to PURGATORY AND BE HAPPY THERE --as Catherine of Genoa saw, darn it!.

So the drugs they were giving me were basically making me emotionally a WRECK! I know one of the things they were doing was trying to keep me calm because they feared some kind o' cardiac complications (BTW I'm fine. NO lasting anything from this episode) But it was having the opposite effect.

I was also in my first year at (get ready) The Protestant Episcopal Theological Seminary in Virginia, and I had my Greek testament with me in my hospital room.

So some seventh day Sabbatarian PHYSICIAN decides that this would be a good time to argue me into taking a seventh day line of thought. This clown wasn't even MY doctor -- just some random doctor. I didn't know him from Adam. He just breezes into my room and starts arguing with me.

You wanna talk to me some more about inappropriate uses of authority? You can talk, but my EXPERIENCE is that seventh day Sabbatarianism presents a lot like septic brain disease or Asberger's -- it's characterized by perseveration and social ineptness and inappropriateness. And I think that doc should lose his license. What is it about taking a weird point of view and then being so driven by the need to a have others validate it that courtesy, reason, prudence, justice, and discretion all go out the window to get one more adherent to Sabbath day worship? I don't know about you but as far as I can tell we did not so learn Christ.

In other words just on the basis of my experience, I ain't buying. And furthermore, NOTHING on FR has encouraged me to change my assessment. If you checked you'd see that I have ducked every direct approach to the question. And I will continue to do so.

Now I really have no clue what these guys you cite think they're showing, but my take on the NT is that the early Church did worship on the Lord's Day not on the Sabbath. It comes down to a debatable interpretation of some idiomata in NY Greek and I see no possibility of conclusive argument either way.

I think the cardinal's argument, Mr. O'Brien's article, and Canon whatchamacallit's argument are bogus. BUT I think there is not enough lexical info to reach a persuasive conclusion so YMMV and, I can think of no way to refute it. So I don't try.