Why We Must Oppose the Satanic Offensive
Luiz Sérgio Solimeo
In this age of complete relativism, some uphold the “right” to practice any aberration not only in the moral order but also in the spiritual sphere. Thus, they advocate the supposed “right” of atheists and unbelievers—and even Satan worshipers!—to ostensibly display their hatred of Christianity.
To many, such hateful displays are harmless manifestations that do not endanger the common good. They are to be allowed because they are believed to be without consequences.
Indeed, such views were put to the test in recent years, when parodies of the Holy Mass and sacrileges against sacred objects occurred in several states. The ferocity of these attacks shocked countless Americans who now question the actions of Satanists. This was seen as the year 2015 came to a close with the satanic desecration of a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary on Christmas Eve in front of St. Joseph’s Old Catholic Cathedral in Oklahoma City—with the permission and protection of municipal authorities.[1]
True Law Is Inseparable from Morals
Although these acts may be legally practiced in our day, they in no way represent a moral “right” to carry out these offensive outrages. They must be seen as an attempt to separate society and morality. And that is where the danger lies.
Society cannot exist without morality. To understand how absurd this separation is, we must remember that true law is inseparable from morals, which in turn is based not only on Divine Revelation but also on natural law. Now the fundamental principle of natural law—and therefore of morality—is that “good is to be done and pursued, and evil is to be avoided.” This principle is intuitive and self-evident to man as soon as the light of reason dawns in him.[2]
“Satan is Symbolic of the Eternal Rebel”
From pagan antiquity, the devil, under various designations and representations, was always seen as a being that rebels against God and His law.
Among the Greeks, for example, we find the Promethean myth. According to mythology, Prometheus, one of the Titans, rebelled against Zeus (the supreme god) and was punished by being chained to a rock for eternity. The poet Aeschylus (fifth century B.C.), in his tragedy titled Prometheus Bond, shows Prometheus’ hatred and revolt in the following verses:
I hate all the Gods….
Mistake me not; I would not, if I might,
Change my misfortunes for thy vassalage.[3]
Mistake me not; I would not, if I might,
Change my misfortunes for thy vassalage.[3]
Aeschylus’ description of the revolt of Prometheus is very similar to that of the Israelites against God, referred to by the prophet Jeremias (seventh century B.C.), when he says:
Of old time thou hast broken my yoke, thou hast burst my bands, and thou saidst: I will not serve (Jer. 2:20).
The words “Non serviam” (“I will not serve”) have come to be an expression of the rejection of God and have been applied to Lucifer.
Today’s Satanists worship the same revolted being, precisely because he is revolted and rejects any law or submission to God. This is reflected on the site of the Satanic Temple of Detroit, for example, where one reads:
Satan is symbolic of the Eternal Rebel … the heretic who questions sacred laws and rejects all tyrannical impositions.[4]
Satan Worship Is Contrary to Natural Law
Natural law—that is, the dictate of our intelligence that we should do good and reject evil—tells us that we must seek the Supreme Good, which is God.
We owe Him gratitude for our existence and for the gifts received. And that gratitude should lead us to render Him not only a worship of reverence but one of true adoration for His infinite perfection and holiness.
Conversely, the same natural law shows us that it is an aberration to revere the one who rebelled against God—the Supreme Good—and became the symbol of evil. Hence the cult of Satan is contrary to the natural law, which commands us to worship the Supreme Good, which is God, and to reject evil.
Thus the laws that permit and protect the public worship of Satan are not true laws and do not oblige morally.[5] For “human positive law is not true law if it opposes the natural law.”[6]
“Neutrality” in the Face of Evil Leads to Totalitarianism
The alleged “right” to publicly worship Satan comes from modern secularism, which sought a law not based on morals. It envisioned a legal order disengaged from natural law and completely neutral regarding good and evil.
As Pope Pius XII (pope from 1939 to 1958) noted, this positivist law is not based on human nature but on the power of the State. Nor is it neutral, since it often paves the way for the rise of brutal totalitarian states.
Speaking after the carnage of World War II, the Pontiff pondered:
Indeed, if you remove from juridical order its foundation, the natural and positive Divine law, which is therefore immutable, State law is all that is left to base juridical order on, and there you have established the principle of the absolute State. In turn, this absolute State will necessarily seek to subject all things to its arbitrary power and especially to use the law for its own ends.
Further on the Pope shows how necessary it is to restore legislation based on the moral order founded on God and on natural law, which is the only efficient criterion to distinguish just from unjust laws. He claims it is a criterion “which is already perceived by the sole light of reason based on the nature of things and of man, a criterion of law the Creator inscribed in the human heart (Rom. 2:14-15) and expressly confirmed by Revelation.”[7]
Totalitarianism and Satanism
When the State is the sole determent of what is just or unjust, it leads to the greatest abuses. A juridical order not bound to moral and natural law leaves open the gates for totalitarian regimes to enter. For its part, the totalitarian State can take its abuse of power to its final consequences by imposing a satanic order of things. That was precisely what happened with the Nazi regime.
Fr. Alois Mager, OSB (1883-1946), a German specialist in mysticism who lived through the horrors of Nazism, shows the connection between Satan and National Socialism.
Taking the words of Our Lord that define the devil as a murderer and liar, he says:
These are the two signs which characterize the satanic: lying and murder.
Now lying and murder are the expression of the essence of National Socialism. Never before have they been committed so entirely for their own sake with such cold premeditation, in so passionless a reflex, and with such complete fanaticism, as being the motive power of the life of a whole nation.
The Nazis exploited men’s unruly passions, a consequence of Original Sin, to impose their power: “A radical sexual amorality was extolled in the schools, in the Hitler Youth camps, in the ‘Ordensburgen’ [training schools for Nazi leaders] and in the S.S. barracks.”
The learned scholar explains that when man fails to fight his unruly tendencies but instead cultivates them, he opens the doors to the devil: “These doors are set open when man, consciously and experimentally, lets himself be guided by the impulse of the triple result of original sin in thought, will and action. This is what makes man a slave; this is what fetters him in the use of his liberty.”
In this sense, National Socialism was not a mere political movement. Its goal was to impose a satanic worldview on a global scale and reorganize the lives of individuals and society on that basis. “Demonism in this form becomes a general phenomenon. Nor is this all. It becomes, both for the individual and for society, a form of life and activity: on it is to be based a new organization of the world and humanity.”
In short, Father Mager quotes Canon Neuhaser, who spent years in a Nazi concentration camp:
There is a close connection between Satan and National Socialism: Satanic was the hatred of National Socialism against Christianity and all that was sacred. Satanic were the methods of warfare and the propaganda of National Socialism. Satanic were the brutality and cruelty of National Socialism.
And the Benedictine scholar concludes in a lapidary way:
There is no definition more concise, more precise, or better adapted to the nature of Hitler than this – medium of Satan.
Does the “Spirit of National Socialism” Survive in Our Days?
Although Nazism had been defeated, Fr. Alois Mager wrote the following words in 1946, which we would call prophetic, as they appear to describe today’s situation:
The spirit of National Socialism slips in everywhere, although it may present itself under different forms and in different degrees from those which it assumed in the days of Hitlerism. It is the spirit of conscious neo-paganism, which raises the three consequences of original sin to an ideal of life. Wherever this takes place, the doors are suddenly thrown open to the satanic.[8]
To What Extent Do Catholics Notice Satanic Influence?
Prof. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira saw satanic influence in the revolutionary process and markedly in its new stage, which started in the sixties with the student uprisings that in turn began the Sexual Revolution and cultural communism.
However, few at that point were aware of that influence. The distinguished Catholic leader asked:
To what degree may a Catholic perceive the deceitful flashes, the canticle (at once sinister and attractive, soothing and delirious, atheistic and fetishistically credulous) with which, from the bottom of the abysses where he lies eternally, the Prince of Darkness attracts those who have denied Jesus Christ and His Church?[9]
Secularism and Satanism
The secularism that came to dominate modern states after the Enlightenment, established a neutral legal system in religious matters. However, in some countries, such as the United States, that confessional neutrality coexisted with discreet sympathy towards Christianity, which was the basis of its founding and is professed by a majority of its population. Such sympathies prevented the public worship of Satan and similar aberrations.
However, as American society gradually drifted away from Christianity and bowed to the pressure of the Sexual Revolution and cultural communism, that sympathy began to vanish and turned, first into indifference, then into antipathy, which is now giving rise to thinly veiled persecution. Increasingly, activist judges “legislating from the bench” have interpreted the Constitution in a sense opposed to the mind of the Founding Fathers, that is, clearly at variance with Christianity.
The result is a society without morality and an increasingly totalitarian action on the part of an ever-growing State. This can be seen, interestingly enough, in the rulings by secularist judges that impose a kind of “anti-morality” upon society that often tries to force Christians to act against their consciences. This Satanic “anti-morality” upholds, for example, blasphemy,[10] abortion, homosexual “marriage”, sadomasochism,[11] and euthanasia.[12]
“Begone, Satan…the Lord Thy God Shalt Thou Adore”
In the final analysis, the choice is between a morality and an anti-morality. That is why it is so important that good Christians protest and continue to be engaged in the Culture War that rages. Such efforts to uphold morality are the only defense against a satanic agenda that is by its nature intolerant of any Christian order and a promoter of every disorder. Like its author, this disorder promises prestige, wealth and pleasure and delivers illusions and misery.
In his demonic dementia, Satan wants to be worshiped as God. This is what he dared to propose to the Son of God when he tempted Our Lord in the desert:
All these [kingdoms of the world] will I give thee, if falling down thou wilt adore me.
To which the Savior replied:
Begone, Satan: for it is written, The Lord thy God shalt thou adore, and him only shalt thou serve (Matt. 4:9-10).---------------------------------
1.
James Bascom, “Catholics Defend Virgin Mary in Oklahoma as Satanists Attack Her,” http://www.tfpstudentaction.org/what-we-do/news-and-updates/catholics-defend-virgin-mary-in-oklahoma-as-satanists-attack-her.html. ↑
2.
“The
precepts of the natural law are to the practical reason, what the first
principles of demonstrations are to the speculative reason; because
both are self-evident principles…. Consequently, the first
principle of practical reason is one founded on the notion of good, that
is to say, that ‘good is that which all things seek after.’ Hence, this
is the first precept of law, that ‘good is to be done and pursued, and evil is to be avoided.’”
Saint Thomas, Summa Theologica, I, II, q.94, a.2, c. [our emphasis]. ↑
Saint Thomas, Summa Theologica, I, II, q.94, a.2, c. [our emphasis]. ↑
3.
Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound, at http://classics.mit.edu/Aeschylus/prometheus.html, accessed January 7, 2016. ↑
4.
http://thesatanictempledetroit.com/about-us-2/ (accessed January 04, 2016). ↑
5.
There
are times when the State, given the circumstances, needs to tolerate
some form of evil in order to avoid a greater one. This circumstantial
and limited tolerance has nothing to do with recognizing a supposed
right to do something evil. ↑
6.
Ioannes di Napoli, Ethica, in Manuale Philosophiae, v. III, Marietti, Turin, 1961, p. 219. ↑
7.
Pie XII, Allocution au Tribunal de la Rote, 13 novembre 1949, in Moines de Solesmes, Les Enseignements Pontificaux−La Paix Intérieure des Nations, Desclée & Cie, Paris, 1952, pp. 542, 546-547. ↑
8.
Dom Alois Mager O.S.B., Satan In Our Day, in, Père Bruno de Jesus-Marie, O.D.C. (Editor), Satan, Sheed & Ward, New York, 1952, pp. 498-506. ↑
9.
Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, Revolution and Counter-Revolution, Part III, I, A. at http://www.tfp.org/tfp-home/books/revolution-and-counter-revolution-v15-1370.html ↑
10.
The
Satanic Temple: “We embrace blasphemy as a legitimate expression of
personal independence from counter-productive traditional norms,” http://jezebel.com/satanic-temple-72-hour-abortion-waiting-period-is-agai-1701520935 (accessed 12/28/15). ↑
11.
Cf. The Church of Satan: F.A.Q. Sexuality, http://www.churchofsatan.com/faq-sexuality.php (accessed 12/28/15). ↑
12.
Modern Church of Satan, http://modernchurchofsatan.com/grotto/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2020.