Image: Nheyob/Tach
To be clear, I’m usually skeptical about rumors, even when I trust their sources. While I refuse to link to the various confirmation announcements, I will note that they’re not hard to find via a Google search. In this case, Archbishop Hartmeyer is absolutely right in his description of the event:
This satanic ritual is a serious sacrilege. It is a blasphemous and obscene inversion of the Catholic Mass. Using a consecrated host they claim they obtained illicitly from a Catholic church and desecrating it in the vilest ways imaginable, the practitioners [will] offer it in sacrifice to Satan. This terrible sacrilege is a deliberate attack on the Catholic Mass as well as the foundational beliefs of all Christians.
I’m still not certain what I plan to do in response to this event — if anything — but I did want to note that there is no way The Satanic Temple obtained the consecrated host honestly.
First, for my non-Catholic readers, I should give a brief overview of the Catholic position on Eucharistic hosts. Prior to consecration (which is done at a Mass), they’re nothing more than wafers of unleavened bread. We’re gentle with them to avoid breakage, but we don’t assign any special importance to them. However, after consecration, our belief is that the host now represents the actual, physical body of Jesus Christ. While there is some symbolism behind the use of an unleavened wafer of wheat bread, the Presence itself is not symbolic.
In light of this, it should make sense that we go to a great deal of trouble to properly handle consecrated hosts. The closest comparison I can think of is that we treat it the same way Americans would treat the original handwritten versions of our founding documents. But that’s an imperfect analogy, as our view on the Eucharistic host is much more profound and our protocols for its handling are much more complicated.
Most parishes in the Archdiocese of Atlanta train their ushers to gently interrupt any communicant who doesn’t immediately consume the host and insist they do so, before they return to their seat. In addition, the Catholic church in general does not hand out Eucharistic hosts to anyone who asks. While they’re not strictly controlled in the sense of keeping an inventory, only a handful of authorized and vetted people are ever allowed to remove them from the altar area post-consecration. In addition, while it’s not impossible to hide the host in your mouth and then spit it out later, they’re designed to dissolve pretty quickly and they generally do.
Put more bluntly: the only way The Satanic Temple can acquire a consecrated Eucharistic host is to steal it, and doing so requires a deliberate and planned act. This act is a crime, and not just in religious law: the Catholic church can, and has, successfully taken legal action against thieves, and so have local law enforcement agencies. While it’s not officially classified as such, most Catholics consider theft of a consecrated host to be a hate crime, as it’s not something that can easily happen by accident and there is very little reason to take such an action other than to use the host for a forbidden purpose.
Beyond that, my question for The Satanic Temple, and those who support their actions, is simple: why?
Why do they hate the Catholic church so much as to commit hate crimes against it? The Church has done nothing to them, aside of articulating its teachings in the public forum. (Don’t start about the abuse scandal; there’s no way non-Catholics are anywhere near as angry about that as Catholics.)
Why do they find it necessary to deliberately insult and attempt to provoke Catholics by committing a sacrilege? There are any number of ways to express disdain for, and even hatred of, religion without crossing into purposeful offense.
Why do they think it’s “entertainment” to carry out such a hateful and discriminatory act? Don’t they believe in freedom of belief? The act of taking the Eucharist does not harm or restrict anyone else’s freedoms. Further, if it makes someone uncomfortable, that person can simply not participate in a Catholic Mass.
Why do they use consecrated hosts for these types of events? We never hear about them deliberately offending and provoking Muslims by desecrating a copy of the Quran; nor do we hear about them engaging in anti-Semitic behavior under the guise of entertainment. So what makes consecrated hosts fair game, particularly that they don’t believe in the existence of Satan or the supernatural anyway?
Finally, what do they think they can accomplish by carrying out a Black Mass, regardless of reason? Do they simply want to rile Catholics up? For what reason? Do they think they’ll convince Catholics to leave the Church? (They won’t, not unless other factors are already present.) Do they see it as some sort of rebellion or irreverent humor? (There are any number of better ways to do that.) Are they themselves trying to recruit members? (They claim that joining them only means being put on a mailing list.)
The Satanic Temple states, on their web site, they believe “the freedoms of other should be respected, including the freedom to offend. To willfully and unjustly encroach upon the freedoms of another is to forgo [sic] one’s own.” They also state that “the spirit of compassion, wisdom, and justice should always prevail over the written or spoken word.”
Where is that spirit of compassion, wisdom, and justice when it comes to letting Catholics worship as they see fit? Do they not understand that desecration of a host is well beyond merely “offensive” to us? What is it about the Catholic church that leads The Satanic Temple to refuse to apply its own beliefs and tenets to their relations with it?
Surely there must be some other, more constructive, way to express their beliefs — many of which are actually quite reasonable — and sponsor a night of entertainment!