The Satanic Temple folks late last night were trying to suggest that maybe it did—but details are a little sketchy: A scaled-down version of the event, without the original sponsorship of the Harvard Extension Cultural Studies Club, was apparently held late Monday by members of the New York-based Satanic Temple off campus, at the Hong Kong lounge in Harvard Square. Lucien Greaves, a temple spokesman, said in an e-mail at 10:35 p.m. that the mass was “happening now” at the... Read more
From the Harvard Crimson: 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... Read more
Sharp and funny words of wisdom from Pope Francis today: Pope Francis told seminarians not to become “orphan priests,” who are motherless without Mary; “businessman priests,” who are after money; or “prince priests,” who are aloof from the people. He also warned them not to give “boring homilies,” saying their reflections should be brief, powerful and address the problems and concerns people are really going through. In a private audience in the Vatican’s Paul VI hall with thousands of seminarians... Read more
Frank Weathers has the scoop: The Harvard Extension School Cultural Studies Club said it will 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 emphasized 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... Read more
What to give the priest or deacon who has everything. Read more
From a newspaper in Alaska.It doesn’t get much worse than this. Read all about it here. Read more
From First Things, here’s an essay that looks at the recent Pew Study about Hispanic Catholics, and comes to some notable conclusions: Perhaps given Catholicism’s relatively deep roots in Spanish-speaking countries and its close links to many cultural practices, some Hispanic Americans experience the faith less as a relationship with God and more as an element of their ethnicity, to be expressed or set aside as they choose. If this is the case, it’s not surprising that many Hispanics abandon... Read more
I was intrigued to stumble upon an interesting factoid on Wikipedia this morning: Drew Faust, the president of Harvard University, who just released a statement condemning the Black Mass on her campus, is descended from the great Puritan preacher Jonathan Edwards. Edwards is studied in classrooms around the world for his rafter-shaking sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.“ With that work, Edwards elevated the humble sermon to the realm of literature, and it’s rightly considered an American... Read more
From The Anchoress: The reenactment of a ‘black mass’ planned by a student group affiliated with the Harvard Extension School challenges us to reconcile the dedication to free expression at the heart of a university with our commitment to foster a community based on civility and mutual understanding. Vigorous and open discussion and debate are essential to the pursuit of knowledge, and we must uphold these values even in the face of controversy. Freedom of expression, as Justice Holmes famously... Read more
The subject came up during his daily homily this morning: “Who are we to close the doors ” to the Holy Spirit? This was the question that Pope Francis repeated this morning during his homily at Mass at Casa Santa Marta, a homily dedicated to the conversion of the first pagans to Christianity. The Holy Spirit, he reiterated, is what makes the Church to go “beyond the limits, go ever forward.” The Spirit blows where it wills, but one of... Read more
The Deacon's Bench
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