On September 21st, a Satanic “Black Mass” is scheduled to take Oklahoma City’s Civic Center.
Bishop Edward Slattery of the neighboring Diocese of Tulsa isn’t about to take it lying down. Here’s the letter he issued on the matter on the diocesan website:
As has been widely reported, a Satanic Black Mass has been scheduled for September 21 in Oklahoma City’s Civic Center. As a part of Satanic worship, a Black Mass attempts to invert the action and meaning of the Eucharist in order to mock Christ’s sacrifice and worship Satan through an orgiastic ritual of pain and perversion. It blasphemes everything which we hold as sacred and redemptive; and the spiritual dangers it poses ought not be dismissed. Since the Civic Center has not responded positively to the pleas of the Archbishop of Oklahoma City not to host this event in a tax-payer supported public venue, I am asking the faithful Catholics in the Diocese of Tulsa to fight this blasphemy through prayer and fasting:
1. Please keep the nine days prior to the Feast of the Assumption as an extraordinary period of prayer and penance. I am asking every Catholic to abstain from all meat and meat products from August 6 through the 14th. I am also asking that you consecrate your hunger with a daily recitation of a decade of the rosary and the familiar Prayer to Saint Michael. Printed copies of these prayers are available in the bulletin and at the entrances of the church. Be strong and encourage your friends to also be strong.
2. On Assumption Day, August 15th, we will ask Our Lady on her Feast, to intercede for us and protect us. On that day I in the Cathedral, and every priest in his own parish, will pray a special prayer written by Pope Leo XIII for the defense of the Church against the attack of the Enemy and his apostate angels.
3. Should these prayers and this period of fasting not effect the cancellation of this event, then I will ask every priest in the Diocese to conduct a Eucharistic Holy Hour on September 21 at the same time (7:00 p.m.) as this profanity is being celebrated in Oklahoma City. Wherever possible, I ask that Eucharistic Processions – especially outdoor processions – be arranged as part of these holy hours. Let us give a public witness to our faith in the Eucharist which is being so profoundly mocked and ridiculed by this event.
From the snares of the devil, deliver us, O Lord!
This is how you fight evil. This is what being a true shepherd looks like. The steps that the good bishop is asking his flock to take are a little intimidating, but as he says in his accompanying letter to the priests of his diocese, “Prayer is our only weapon. Please pray with me – the matter at hand is serious!”
[pullquote]”For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood; but against principalities and power, against the rulers of the world of this darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the high places.” (Eph. 6:12)[/pullquote]
Indeed, in spiritual warfare, prayer is both sword and shield.
It will come as no surprise to our readers that Bishop Slattery is also a proponent of the traditional Latin Mass and a more traditional celebration of the Missal of Paul VI. In 2011, he said as much in an interview with the National Catholic Register:
They shouldn’t have viewed the old liturgy, what we call the Tridentine Mass or Missal of Pope John XXIII, as something that needed to be fixed. Nothing was broken. There was an attitude that we had to implement Vatican II in a way that radically affects the liturgy.
There is a demonstrative relationship between those priests and bishops who are rooted in the Church’s tradition and the belief that Satan and his armies at work in the world, and must be fought with the weapons the Church has long provided.
More than one exorcist has said that holy water blessed in the old rite is the most efficacious against demonic manifestation. The old rite of baptism includes a multiple exorcism of the baptized, to free them not only from original sin, but Satan’s dominion over all of us, who come into this world under its (and thus his) power. Father Gabriel Amorth has said that only the old rite of exorcism gives a priest the power he needs to do his work effectively in casting out demons.
The Leonine prayer of exorcism which Bishop Slattery is sending to the priests (and which is to be said ONLY by priests!) of his diocese is itself taken from the 1962 Rite of Exorcism, and has its origins with Pope Leo XIII, who was said to have had a terrifying vision of Satan entering the Church, whereupon he composed the prayer to St. Michael the Archangel as well as prayers of exorcism for priests and laity alike to use in their fight against Satan.
We are grateful for the actions of Bishop Slattery, and we hope that Catholics around the world will join the faithful of the Diocese of Tulsa in prayer and fasting for the end of this sacrilege, and all others like it.
UPDATE – 8/5/2014 @ 10:20AM: The original post indicated that Oklahoma City is part of the Diocese of Tulsa. This was an error. Oklahoma City is within the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City. You can read the statement of Archbishop Coakley of Oklahoma City on the scheduled “Black Mass” here.
