Posted on 05/12/2014 7:57:21 PM PDT by NYer
UPDATED: May 12, 2014, at 8:15 p.m.
The Harvard Extension School Cultural Studies Club has dropped its sponsorship of a re-enactment of a Satanic “black mass” ritual, which was scheduled to occur Monday evening at Cambridge Queen’s Head Pub. A spokesperson for the Satanic Temple, which was facilitating the black mass, said that the organization no longer plans to hold a black mass this evening.
The Harvard Extension School Cultural Studies Club originally said that it planned to relocate its reenactment of a Satanic black mass ritual, scheduled for Monday night, to an off-campus site, citing in an email that “misinterpretations about the nature of the event were harming perceptions about Harvard and adversely impacting the student community.”
The club wrote in its email around 5 p.m. that they planned for the event to be held at The Middle East nightclub in Central Square at 9 p.m. But Clay S. Fernald, the general manager of The Middle East, said Monday evening that the nightclub will not host the event, and that negotiations with the Harvard Extension Cultural Studies Club had fallen through.
Fernald declined to comment on why negotiations had ended.
Around 7 p.m., the Cultural Studies Club sent an email saying that they had been unable to find another location and would no longer sponsor the black mass.
The club emphasized in the 5 p.m. email that Harvard had not asked them to move the event from its previous location, the Cambridge Queen’s Head Pub in the basement of Memorial Hall, and commended the University for affirming its members’ rights to free speech and assembly.
“Harvard always demonstrated that it understood its responsibility to defend protected student speech. That was always made clear to us,” the club wrote in a second email.
In response to the event’s relocation, Terrence Donilon, secretary of communications for the Archdiocese of Boston, said that the Catholic Church still condemns any re-enactment of the Satanic ritual, regardless of setting.
“Whether they have it at Harvard or at some other location, this is repugnant. No other community would stand u p for this,” he said. “We recognize that we’re a country that allows free speech, but we’re also a country that shares in the common good. There’s nothing good that comes out of desecrating the central element of the Catholic Church, which is the Eucharist.”
And, I presume, President Faust (the jokes write themselves) would find a reason to forbid it. In two seconds.
That's pretty much what local news is reporting this morning. The restaurant staff was "unaware" of it.
It sounds like a meeting of the Massachusetts Libertarian Party, which I once attended. The meeting was held at a Ground Round, and most of the time was spent debating Robert's Rules of Order. There was a crowd of about 10 people.
This Catholic thanks you for your decency. When I think of the Satanists my heart plunges. Lord, save these slaves of hell.
... and very soon, impelled by the love of Christ, an inheritor of all the graces of God!
Praise God!
This is just one skirmish in which we have seen victory, though. I hope that this is just the beginning on our side of a huge spiritual battle, in which satan’s side has been winning far too often in our society.
This battle was won for and by Christ, so it was many Christians and not just Catholics who were praying for this outcome.
May God bless and keep both of you.
And may all Christians continue to pray for the defeat of satan’s works.
You are absolutely right. It would never have even been considered. It would not have made the light of day. It would have instantly been filed in the trash can.
It is not OK to attack certain classes of people: homosexuals and Muslims come to mind. But it is ok at Harvard to attack Christians, and there appears to be a special disdain for Catholic Christians.
True. They need our prayers. We’re asked by Mary to pray for conversion, so we should.
Yes, and now, going beyond Russia, prayers for the conversion of ALL to Christ, including the worse of sinners, including those who worship the enemy or who are Muslims.
The association with the Satanic Temple is explicit from the first posters the night schoolers put up on campus.
Last year, the pro-palestinian group on campus served “eviction notices” to dorm rooms, and although they didn't explicitly mention Jews or Israel, whom do you think they were figuratively “evicting”?
The university tolerated this.
Harvard Pro-Life (an actual, supported, official student group that gets free meeting space at Harvard, and doesn't have to pay to rent space in the bar) put up posters a few years back across campus depicting cartoon drawings and actual fetal photos of an unborn baby they called “Elena,” with pro-life quotes and messages attached. The university did nothing. The Anscombe Society invites speakers who talk about the good of traditional family, the good of traditional sexual morality, and related topics (heck, even talks about the evil of contraception), and this is permitted.
At Harvard, many, many people consider these groups to be hate groups and their actions to be hate crimes. Harvard Pro-Life’s poster campaign met with a great deal of hostility and was condemned as hateful in the student newspaper, the Crimson.
We Catholics and Christians once had, as Pope Emeritus Benedict called it, a privileged place in western society. Now we hold a minority viewpoint, and there are many who would like to silence us. Harvard is a place that has so far resisted silencing us. The “official voice” of Harvard is very liberal, but official Harvard has not shut down our voices.
There are other colleges and universities throwing our groups off campus, actively silencing conservatives, Catholics, Christians. Stanford tried to ban a speaker hosted by their campus Anscombe Society after the homos got all bent about the event.
In trying to silence these folks who were renting space in Harvard's campus bar, we have now given others the pretext to silence us.
sitetest
I have seen it mentioned in only 2 of probably a dozen articles I have read.
So, who is responsible for that? The journalists writing the article (who work neither for Harvard nor the night schoolers), or the night schoolers?
My son posted a photo of the group's campus poster on Facebook on WEDNESDAY, May 6. And right there, it says, and I quote:
“MAY 12TH
“8:30 PM
“THE HARVARD EXTENSION CULTURAL STUDIES CLUB
“IS HOSTING A REENACTMENT OF A
“satanic black mass
“performed by
“THE
“SATANIC TEMPLE
“** WITH COMMENTARY AND HISTORICAL CONTEXT **
“Queen's Head Pub in Memorial Hall
“Admission is free
“Reservations required at www.blackmass.info”
The text in quotes is centered on the page, and there is a photo below it with a commonly-used illustration of the event.
The night schoolers, for all their other mistakes, stupidities, misjudgments, etc., were quite open about what they were doing and with whom they were doing it.
sitetest
If I recall, they were not kicked off campus, but were instead identified as a group that was conducting a hateful program designed to denigrate a class of students. Apparently, that letter by the president (?) of Harvard had them reschedule on their own.
You ask a legitimate question, though. How can we shout one group down and justify our belief that others should not shout Christians down?
We have to begin with the limits. At right end of a continuum (1) we have absolutely harmless speech. (See Jane run.) At the left end of our continuum (10) we have speech that is designed at that very moment in time intentionally to take the lives of many in attendance and/or in close proximity to the speaker. (We hate Thalotraxians, pull out your knives, and let’s kill them now!”)
How far to the left side of the continuum does degrading a class of people (Catholics/Christians) go? It isn’t a 10. I have no problem with using police to stop a 10, a direct intent to kill at that moment.
I would consider the Satanic incident to be “demonizing” (no pun intended but certainly recognized) that class of people and intending them harm/degradation. Dehumanizing was the Nazi tactic against Jews, and it did lead to systematic deaths as a result of an information campaign that taught Jews were dangerous and expendable.
Dehumanizing strikes me as about an 8, because it isn’t immediate death to those attacked. Demonizing, then, as a prior step would be about a 7.
But, we’re also talking falling dominoes here. Allow a continued demonizing to take place, and you will accomplish dehumanizing and then slide into killing.
So, it isn’t really “hate speech” that should be controlled. It’s “death speech”. The steps prior to that should cause concern.
Well, I would call it the fault of those who wrote the articles that didn’t include important information. It is very important, though, to know that those who actually WANT to injure Catholics/Christians are behind that evasion they explained as a “reenactment”.
It would be like the Catholic chaplain saying they doing a reenactment of a mass and not really conducting a mass. His presence would mean it was no simple reenactment.
“If I recall, they were not kicked off campus,...”
In the first place, their spot on campus was not provided by the university in the way that space is ordinarily provided to student groups. It wasn't provided to them at all. They rented space on a first-come, first-save basis from the campus bar.
I don't think they'd have lasted 20 minutes if, instead of renting the bar in the basement of Memorial Hall, they'd gotten an auditorium in the science center or someplace.
They had a rental contract.
“Kicking them off campus” would have meant canceling a legally-binding contract, which would have been one step further down the road than denying them previously-promised free space.
Put the shoe on the other foot - what if Harvard had unwittingly allowed a pro-life group focused on showing graphic pictures of abortions to rent the bar? What would you say if Harvard tore up THAT rental contract?
Yet, in the second place, the administration LED BY THE PRESIDENT orchestrated their own campaign against the night schoolers, from the outset calling their actions also sorts of mean, pejorative names.
Do you REALLY think the night schoolers gave up their PAID location out of the goodness of their hearts? Or do you think that perhaps there were some private conversations along the lines of:
“You night schoolers have put us in an untenable position. We propose that you should ‘voluntarily’ do the right thing, and we will publicly back your right to have met in the bar, even while we kick you in the teeth for being a bunch of gob-smacked, brainless bigots. The alternative is... well,... you may not really want us to discuss the alternative with you folks, just right now. We're sure you're going to do the right thing.”
As it is, it's pretty clear, if only implicit, that the university HAD drawn the line at the use of an unconsecrated host. This gives them the needed cover when they DO ban an actual Koran-burning. But I suspect a group that rented the bar to burn the Koran in effigy would receive the same treatment the night schoolers got - defend in principle their right to do that, but turn up the heat so hot, so fast, that eventually the frogs would jump out of the pot.
Other groups on campus have, over the years, engaged in activities that have been seen as “dehumanizing” of other groups. I've cited a pro-life campaign from a few years back that, to me, looked innocent and sweet. But pro-aborts on campus were outraged. I imagine that the not-insignificant number of Harvardians on campus who have actually had an abortion may have been personally convicted in their heart of sin, of murder. You know the reactions of folks who feel that conviction. If they're not ready to repent, their feelings can be very hostile, very angry. They may feel very, very wounded and attacked.
Yet, official Harvard said nothing.
This is not a school with a faultless record on these issues. But it is a school that struggles to be fair, in its own eyes, and in my opinion, they didn't fall far from the mark in the present case.
Ultimately, xzins, the issue you raise begs the question, "who sets the limits?"
I promise you, it's no longer you or me or anyone like you or me. We do well to encourage the broadest limits possible, otherwise we will find those limits applied to us with increasing frequency.
sitetest
Dear xzins,
Actually, it is my understanding (although I may be in error), that to teach folks in the seminary, actual priests do re-enact the Mass with seminarians to teach them how to celebrate the Mass, but without the intention of confecting the Blessed Sacrament each time.
sitetest
"The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision
of what is before them, glory and danger alike,
and yet notwithstanding, go out to meet it."~Thucydides
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Having been a seminarian — though not Roman Catholic — there’s nothing that is led by an ordained Professor that is viewed as simple practice. The environment of seminary changes it. I’m probably presuming too much, my coming from a protestant setting, but I remember seminary being “holy ground” for want of a better way to describe it.
I think "death speech" is a fair limit, sitetest. All I ask you is to pray about what I was trying to communicate and not what this feeble brain of mine sometimes seems to be stumbling inexactly to put into words.
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