Baal worship in Los Angeles?

Pagan? Definitely. Christian? Implausibly. Catholic? In whose overheated imagination? This, my friends, is the Liturgy of the Word from the 2008 LA Religious Education Congress Mass, presided over -- if you can find him -- by the irrepressible Roger Michael Cardinal Mahony.

If I squinted really hard, and maybe dropped acid, I suppose I could imagine some sort distal relationship to an etiolated Christianity here somewhere -- perhaps like Israel's worship of the Golden Calf beneath Mt. Sinai could be seen as having a distal relationship to her broken covenant with Jehovah. But as I watch this video, I keep looking for a Golden Calf to appear somewhere. I keep expecting a sacrificial virgin to be carried out and place on the altar and prepared for human sacrifice. And I keep asking myself: is there anything in these precincts beside the gaggle of usual suspects in liturgical vestments among the dancing nymphs that is remotely reminiscent of Catholicism here?

Is this the future of Catholic liturgy, the Source and Summit of our lives, of which the liturgical arthitects of Vatican II desired us to drink deeply for our spiritual sustenance? Vade retro Satana! Nunquam suade mihi vana. Sunt mala quae libas. Ipse venena libas.

Pax.

[Hat tip to N.B.]