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Catholics in the United States are outraged that local government officials in Oklahoma City have approved a Satanic Black Mass in a city building.
The event, scheduled for September 21 in the Oklahoma City Center Music Hall, will involve the desecration of a consecrated host taken illicitly from a Catholic Church.
The Black Mass will be staged by Satanist group Dakhma of Angra Mainyu, but it says the event has been toned down to allow it to be performed in a public government building.
Lawyers for Oklahoma City’s municipal government say the occultists have a right to lease the public space under the US Constitution’s first amendment, which guarantees freedom of speech.
Catholic Archbishop Paul Coakley said he was disappointed at the city’s response.
“If someone had come to them to rent the Civic Center to stage a burning of the Koran or to hold an event that was blatantly and clearly anti-Semitic, I think they might find a way to prevent it,” he said.
He said hate speech intended to ridicule religion is not protected by the constitution.
Archbishop Coakley urged churchgoers to prayer to St Michael the Archangel at the end of Masses until September 29.
Oklahoma City has 120,000 Catholics.
He said the host would be desecrated “in the vilest ways imaginable” and then offered to Satan.
It is believed the event will involve stomping on the host.
The black Mass is a “blasphemous and obscene inversion of the Catholic Mass”, Archbishop Coakley said.
Bishop Edward Slattery of Tulsa released a similar message.
He urged parishioners to fast and pray for the event’s cancellation.
As of August 8, only 13 tickets had been sold to the Black Mass, which will be monitored by police.
The leader of Dakhma of Angra Mainyu, Adam Daniels, is a registered sex offender.
Oklahoma City’s city manager has received thousands of emails and phone calls demanding the cancellation of the event.
Writing in the National Catholic Reporter, columnist Phyllis Zagano noted that Oklahoma state has blasphemy laws and they should be enforced.
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