May 18, 2014 The Black Mass at Harvard
“Veritas Christo et Ecclesiae.”
“Truth for Christ and the Church.”
In view of what Harvard has become today, it seems oddly shocking to read what was once the motto of America’s oldest university.
It seems odder still that an early directive to Harvard students laid out the purpose of all education as follows:
“Let
every student be plainly instructed and consider well that the main end
of his life and studies is to know God and Jesus, which is eternal
life. And therefore to lay Christ at the bottom as the only foundation
of all sound learning and knowledge.”
How things have changed since the Christian piety of John Harvard.
Nowadays, such is the adherence to the progressivism’s principle of unthinking push for “diversity” that the Harvard Community of Atheists, Humanists and Agnostics
positively glowed about Atheist Coming Out Week. The community noted
in a post on their website entitled “Out of the Profane Closet” that the
Harvard Crimson applauded the coming out of atheists as “a very
valuable initiative that we hope will raise awareness of the value of
nonreligious ethics, as well as promote further dialogue and coexistence
between those who seek their codes of conduct in the realm of the
divine and those who don’t.”
Perhaps
the development of “diversity” and the erasure of any sense that any
stance is profane contributed to Harvard’s newer motto and seal, which
contains just one word: “Truth.”
The
idea that Truth can and should be separated from the Christian concept
of a transcendent God who reveals Himself as Truth means that Truth can
be anything one chooses it to be. It means the erasure of any
distinction between the sacred and the profane.
The
reliance on human reasoning without faith and strict adherence to the
progressive doctrine of cultural diversity may have been reasons the
Harvard Extension Cultural Club decided to conduct a “black mass” as an
exercise in “Truth,” describing the satanic rituals as “educational.”
It’s hard to comprehend just how students’ minds would be broadened if they indulged in satanic worship, but according to a Boston Globe
report on the Club’s attempts to create a Faustian atmosphere at the
august university, the Harvard Extension Cultural Club “has continuously
urged critics to widen their understanding of satanic worship.”
The
Globe reports that one unidentified spokesman said the event was meant
“to be educational, not offensive,” adding that “Many Satanists are
animal rights activists, vegetarians and artists with a strong sense of
community.” Satanists, it seems, are actually do-gooders.
The
club tapped the New York-based Satanic Temple to conduct the rituals,
which, following the tenets of the blasphemous Marquis de Sade, have
sometimes been accompanied by bizarre sex acts performed on an altar
dedicated to Satan. Usually the ceremony also includes the desecration
of consecrated host and wine, which Catholics regard reverentially as
the actual body and blood of Christ.
The
“black mass” itself is entirely unoriginal. Worshipping Satan is
accomplished by mocking and imitating by negation the holy rite of the
Eucharist, which is a sacrament at the core of the Catholic (and
Protestant) faiths.
The
black mass is not perceived by any but the deliberately deluded as
“educational.” It is more correctly perceived as a vicious attack on
Christianity, particularly on Catholicism. Certainly many Boston area
Catholics correctly perceived the proposed enactment of a black mass as a
blatant attack on their faith and protested accordingly, much to the
faux shock of Lucien Greaves, spokesman for the New York Satanic Temple,
who stated:
“Everyone
involved, outside of the Satanic Temple, got really scared. And I
don’t necessarily blame them, because I understand that they were
getting a lot of vitriolic hate mail, and I don’t think they expected
it.”
Greaves seems to have absorbed the meaning of Dostoevsky’s observation in The Brothers Karamazov that “if there is no God, then everything is permitted,”
including a black mass. Such is the hubris of those who dismiss
matters of faith as unimportant or remnants of a superstition that
should be discarded as belonging to the trash bin of history. Greaves
probably did not expect, along with the nascent and real Satanists
invited to the educational event, much protest and outright anger from
what he sees as deluded Catholics.
But many Catholics were
quite understandably outraged and protested loudly. For them, if not
Greaves, the black mass was as offensive and outrageous as deliberately
desecrating the Koran is for Muslims.
Catholics’
outrage was potent enough to make the promoters of the black mass back
down. The devotees of Satan finally decided to move the proposed
celebration to the Hong Kong Lounge on Harvard Square, where evidently
their enthusiasm for defiling the Eucharist fizzled out, ending in a few
rounds of drinks.
Regardless
of the fact the event was cancelled, the very fact it was to be held at
Harvard, an institution once devoted to the education of the clergy,
holds some lessons for all Christians, but particularly for Catholics.
First, as the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan observed, apparently anti-Catholicism is still an acceptable prejudice.
But matters are worsening to a degree unanticipated by Catholics and other Christians.
According to the National Catholic Register,
Professor Robert George of Princeton University, an institution also
once as profoundly Christian as Harvard was, recently told attendees of
the Catholic National Prayer Breakfast that he had a “somber message for
them and other Christians: “The days of acceptable Christianity are
over. The days of comfortable Catholicism are past.”
George
went on to warn that a “price is now demanded of all committed
believers.” The professor went on to say that there can be no more
socially acceptable, tame Catholics who are ashamed of the gospel of
Christ. There will be increased costs for Christians who stand up for
the traditional teachings of the Church on the dignity of human life and
marriage.
“To
believe in the Gospel is to make oneself a marked man or woman,” George
said. Certainly the vicious attacks against the twin Benham brothers,
who are very deliberately being ruined by the atheistic Left, their
very livelihood now being attacked because of their stand for
traditional Christian values, are but one example ratifying George’s
warning.
Author
Peter Jesserer Smith goes on to write that Dr. George “reminded his
audience that while Jesus Christ has won the ultimate battle, those who
live during this time must one day ‘give an account for all we do’
before the ‘Lord of truth, the God of history […] One thing and one
thing only will matter: Was I a faithful witness to the Gospel? My
friends, the Gospel is true, and that is the most important thing to
know. We’re betting our whole lives on it.”
John Harvard would have approved of George’s commitment to the veritas of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
It’s
tragic to see how far Harvard, still one of the most revered
educational institutions in the world, has strayed from not just the
gospel of Christ, but even from the quest for any solid bases for Truth
at all, substituting instead puerile, unthinking and dangerous ventures
into the Dark Side.
Fay Voshell is a frequent contributor to American Thinker. Her articles also have been published in National Review, RealClearReligion and PJMedia. She may be reached at fvoshell@yahoo.com