Church atrocities

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fatimite13

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Howdy, so today I saw a post on Facebook of a statue of Baphomet with the comment “If any statues should come down, start here.” After my comment, agreeing with the posy, I got into a heated “discussion” that brought up questions: 1. Is satanism (as opposed to luciferianism) protected under religious freedom law? 2. How can we be catholic when the church (even some people we consider saints) committed horrible atrocities? 3. How do we respond to what people call the church’s “cultural appropriation” of Christmas, Easter etc?

Looking forward to everyone’s insight.
 
fatimite13 said:
  1. Is satanism (as opposed to luciferianism) protected under religious freedom law?
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The short answer is that all religions are protected in USA. There may be some limits to the protection if a religion is breaking the civil law in some way, depending on what the lawbreaking activity is.
  1. How can we be catholic when the church (even some people we consider saints) committed horrible atrocities?
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A person who claims a “saint” committed “horrible atrocities” needs to provide a credible source identifying the saint and the purported atrocity. Then we deal with each one in turn. I am not aware of any saints who committed atrocities, unless they were saints who lived an unholy life (such as saints who were murderers) and then repented and lived a very holy life to make up for all their past misdeeds.
  1. How do we respond to what people call the church’s “cultural appropriation” of Christmas, Easter etc?
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Most of the stories about “cultural appropriation” of Christmas and Easter are not true. Again, the person needs to identify an actual custom and a credible source. I would note that credible sources are generally something from scholarly literature and not some anti-catholic website or youtube.

The vast majority of people who throw these kinds of “arguments” around do not have any credible sources to cite. Their minds are also closed so it’s rather pointless to argue with them.
 
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Thank you so much for your response!
  1. I was told I was a hypocrite because I respect every religion besides satanism when they explained satanists don’t really worship satan.
  2. One claim was that St. Boniface, I’d have to go back and see the claim but the St. Patrick one I’ve heard is that the snakes really represent pagans he slaughtered.
  3. St. Boniface comes to mind with the Christmas tree story here.
 
  1. If you live in USA, you need to respect freedom of speech and freedom of religion for all religions, not just Catholics or Christians. That means you need to even respect the fringe religions like Satanism or Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Also, if you’re going to post stuff about tearing down Baphomet statues in a place where non-Christians, atheists, agnostics etc can see it, then expect to get an argument about it.
  2. St. Patrick drumming the saints out of Ireland is a pious legend. If the person is claiming St. Patrick slaughtered people, then they need to provide a scholarly source on St. Patrick backing up their claim.
  3. The story of St. Boniface and the Christmas tree is a pious legend. It is likely that St. Boniface may have disrupted pagan celebrations, but we have no idea if an evergreen tree was involved. Our modern day Christmas trees were first developed by German Lutherans. So if we culturally appropriated them from anyone, it was from the Protestants.
 
Hopefully these are all in order with only small aspects cut out, I covered up names and pictures for privacy reasons! Thank you again for your response, I appreciate it very much, it helped me for sure! (Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.) (Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.) (Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.) (Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)
 
Are these folks your Facebook friends? Because I wouldn’t bother with them.

They’re just using their own 20th century anti-Catholic/ anti-religious constructs to argue against religion. This is all over the Internet and you could spend your whole life responding to it.

I would suggest perhaps not engaging with them.
 
They’re part of a group I am in and that’s all and they’re trying to say that satanism formally condemns pedophilia and sex abuse when the Bible doesn’t etc. It’s exhausting
 
Time to find some new groups and some less tiring new friends.

You could give them all the right Catholic answers and they’d just come up with new unsupported gunk.

Life’s too short for that.
 
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Allegedly they’re broken into groups and satanists are more atheists that embody the “spirit” of lucifer, indulgence and revolt.
 
If it looks and sounds like a duck…
 
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While I can’t say I praise God for the virus because of the death toll even though I believe there’s a lot of politics in it, but that’s a different story. I also greatly treasure the Eucharist most of all in my faith to find watching Mass sufficient. I respect very much your comment about how difficult it is to argue with the church, especially as a gay catholic. I guess my question is what does the church do to address these common objections. I love the feasts of the Church but there is so much to address. I’ve read too how in some aspects satan is to be pitied in a sense and he can still repent per de so in that sense I pity those who follow him in any sense and do wish for ecumenism. I wish there was a way to apologize for the errors of the past and homophobia and such of the present. Hopefully I didn’t miss anything.
 
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The Church of Satan is basically a political organization dressed up as a religion for shock value. When ever a religion insists on inserting itself into the secular sphere, the Satanists do likewise to show how religion in the secular sphere is a dangerous thing.

Want a cross placed in a public park? The Satanists will insist that they should be legally allowed their statue, too. Opening prayer at a government council? A Satanic prayer should get equal time. They are there to drive a point in keeping the separation of church and state in the forefront, that we shouldn’t be comfortable with religious symbolism of “our” religion if we aren’t comfortable with “other” religious symbolism, too. It’s political and mostly funded by atheists. It has been effective, too.
 
I’ve always seen satanism in this sense to as you say a political stunt by atheists. It’s shocking how
much sympathy they get nowadays as well as distressing.
 
Yes, it is a stunt and I certainly see the ridiculousness of using Satan for its shock value but as someone that grew up in a minority religion, I do get the point. Keep religion and government separate. It seems more effective than the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Jedi religion or Scientology has been able to do. A good Yiddish word for it is chutzpah!
 
But he didnt do anything atrocious after his conversion did he?
 
No, I don’t think so. I didn’t realize we weren’t talking about their whole lives.
 
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