At noon Wednesday, local time, attorneys representing the Archdiocese of Oklahoma filed a lawsuit concerning the satanic “black mass” scheduled to be held on Sept. 21 at the Oklahoma City Civic Center Music Hall.
As previously reported by Breitbart News, a group calling itself Dakhma of Angra Mainyu, led by registered sex offender Adam Daniels, has announced that it is in possession of a Consecrated Host – a communion wafer transformed, according to Catholic doctrine, by a priest in good standing into the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ – which it intends to desecrate during the ceremony.
The lawsuit is asking the Oklahoma County Sheriff’s office to get the Consecrated Host back and return it to its rightful owner, the Catholic Church, and specifically, the archdiocese.
Speaking to the National Catholic Register, Oklahoma City Archbishop Paul Coakley said, “Our contention is that they are in possession of stolen property. They cannot complete their satanic ritual without a Consecrated Host, and they have no means of acquiring one except through theft. We are asking the court to order them to return it immediately to me.”
The satanists have stood upon First Amendment grounds to defend their holding of the event – and local officials have cited that as a reason why the group was able to rent the taxpayer-funded space – but the lawsuit doesn’t touch on that.
One of the attorneys who filed the suit (in association with a local firm) is Michael Caspino, the CEO and a partner at Busch & Caspino law firm in Irvine, California, in Orange County south of Los Angeles. He says the firm has represented the Catholic Church in a variety of cases, and he is acquainted with Archbishop Coakley.
Said Caspino, speaking earlier Wednesday to Breitbart news:
I contacted him to talk to him about the legal theory that we filed on, which was a property-rights issue. He was looking for some way to try to remedy the situation, and he liked our idea.
It came to me when I was at Mass about ten days ago. I was thinking about the case, because I’d read about it in the National Catholic Register, and I was thinking, ‘It’s really a property-rights issue.’ So we’re raising it, and we’re going full-bore with it.
We’ve filed all the paperwork, just got everything signed off by the judge today, on a temporary order that [Daniels] cannot, in any way, harm a Consecrated Eucharist. He just did that an hour ago on another order, to preserve the Eucharist for a hearing that will eventually take place.
This is not a First Amendment issue. We’re not trying to censor anybody. We just want our property back. That’s it. It’s a simple property-rights case.
All this, of course, presumes Daniels is telling the truth in asserting he is in possession of a Consecrated Host, which he has been quoted as saying came to him by mail.
Says Caspino, “If they come out and say, ‘We lied, this is not a Eucharistic Host, it’s not a Consecrated Host,’ and they’re willing to do that under penalty of perjury, then we’ll drop our lawsuit, no problem.”
Caspino says the legal argument is based on both the Church’s own rules and on civil law.
“We have a 2,000-year history of exercising dominion and control over a Eucharistic Host,” he explains. “You can’t take the Host out of a church unless it is taken with permission of a priest to someone who’s sick or dying, in a special vessel. So we have all these rules, and we very strictly abide by these rules.”
“So the only way Adam Daniels could have gotten a Host is if someone stole it out of a church, out of a [locked] tabernacle… or they got it by fraud,” he went on. “By fraud I would mean this: they went to a church, posed as a Catholic in good standing and good graces with the Church, took a Host, and somehow were able to walk out with it.”
Caspino points out this can only be done by subterfuge, because priests, deacons, or lay ministers handing out communion are trained to ensure the communicant consumes the Host in their presence.
In speaking to the Register, Daniels said, “It will not work. We are not cancelling.”
Daniels also said he would “sue everybody I can sue” for defamation of character and noted that the court has fourteen days to find him to serve him with papers.
“The interesting thing is,” says Caspino, “because he’s a convicted sex offender, he has to register his address with the state, so we know exactly where he is.”
Regarding Daniels’s insistence that he won’t cancel the event, Caspino says, “I’m not asking him to cancel at all. I’m just asking for the Eucharistic Host back, the Consecrated Host. That’s it.”
As for “defamation of character,” Caspino says, “I have no idea. All we’re responding to is his public statements, and that’s it. If he has a problem with us calling him a satanist in our papers… that’s what he says he is.”
Even if the event is not cancelled, provided the Host is either returned to Archbishop Coakley, or Daniels testifies, under oath, that he doesn’t have one, Caspino would consider that a win.
“Absolutely,” he says, “because we’ve protected the Blessed Sacrament” – another term for a Eucharistic or Consecrated Host – “and we’ve protected what we, as Catholics, believe to be the body of Jesus Christ.”
Caspino also hopes a positive outcome from his perspective will serve as a warning to others, as a “wakeup call to those who are doing these types of things, that it’s not legal. We all know it’s not right, but it’s not legal, and the justice system will have spoken on this.”
“In my career, this is probably the most important thing I’m ever going to do,” he said. “Because I’m protecting the body of Jesus Christ.”
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