Fr. Z's Blog

From a reader…

QUAERITUR:

After a black mass or an occult rite occurs that consecrates the sanctuary of a Catholic Church to Lucifer (heaven forbid), but before that sacred space has been reconsecrated and restored for Catholic use, what would be the consequences of a Mass that was celebrated in that same sanctuary? Would the Mass still be valid?

Were a church to be mistreated like that, desecrated, before the space is used for liturgical worship again it ought to be re-consecrated.

If, by chance, that doesn’t happen, re-consecration, and Mass is celebrated in that place, there is no question that the Mass would be valid.

The true celebrant of every Mass is the High Priest, Jesus, Son of God.  Christ is not thwarted by the “Prince of this world”.  As the Lord says, the Enemy has nothing on Him (John 14:30).

When the ordained priest, alter Christus, acting in Christ’s person, in persona Christi, says the words of consecration over bread and wine, the wonderous change of transubstantiation takes place.   The two-fold consecration separates the Body and Blood.  The priest consumes both species of the Eucharist.  The Sacrifice is renewed.

There is nothing that the enemy can do to change that or thwart that, short of some sort of demonic party trick to distract the priest.

The Mass, even in a desecrated place, would be valid.

I am more and more concerned about the lack of awareness that many Catholic priests and bishops seem to have about the supernatural battle that is being waged around us and about the real difference between, for example, invocative and constitutive blessings, the transcendent and immanent, the sacred and the profane.

There are sacred – sacred – things, places and people.   Sacred means that they have been removed by constitutive blessings and by consecrations from the realm of the “Prince of this world” and handed over to the King.  Sacred does not necessarily mean “better” in a worldly sense.   Ordination to the priesthood, which makes a man a sacred person, doesn’t confer on him greater intelligence or strength, etc.  Sacred means that the person (priests and consecrated religious) or places (churches, cemeteries) or things (chalices, rosaries, vestments, bells, etc.) are now set apart for the service of God.

One of the dire effects of Modernism that pervades every level of the Church right now, involves a need constantly to try to reduce the supernatural to the natural, to discount the sacred and bring it into the profane or secular.  “Profane”, as an opposite of sacred, doesn’t mean “bad”.  It means “not sacred”, in the sense that it is not consecrated.  It still belongs to the world.  It is “pro+fanum … outside the fanum, the temple“.   Something that is sacred is dedicated to the service of God.  The profane is still under the domination of the “Prince”.  That doesn’t mean that thing is “evil”.  And there are sacred persons and places and things that are used for evil purposes.  The sad horror is that living sacred beings, such as priests who do not lose their consecration, can be true agents of evil… a horrible distortion of the sacred.  Misuse of the sacred is “profanation”.

Sometimes when I look around at what is going on, I read the news about churchy issues, I wonder if any of the movers and shapers have a sense anymore – if they had it at all – of the spiritual realm and the battle that is perpetually going on, between the faithful holy angels and the fallen apostate angels.  I look at how Mass is celebrated, consider the music and the vestments and the comportment of all involved (especially manifested in the ars celebrandi of the priest or bishop) and wonder if they have any notion of the sacred and the profane, the transcendent and immanent.

Quite a lot of Catholics today are mired in what might be called Immanentism Lite.  It’s not that they deny the transcendent.  They just don’t ever think about it.  If pushed, they will sort of get the idea that there is a difference.  But they’ve never been led to think about it.  Why would they?

Think about what they see in their churches on Sundays, the catechesis they had, the sermons they’ve heard, the news stories about corrupt priests and bishops, mad and even plainly idolatrous antics at the highest levels.

Do they get a sense of the sacred from all of that?

No wonder Traditional Catholics are the most marginalized demographic in the Church.    They and what they want give a large number of our leaders the willies: they fear what they don’t grasp.

There is obviously a spectrum of awareness of the sacred and the profane, transcendent and immanent.

Back to the question.

Would Mass be valid in a church so desecrated?  Yes.  However, lingering problems would more than likely remain, probably to manifest themselves “sideways”, as it were, in and around the place.

This would be the case if the church were tiny and humble St. Ipsidipsy in Tall Tree Circle or St. Peter’s Basilica on the Vatican Hill.