Those apt words coming from Deacon Greg as he joins others in the Catholic world who are reporting what will soon be taking place at Harvard:
The Harvard Extension Cultural Studies Club is indeed hosting a Black Mass Monday night. And the group staging this event, The Satanic Temple, has announced plans to use a consecrated host.
The Extension School issued a vague and rather passive aggressive statement about this
“controversial event,” without actually saying what the event is, or even mentioning what it entails or why it might be in the least bit controversial. It’s an independent group, they say. We don’t endorse it, they say. They can do what they want, they say.
As The Anchoress noted: this has a familiar ring to it. That sound you hear is Pilate, splashing his hands in the bowl.
A reader on Facebook was quick to point out that, technically, the Extension School isn’t quite the same as the university; it uses its name, but not much else.
But that name still counts for something. Doesn’t it?
Read a cursory summary of Harvard’s history on its website. It begins with a baptism, when John Harvard joined the church at St. Saviour’s Church in London in 1607. It continues with John Harvard willing his library and estate to the school in 1638. It mentions prominently the school’s first president, Rev. Henry Dunster, and the legendary preacher Increase Mather, Harvard’s first Doctor of Divinity. It notes that eight Harvard alumni signed the Declaration of Independence. And on and on, through presidents and prize winners, across the centuries.
The school’s roots are in religion, and in Truth; it’s one word motto, “Veritas,” says it all.
But now it finds itself inexplicably linked to a splinter Satanic cult which, using the name of Harvard, intends to enact a ritual that will desecrate the Body of Christ.
Read the rest.
In a way, this sort of thing is an argument for, an apologetic if you will for, Catholicism and for Jesus Christ and for His Real Presence in the Eucharist.
Why else would it become the object of a Satanic ritual? Why else would they mimic a Holy Mass?
This sort of thing should serve as a signpost. Diverging roads in a yellow wood. You can't be apathetic about it because apathy is in fact the choosing of one of those diverging paths.
I pray that we will choose wisely and thoughtfully.
For our struggle is not with flesh and blood but with the principalities, with the powers, with the world rulers of this present darkness, with the evil spirits in the heavens.*
