The Satan Club: One H*** of an After School Club for Children

An earlier version of this Worth Revisiting post was first published 7 October 2016 . To enjoy the work of other faithful Catholic bloggers see Worth Revisiting Wednesday, hosted by Elizabeth Reardon at theologyisaverb.com and Allison Gingras at reconciledtoyou.com.

There's A New Club In Town

    Here’s some happy news: the Nehalem Elementary School in Portland, Oregon, has approved a “Satan Club” for its young (i.e., pre-teen) students.  The club is sponsored by a group going by the felicitous name of The Satanic Temple. Does that, or does it not, sound uplifting?

Charming illustration from "Educatin With Satan" website

    I don’t doubt that there are some people who do consider it good news that there will be a club upholding the Prince of Darkness as a role model for youngsters.  In particular, some of a more secular bent may appreciate that this puts those of us in with, shall we say, more traditional religious views, in something of a bind.  After all, aren’t we always carping about religious freedom, and complaining about efforts to exclude religious belief from the public square? Don’t we claim that government has no business deciding what is legitimate religion and what is not?  Are we not, in fact, hypocrites if we try to prevent the satanists from sharing their enthusiasm for Lucifer with the boys and girls at Nehalem Elementary School?

Keeping The Satan In Satanism?

    The answer is, I think, simpler than it might at first appear.  We absolutely ought to oppose as strenuously as we can anything as poisonous as a “satan club” in schools, and no, there is nothing whatsoever hypocritical about it.  Consider the following:

    The satanists themselves make it clear that they are not really a religion.  For instance, The Satanic Temple is also trying to install an after school club in the Seattle, Washington area. The Seattle Times (story here)  quotes Tarkus Claypool, campaign manager for the group in that area, as saying: “We don’t worship a deity . . . We only see Satan as a metaphor for fighting religious tyranny and oppression.” This is a fairly common trope among Satanists, one you might have heard before.  There was a similar quote in the original Fox News article about the Oregon satan club.  That quote has since been removed, perhaps because the spokesperson in Portland also added that most satanists are really atheists, which tends to undercut even further their claim to religious status.

Illustration from the "Educatin With Satan" site

    So, if the satanists don’t really believe in Satan, what is the purpose of their club? “Our curriculum is about teaching them logic, self-empowerment and reasoning”, according to Claypool,  “The most Satanic thing about it is in the healthy snack — we have an apple.”  Finn Rezz, speaking on behalf of the newly-approved Nehalem group in Oregon, adds that, in addition to “science and rational thinking”, the club will promote "benevolence and empathy for everybody."

    If only that were true.  After all, if  all they wanted to do was to promote rational thinking, why not a “Reason Club”? Why not a “Science and Empathy Club”?  Those are perfectly legitimate viewpoints. Why not even an “Atheists Club”?  However much we believers might dislike it, the same laws that allow Christian clubs on school grounds also protect the nonbelievers.  The Satanic Temple has chosen a different route, however, and their choice of the Prince of Lies as their public persona tells us what they’re really about; it has nothing to do with reason or benevolence.

The Devil Is In The Details

    To begin with, let’s talk about Satan.  He has a track record: he’s been a public figure, so to speak, for millennia.  If you were to go out on the street and ask people at random what the Devil represents, what responses will you get?  Most people will, of course,  answer "evil", "sin", "death", "corruption", etc.  How many do you think will say “a metaphor for fighting religious oppression”?  There may be a few, perhaps, but a very few indeed. No, Lucifer’s image has remained true to the source that introduced him to us, the Scriptures.  There we read:

He who commits sin is of the devil; for the devil has sinned from the beginning. (1 John 3:8)

He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies. (John 8:44)

Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. (2 Corinthians 11:14)

Be sober, be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. (1 Peter 5:8)

How rational is it to hold up as a paragon of “reason” a figure who is the enemy of truth, a born liar who hides his true nature?  How appropriate a personification of “empathy and benevolence” is someone known as a murderer who seeks to “devour” the unwary?  My purpose here is not to make a Biblical argument against the satan club, I’m simply pointing out who and what its patron has always been known to be, and what he actually represents. One doesn’t need to believe in the truth of the Bible to recognize that Satan represents the exact opposite of what the satan club claims to promote.

Reason and empathy? A science Lab?  Botticelli, Dante's Inferno Canto XVII

"By Their Fruits You Shall Know Them"

    In fact, their choice of the universally acknowledged personification of every evil as their public face brings to mind another applicable scripture passage: “You will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles? So, every sound tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears evil fruit.” (Matthew 7:16-17).  That’s just common sense, isn’t it? And what are the "fruits" of the satan club advocates? Do the satanists act like people committed to reason, love, and kindness, and do their own self-explanations emphasize any positive message of their own . . . or are their fruits of a different kind?  Let us look again at what they say about themselves.  Seattle satanist Tarkus Claypool says of the satan club, “It’s designed to be a counterpoint to the Good News program.” Portland Oregon’s Finn Rezz says that their satan club "will be held on Wednesdays once a month at the same time as the Good News Club."  In fact, if we look at the FAQ page from the satanists “Educatin With Satan” website, we find that they really have more to say about this “Good News Club” than they do about their nominal patron demon, and certainly more than they do about reason, science, benevolence, empathy put together.  In several places they cite the Good News Club as their reason for being, and they even advise those who might wish to establish a satan club (my bold):

Please keep in mind that The Satanic Temple is not interested in operating After School Satan Clubs in school districts that are not already hosting the Good News Club. However, The Satanic Temple ultimately intends to have After School Satan Clubs operating in every school district where the Good News Club is represented.  

Seattle area Satanic Temple members (Seattle Times photo)

    Now, if their reason for existing were really simply to spread reason and goodwill they’d want to do that everywhere, don’t you think?  By their own admission, their true purpose is to antagonize the Good News Clubs.

Good News: What's Not To Like?

 

    What are these Good News Clubs that so exercise the good people at the Satanic Temple? The Good News Clubs are a ministry of the Child Evangelism Fellowship.  From CEF’s website they appear to adhere to a fairly traditional Evangelical Protestant understanding of Christianity.  They describe the purpose of their Good News Clubs as follows:

Our ministry teaches morals and respect for others, helps build character, strengthens families, assists schools and encourages children. We frequently receive comments of support from school officials, bus drivers and parents which complement the positive change in the behavior of the boys and girls who attend Good News Clubs. Our mission is to serve the children, their parents, the school and the community.

They also give a succinct explanation of their methodology:

Photo from CEF website

. . . trained teachers meet with groups of children in schools, homes, community centers, churches, apartment complexes, just about anywhere the children can easily and safely meet with their parent's permission. Each week the teacher presents an exciting Bible lesson using colorful materials from CEF Press. This action-packed time also includes songs, Scripture memory, a missions story and review games or other activities focused on the lesson's theme.

As with all CEF ministries, the purpose of Good News Club is to evangelize boys and girls with the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and establish (disciple) them in the Word of God and in a local church for Christian living.

Here and in numerous other places they emphasize that they only meet children with their parents’ permission, and do not seek to supplant their family’s church. Also, while they are straightforward in proposing sin as something that infects everyone, they at the same time emphasize Christ's saving love and forgiveness: "Now, because of what Jesus has done for you, you can have your sins forgiven. Read on to see how!"

J'Accuse!

Most fair-minded people, even if they take issue with the Child Evangelism Fellowship on some points of theology and ecclesiology, would have a hard time objecting to this program. Perhaps you won’t be surprised that the Satanic Temple doesn’t take a positive view.  On their FAQ page they say:

[T]he twisted Evangelical teachings of The Good News Clubs “robs [sic] children of the innocence and enjoyment of childhood, replacing them with a negative self image, preoccupation with sin, fear of Hell, and aversion to critical thinking . . . ”

Forgive me for observing that this angry, accusatory smear seems neither rational nor objective, nor terribly benevolent or empathetic.  In fact, it reminds me of nobody so much as the satan clubs’ standard bearer, of whom I observed in an earlier post:

For this reason he is called “the Devil”, from the Greek διάβολος (diabolos), which means “slanderer, perjurer, false accuser, and can also mean “deceiver, one who misleads”.  It derives from the verb διαβάλλω (diaballo), whose original meaning is “drive through”, or destroy.  Satan seeks to destroy us, eternally, by using falsehood and deception to separate us from God.

Isn’t that just what the satan club is about?  They pose as “angels of light” with their talk of empathy and science, but it’s clear by their own words and deeds that their true agenda is to disparage and harass a particular Christian group, and separate Christian children from the religious beliefs of their families; the only plausible reason to choose as their public face Satan, the personification of mindless hatred, untruth, and evil from the Christian Scriptures, is to taunt and insult Christians; their stated policy is to form their clubs only where they can target the Evangelical Christian Good News clubs.  Clearly, their purpose is not to promote a religion they assure us they don't believe, and they manifestly don’t model the virtues they claim to advocate.  They are in reality a hate group dedicated to denying Christian students the right to exercise their own right of free expression in their own clubs.  Far from being hypocrites, we have solid legal and moral reasons to work to deny them access to public facilities.

   

Charleston, the Stranger, and the Power of Forgiveness

An earlier version of this Worth Revisiting post was first published 27 June 2016 . To enjoy the work of other faithful Catholic bloggers see Worth Revisiting Wednesday, hosted by Elizabeth Reardon at theologyisaverb.com and Allison Gingras atreconciledtoyou.com.

One more recent development: it was revealed in the recent trial of Omar Mateen's widow that Mateen did not choose to attack the Pulse nightclub because of its clientele. He chose Pulse simply because it appeared an easier target than his first choice, Disney World, where he was deterred by heavy security.

Love Overcomes Hate

One year ago [June 17th, 2015], a shocking crime was dominating the news here in the United States: the vicious murder of nine members of a prayer group in Charleston, South Carolina.  The killer, a young man named Dylann Roof, hoped that the crime would ignite a race war (Roof is white, his victims were black).  It didn’t happen.  It is true that some political activists took advantage of the understandable outrage at Roof’s racist massacre to push for various tenuously related pet causes, such as banning displays of the flag of the old Confederacy (never let a good crisis go to waste, someone once said), but racial armageddon stubbornly refused to break out.

Funeral for victims at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, 2015

More important than the machinations of the usual political agitators, however, was the reaction of the family and friends of the victims.  They had every reason to rise up in a spirit of anger and righteous vengeance.  Instead, they came together in a spirit of love and forgiveness, forgiveness explicitly grounded in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  These grieving, wounded Christians gave the whole world a moving example of the healing power of Christ’s love.

A Stranger Comes To Town

As it happens, these were not the first Christians to have lived out the words of their Savior: “Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:44).  It has happened many times over the past two millennia. I was reminded of another such example a few days ago, when I paid a visit to the town cemetery in Gray, Maine.  There, among other Civil War era graves stands a headstone which reads:

Stranger

a Soldier of the late war

Died 1862

Erected

By the Ladies of Gray

A star medallion accompanies the stone, to indicate that the man beneath was a combat veteran.  There is usually a flag as well; when I visited last week, there were actually three small flags snapping in the breeze.  The Stranger differs from the dozens of other Civil War veterans buried in the cemetery, however, in that, here in the heart of the northernmost state of Yankee New England, his grave is honored not with the American flag, but with the Confederate battle flag, an emblem of the enemy of the local brothers, sons, and fathers who perished in that conflict.

There’s an interesting story here, going back over a century and a half.  At the time of the Civil War, soldiers who fell in battle would be buried in a military cemetery, usually not far from where they died.  If a soldier’s family wished to bury him at home, they had to pay out of their own resources for the transport of his body.  And so it happened that when Lt. Charles Colley of Gray died in September of 1862, succumbing to wounds he received at the battle of Cedar Mountain in Virginia, his family paid to bring his body back to Maine.

    An unpleasant surprise lay in store for Lt. Colley’s family when they opened his coffin, however.  They found in the casket not their son, but an unidentified young man in a Confederate uniform.  The government was not willing to ship him back, and besides, who knew where to send him? And so a group of local women arranged to have him interred in the local cemetery. There he lies today, the gray-uniformed Stranger side by side with one Johnson Smith, his blue-coated antagonist from the Maine Volunteers.

People Are More Than Symbols Or Categories

It might be helpful to consider who these “Ladies of Gray” were.  First of all, the Town of Gray sent a larger proportion of its population to the war than any other community in Maine; 178 of them are buried in the town cemetery.  The “Ladies” were mostly mothers and wives of young men who had gone to fight against the Stranger and his comrades-in-arms.  Many of these women had already seen their loved ones killed or grievously wounded.  How tempting it must have been to take symbolic vengeance on the remains of this enemy.  The Ladies of Gray were good Christian women, however, and saw him not as a symbol or a category (“The Enemy”), but as a fellow human being whose mortal remains deserved to be treated with the same dignity as any of their own.

Enemies in life, together in eternity

The two cases above, in Charleston, South Carolina in 2015 and in Gray, Maine in 1862, are vivid reminders of what we can do if we take Christ’s words to heart.  And if Christ’s love can help us to see, and to love, the humanity in someone who has murdered a brother or sister, or who has been making war against our sons, surely we can do the same with somebody with whom we simply disagree.  That’s why it was perfectly natural for Christians around the United States and around the world to offer prayers for the forty-nine people murdered and dozens more injured at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, and offer support to their families.  It doesn’t matter if we disagree about the morality of homosexual acts or the proper legal status of homosexual relationships.  The victims in Orlando are our fellow human beings, brothers and sisters made in the image and likeness of God, and unjustly slaughtered by a heartless fanatic.  We Christians would be hypocrites indeed if we did not pray for their souls and for the consolation of their loved ones.

J’Accuse!

As it happens, however, there are some people who are accusing Christians of hypocrisy because we pray for the victims of the Orlando massacre.  They argue that because we oppose gay marriage and the homosexual lifestyle, we must therefore really hate the victims, since they were slaughtered in a gay nightclub.  Some of these critics have even gone so far as to say that conservative Christians are really to blame and not radical Islam, not even the Muslim jihadist himself who publicly declared his allegiance to the terrorist Islamic State in the midst of the killing.

Some of the purveyors of this venomous nonsense are political operators, intent on exploiting a tragedy to push their agenda. It is likely, however, that most are sincerely convinced of the current secular dogma that our worth derives not from the fact that we are human beings made in the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1:27), but from our membership in various ethnic or sexual identity groups.  According to this worldview, the fact that Omar Mateen’s victims were mostly members of the LGBQT community is more important than the simple fact that they were human beings cruelly murdered. In such a view it is all too easy to lose a sense of shared humanity for its own sake, and to come to believe that to disagree with a particular group is necessarily to hate its members.  In such a worldview it is practically impossible to love your enemies, and praying for them can only be pretense.  And so large segments of the popular culture have proclaimed Christians who pray for the murdered men and woman of Orlando to be haters and hypocrites.  Case closed.

Speaking The Truth In Love

Now, it’s mighty tempting to lash out in turn at those who are exploiting the crimes of a fanatical jihadist, not to mention the deaths of his many victims, in order to slander Christians.  I was ready to do just that a week ago.  That is, until I came across this article titled “Pastor: Have Mercy On Dylann Roof”.  It tells about a prayer service held in Charleston on the first anniversary of Dylann Roof’s rampage:

Rev. Dr. Juenarrl Keith gave the invocation for the service . . . During the prayer, he asked for guidance and healing for the families, but also mentioned Roof, the man charged with the murders of the church members.

"Have mercy upon the soul and the life of young Dylann Roof," Keith told the crowd. Some in the crowd could be heard saying "Amen," and clapping after his statement.

Moments earlier, Keith told the gathered crowd inside the area, "help us o God never to deny humanity in others, for it is then we destroy humanity within ourselves."

Rev. Dr. Juenarrl Keith speaking at commemoration service for Charleston massacre victims

After seeing that, how could I not feel ashamed of my own anger at people guilty of little more than name-calling?

It’s not for us, of course, to forgive Omar Mateen: that is for the loved ones of those he has killed, if God grants them the grace. It is our place to respond to our own accusers with forgiveness. That does not mean that we agree to abandon the moral law or to reconfigure society based on the assertions of the ever-evolving sexual revolution.  Nor should we allow slanders against us and our faith to go unanswered.  The trick is to speak the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15), respecting our antagonists as human beings even as we point out where they’re wrong (not coincidentally, what we say will be much more effective if we match it with how we say it). That’s not easy to do (not for me, I confess), which is a good reason to keep praying for God’s grace to live up to the example of the families of Charleston, and the Ladies of Gray.  Only then can we hope to be that shining lamp (Mark 4:21) that Christ calls us to be.

Mother Angelica and Brother Joe

An earlier version of this Worth Revisiting post was first published 10 April 2016 on the blog Principium et Finis. To enjoy the work of other faithful Catholic bloggers see Worth Revisiting Wednesday, hosted by Elizabeth Reardon at theologyisaverb.com and Allison Gingras at reconciledtoyou.com. 

    A couple weeks ago this world lost two prominent Catholics, both Italian-Americans well-known for their involvement in broadcasting, and both with Franciscan connections. The first, of course, is EWTN founder and Franciscan nun Mother Angelica [died 27 March 2016].  Few Catholics below the rank of Pope have had quite so profound a impact in the Catholic world over the past century. Her influence has spread in ever-expanding ripples since the founding of her Catholic television station in 1981.  Thanks to Mother Angelica there are people who have been brought into the Church or back to the practice of the Faith through EWTN; there are Catholics formed by watching, listening to, or working for EWTN who have gone on to people the amazing evangelization and apologetics industry that has sprouted up over the past four decades, and has become something of a movement; there are all the people, Catholic or not, affected by the witness of those whose faith has been nourished by that movement, and . . . well, it goes on and on.

Mother Angelica

         Mother’s life story is an inspiration all its own.  One can’t help but admire her determination to rise above a troubled childhood, and after that a debilitating injury as a young religious sister, to establish a convent in the deep south, and to create a vibrant Catholic media empire, sustained throughout by an unfailing love for Jesus Christ. In her last years she offered another, deeper, kind of witness when, like St. John Paul II, she was a living reflection of Christ’s Paschal suffering (interesting that Mother died on Easter Sunday, and John Paul the Great on the Second Sunday of the Octave of Easter, Divine Mercy Sunday).  She suffered intensely after a pair of strokes fifteen years ago, with very limited powers of speech and a host of other related ailments.  She did not, however, let her increasing pain and discomfort discourage her.  Instead, according to EWTN chaplain Joseph Wolfe:

Mother Angelica had instructed her nuns to do everything to keep her alive, no matter how much she suffered, because every day she suffered, she suffered for God. [full article here]

I expect that there will be a cause for her canonization opened soon, and it will not be surprising if Saint Angelica of Irondale finds her way onto the Liturgical Calendar in due time.

A young Joe Garaglio (r.), with childhood neighbor
and life-long friend friend Yogi Berra (l.)

         We will probably never see a cause for the canonization of long-time sports announcer Joe Garagiola, however, who died four days before Mother Angelica, on the Wednesday of Holy Week [27 March 2016].  Joe was not a Catholic broadcaster, like Mother Angelica, but a broadcaster who happened to be Catholic. In fact, although he was a lifelong, faithful Catholic, he would probably be intensely embarrassed by any discussion of his personal sanctity.   Despite his celebrity he was a humble man, always speaking very dismissively, for instance, about his tenure as a catcher in major league baseball.  The truth is that, although he wasn’t a Hall of Fame player, his career wasn’t without its highlights: he batted .257 in 676 games over eight seasons, which is quite respectable for a catcher, and in 1946, his rookie season, outhit the great Ted Williams in the World Series (the only Series for both of them).

         It wasn’t until his playing days were over that Joe Garagiola really made a name for himself, as a talker (which did get him into the Hall of Fame).  He was a five-tool player in the broadcast booth: he started with an extensive knowledge of the game, experience playing at the highest level, and a knack for telling a story; in addition to those, his personal warmth and generous spirit kept him on the air for more than half a century, mostly in sports, but also for stints on various talk programs and game shows.

         As it turns out, that warmth and generosity welled up from a deep source: Garagiola was a man of deep faith, as detailed [here] in a recent story at CatholicPhilly.com. He always carried a rosary in his pocket, had a deep devotion to the Blessed Mother and, for the last quarter century of his life, poured a veritable flood of time, money, and love into the St. Peter Mission School in the Gila River Indian Community near Phoenix, Arizona.  The Franciscan nuns who run the school are among his most fervent fans:

“He was one of the best people I have ever met. There was no limit to his generosity,” said its principal, Sister Martha Mary Carpenter, who estimates that Garagiola was responsible for bringing hundreds of thousands of dollars into the school.

     Indeed, Garagiola was a tireless fundraiser for St. Peter's, and was instrumental in financing and promoting a long list of improvements and additions to the school’s facilities. He did more for St. Peter’s than just give money, however: he gave himself.  The former Major League catcher and broadcaster was constantly promoting the school.  According to Sister Martha Mary, “Joe couldn’t talk to people for more than five minutes without talking about the mission. … He will be with us in spirit for a very long time.”  A frequent visitor to St. Peter’s, he had often been with them in more than spirit, taking an intense interest not just in the institution, but in the children it serves.  Sr. Martha Mary is proud to point out that

St. Peter’s schoolchildren still recite “Joe’s Prayer” twice each day. Garagiola himself taught them the short invocation: “Teach us O Lord, that every day, down every street, come chances to be God’s hands and feet.”

Garagiola at St. Peter Mission School in 2005 (photo: The Republic)

    Before I go any further, let me make it clear that I am not advocating a cause for the canonization of Joe Garagiola, nor putting his personal sanctity on a par with Mother Angelica’s, or anyone else’s.  The spiritual superstars who join the official canon will always be a very small and select group. At the same time, all believing Christians hope to spend their eternity in Heaven, in the Presence of God, which is precisely to become a saint.  I suspect that, celebrity notwithstanding, most of us are more like Joe Garagiola than we are like Mother Angelica. Like most of us, Garagiola spent most of his time and effort on things that had little explicit connection to the Catholic Faith.  As he was living out in The World, however, he was always open, “every day, down every street”, to the possibility of living out Christ’s love. The Great Saints show us how far we fallible creatures can rise, the little saints (a loving grandmother, a supportive coach or teacher, or a kind and generous old sportscaster) can teach us some of the first steps on the way.  I’m adding “Joe’s Prayer” to my store of devotions.
     It's fitting that we pray for the souls of these two Catholics who have come into our homes so often through television, along with the souls of others who have died.  Who knows? Some day, maybe soon, Mother Angelica and Brother Joe may be praying for us before the Throne of God.

(See also "Feed My Sheep" at Principium Et Finis)