Oklahoma City, Okla., Aug 20, 2014 / 10:05 am
Organizers of a satanic black mass slated to take place in Oklahoma City next month face a lawsuit on grounds that the consecrated Host used for the sacrilegious event is stolen.
"We are honored to represent Archbishop Coakley in this fight against the desecration of the Blessed Sacrament," attorney Michael W. Caspino told The National Catholic Register. "The archbishop should be lauded for his courageous stance against the enemies of the Church."
"Our legal theory is very simple," he continued, "a Consecrated Eucharist belongs to the Church."
"The Church has exercised dominion and control over the Eucharist for 2000 years. The Satanists procured the Consecrated Host by illicit means, by theft or fraud. We are simply asking the Court to return the stolen property to its rightful owner, the Roman Catholic Church."
The lawsuit was filed in Oklahoma City District Court Aug. 20 on behalf of the local archdiocese by Busch & Caspino.
On Sept. 21, a black mass is scheduled to take place at the Oklahoma City Civic Center music hall.
Connected to witchcraft and demonic worship, a black mass is a sacrilegious ceremony structured as a parody of the Catholic Mass. Invoking Satan, the ritual is centered around the desecration of the Eucharist, which is generally done by stealing a consecrated host from a Catholic church and using it in a profane sexual ritual, or defecating and urinating on it.
The event organizer Adam Daniels said the purported Eucharistic Host was "mailed to us by (a) friend."
"As far as I know, the host mailed to me is consecrated," he told the Catholic news site Aleteia Aug. 6.
In July, an official with the city music hall defended the decision, citing the hall's neutrality policy. She told CNA that as long as no laws were broken during the event itself, the city hall was not concerned with whether laws may be broken in obtaining a consecrated host ahead of time. She said that similar events scheduled in previous years had poor or no attendance.
Archbishop Paul Coakley of Oklahoma City has called on the civic center to reconsider hosting the event, which he described as "grievous sacrilege and blasphemy of the first order."
Black masses, he told CNA in July, revolve around "taking what is most sacred to us as Catholics, and mocking it, desecrating it, in vile, often violent and sexually explicit ways."
"It's obviously horrendous…what they intend to do with that consecrated Host is offensive beyond description."
Archbishop Coakley and other bishops in nearby dioceses have called for novenas of prayer and fasting to stop the black mass.
A similar event scheduled by Harvard Extension School's Cultural Studies Club in May was "postponed indefinitely" amid protest among students and the local community.