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Vatican Warns That Internet Promotes Satanism
Hugh Pickens writes "The Telegraph reports that the Roman Catholic Church has warned that the internet has fueled a surge in Satanism that has led to a sharp rise in the demand for exorcists. 'The internet makes it much easier than in the past to find information about Satanism. In just a few minutes you can contact Satanist groups and research occultism,' says Carlo Climati, a member of the Regina Apostolorum Pontifical University in Rome who specializes in the dangers posed to young people by Satanism. Organizers of a six-day conference that has brought together more than 60 Catholic clergy as well as doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists, teachers and youth workers, co-sponsored by the Vatican Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments and the Congregation for Clergy, say the rise of Satanism has been dangerously underestimated in recent years."
Protestants and evangelicals are the Open Source of christianity - everyone gets their revelations from the sky wizard directly and interprets the scripture as they see fit. Catholics are the Microsoft, with the clergy excercising complete control over the minutest details of their faith and telling everyone else what to believe. When the source code is available, it's in obscure languages and obfuscated as can be.
That was basically Satan's argument in Paradise Lost.
"Ye will not, if I trust
To know ye right, or if ye know yourselves
Natives and Sons of Heaven possessed before
By none, and, if not equal all yet free,
Equally free; for orders and degrees
Are not with liberty, but well consist.
Who can in reason, then, or right, assume
Monarchy over such as live by right
His equals; if in power and splendour less,
In freedom equal? or can introduce
Law and edict on us, who without law
Err not? much less for this to be our Lord,
And look for adoration to the abuse
Of those imperial titles which assert
Our being ordained to govern, not to serve!'"
In essence and in more modern terms: "God is immensely powerful, but just because he is physically capable of beating us all to a bloody pulp if we disobey him doesn't mean he has the right to do so. We deserve to run our own lives, not just to do as God decrees because he is big enough to enforce his will by violence."
Satan goes on to run the first uprising, and is promptly schooled on just what 'omnipotence' means in the form of the divine smackdown.
There's a whole bunch of people who call themselves Satanists who really don't actually believe in Christ (or even actually Satan) for that matter. If a group can appropriate the name of someone they don't believe in and use it in their religion, I would think that its certainly possible for others to follow the teachings of that same entity and call him something else, or even deny his existence entirely. That's what we call results-oriented diabolism.
Obviously, if you didn't start out as a Christian or in a Christan-influenced area, you probably wouldn't use the terminology. Still, that's like when the Native Americans called European ships "giant birds" or whatever when they first saw them. They didn't have a word for ocean-going ship and no previous way to pick one up from the Europeans, so they made something up. That doesn't mean they weren't talking about ships. If you follow certain practices, then you are following Satanist practices, even if you say that you are actually following Zamfir, Master of the Pan Flute.
Catholicism does not split things down into the line of good and evil. Having had to sit through Catholic education, I know that's more the realm of Manichaeism, which is definitely not Christianity. Catholics believe in one creation, and they do not believe in the equality of good and evil in Creation. Good is more powerful than evil and will always triumph. The only thing that gives evil the illusion of being equivalent to good is that free will allows humans the freedom to select evil if they want to, which tends to make it seem like just two equivalent choices in voting booth. Once selected, however, evil always either falls short of the promises, and sometimes, even some unintended good comes out of it because good is more powerful. So the teaching goes, in any event.
As for Satan, my understanding of what the Catholic Church teaches are as follows:
* Satan is real and a distinct entity. He was created by God and therefore subject to God's rules. Apparently, he is/was an angel, and so our understanding of his existence and his motivations are limited. He is supernatural, but limited, so he doesn't need a TV to lie to you, but he can't actually create things.
* Satan can't make you do anything. Your God-given free will must be respected by him just as much as by any one else.
* Satan can tempt you. That is to say, he's allowed to promote his way of life vigorously and by any means other than removing your free choice. This means that he's probably the world's first, and by far the best, global marketing/advertising firm.
* You can choose to let Satan into your life and in that manner, he can do the whole possession thing. Apparently, Satan and his underlings, being real and supernatural, do have the ability to manifest, but likely if very specifically allowed in. My understanding is that you generally need to have made some sort of choice to allow that to happen. Perhaps even a specific set of choices, the practices therein referred to collectively as "Satanism".
Okay, well, that's probably too much for someone who doesn't actually believe in God to bother with, but I think its important to realize that there is an entire set of logical premises out there that you accept if you are actually a Catholic. Having Satan exist may seem like an externalization of blame, but he's only an externalization if he's not actually real. If he's real, he's out there doing things, and those things are the Church's job to oppose. Either way, it seems to me that self-discipline IS what they are teaching: you have the choice to not be a Satanist, and no one can force you to be one, not even Satan himself.