Date: Mon, 23 OCT 1995 10:44:54 -0500 (EST) 
From: oracle-request@cs.indiana.edu
Newsgroups: rec.humor.oracle
Subject: Usenet Oracularities Digest #789 

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Selected-By: "Leo L. Schwab" <ewhac@shell.portal.com>

The Usenet Oracle has pondered your question deeply.
Your question was:

> O' Oracle so witty, wacky, and wise:
>
> Does light have mass?

And in response, thus spake the Oracle:

} The early Church took a very dim view of light, in part because
} of its pagan association with the planet Venus (commonly called
} Lucifer, "light-bearer").  Theologians of the second and third
} centuries held that because the sun and moon were created
} only *after* the God's original command "Fiat Lux", their light
} was somehow impure and therefore suspect.  For this reason,
} light was often excluded from the sacraments.
}
} According to the papal bull "De Lux Ecumenica" of 634, light was
} not allowed to receive communion, since it consistently refused
} to sit still long enough to complete confession.  Indeed,
} churches for hundreds of years afterward were very poorly
} illuminated; this period is often referred to as the Dark Ages.
}
} It was not until the Renaissance, around 1348, that the Church
} reversed itself and began admitting light within its congregations.
} The gothic cathedrals built during and after these years were
} designed to admit as much light as possible.  This inclusive
} attitude toward light persisted essentially unchanged down
} to the beginning of the present century.
}
} In the early 1900's, certain conservative bishops became quite
} concerned about the wave/particle duality of light.  This dual
} nature seemed to them a form of Manichean Heresy, and a movement
} began to threaten light with excommunication unless it stuck to
} one form or the other.  Luckily, this inquisition came to an
} end when it was shown that, while light could behave as both
} a wave and a particle, it could only take on one of these
} roles at a time in experiments.
}
} So, to answer your question, light *does* have mass, along with
} all the various sacraments, but only since the 14th century.
}
} You owe the Oracle one of those cool t-shirts showing Maxwell's
} equations.