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Wednesday, May 8, 2019

Satanists For Religious Liberty

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Lucian Greaves (in horns), co-founder of Satanic Temple Lucian Greaves (in horns), co-founder of Satanic Temple

In case we needed any more evidence that the United States media is anti-Christian, National Public Radio (NPR) titled an April 18th headline, Review: ‘Hail Satan?’ Is Devilishly Compelling. (Remember, NPR is partially funded by our tax dollars.)

The article is a movie review of a so-called documentary called “Hail Satan” which covers the goings-on of an organization called The Satanic Temple. NPR also aired an interview with the founder of the Satanic Temple who goes by the name “Lucian Greaves” and the director of the documentary, named “Penny Lane,” on April 27.  “Penny Lane” has won awards from liberal film festivals and previously made a short film in 2005 called “The Abortion Diaries” where she interviewed women about their abortions.

Mr. Greaves founded the Satanic Temple to irritate Christians, but also as an activist group to make a point about the concept of religious freedom. 

Ironically, Mr. Greaves’ point on religious freedom stands as an embarrassment for the Neo-Catholics and Vatican II. For the Council and its promoters, including Fr. John Courtney Murray, helped jettison the centuries-old concept of the Catholic Confessional State and replaced it with religious liberty.

Religious liberty is the idea that the state should make no distinction between the one true religion founded by Jesus Christ and any sort of heretical, schismatic, or pagan sect.

penny lane interviewGreaves and Lane interviewed to promote "Hail Satan?"

In more recent times we have seen every Conciliar Pope as well as Neo-Catholic luminaries such as George Weigel praise the concept.

Well, Mr. Weigel and his ilk can now celebrate the fruits of their labors as the Internal Revenue Service has recently declared the Satanic Temple a “tax-exempt Church” under the tax code.  As the New York Times reports, “The group says the designation will help in religious discrimination legal cases and allow it to pursue faith-based government grants.”

The state’s recognition of “The Satanic Temple” as a religion, is, of course absurd. For a religion, by any meaningful definition of the word, includes the worship of a deity or deities. However, even though Mr. Greaves chose to name his organization after Satan, he admits he is nothing more than an atheist. For neither he nor his organization even believes in the existence of Satan. They simply use him as a metaphor for run-of-the-mill secular humanist ideals. Thus, the state of faith is so poor in the United States that Satanists don’t even believe in Satan anymore.

The entire organization then, is merely a bunch of atheist and anti-Christian activists with no real religion to speak of. They have fun using blasphemy to upset Christians and attempt to attack the religious liberty protections of Christians by obtaining those same protections for their pretend religion.

Yet, what can the Neo-Catholics say against it? For don’t they hold the Vatican II principle that the state is incompetent to intervene in religious affairs.

Even if the “Satanic Temple” truly did worship Satan as a god, how would they convince a state they think should be agnostic, that the Satanic religion should not enjoy the same protections as other religions? They can’t. Thus, in the ideal “Catholic” state of a George Weigel and Vatican II, “The Satanic Temple” would have just as many rights as the Catholic Church.

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Last modified on Wednesday, May 8, 2019
Chris Jackson | Remnant Columnist

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