Witches Night in New England
On the weekend of April 28th to April 30th, The Satanic Temple—one of the two principal manifestations of organized Satanism in the United States today—will hold its second annual national conference in that major American city most identified, historically, with the Catholic Faith.
The sold-out event, marketed as “the largest Satanic gathering in history,” is entitled “SatanCon 2023, A Weekend of Blasphemy and Remembrance in Boston.”
Commemorating the tenth anniversary of The Satanic Temple, the theme of the assembly is “Hexennacht (Witches Night) in Boston.” Its promotional video bears an inscription mocking and inverting the two-century old motto of the City of Boston.
Instead of ‘Sicut patribus, sit Deus nobis,’—God be with us as He was with our fathers—it reads ‘Sicut matribus, sit Satanas nobis’—Satan be with us as he was with our mothers.
The event will feature presentations, Satanic rituals, and a Satanic marketplace. Speakers will address such topics as ‘…Reproductive Rights,’ ‘Reclaiming the Trans Body…’ and ‘Sins of the Flesh: Satanism and Self-Pleasure.’
The venue will be the Boston Marriott Copley Place, in the center of the city’s historic Back Bay neighborhood.
Professions of Agnostic Naturalism
Founded in New York City in 2012, and headquartered in Salem, Massachusetts since 2016, The Satanic Temple, led by Lucian Greaves, claims to deny any belief in the supernatural, or in the person of Satan.
The temple asserts that Satan is a metaphor for rational inquiry, critical thinking and a “reasonable agnosticism in all things.” It claims that Satan is the symbol of the “Eternal rebel…the heretic…the unsilenced inquirer.”
An Obsession with The Culture of Death
The temple maintains that “Bodily autonomy has been a central pillar of The Satanic Temple’s mission since its founding,” and that abortion is a “religious ritual” for temple adherents, who therefore deserve a religious exemption from state laws which restrict or prohibit abortions.
The organization opposes informed consent laws in states where abortion is legal, believes the bodies of aborted children should be discarded as medical waste, and is an active participant in the campaign to defame and discredit pro-life pregnancy resource centers, deriding them as “fake clinics.”
The temple has filed lawsuits in Missouri and Texas asserting that abortion restrictions violate its religious freedom rights. It now claims to have established what it calls the “world’s first religious abortion clinic” in New Mexico—Samuel Alito’s Mom’s Satanic Abortion Clinic—a purported online telehealth center which will arrange for an alleged “pharmacy partner” to mail abortion pills throughout the country.
The temple also states that it is committed to supporting its “LGBTQIA+ members.”
Strategy of Provocation
The Satanic Temple has confected a cynical public relations strategy. It seeks to elevate its public profile by provoking controversy, usually in the form of grotesque publicity stunts intended to shock and offend Christian sensibilities.
A cooperative secular media—which routinely ignores public events by pro-life and pro-family activists—invariably rewards the temple with generous coverage.
The temple conducts what it calls a “Satanic Representation Campaign.” It is a three-part effort aimed at having temple members give invocations before legislative bodies; placing Satanic symbols or displays on public property; and inserting Satanic clubs into public schools.
The Satanic Temple has sued the City of Boston, unsuccessfully, for the right to deliver invocations before the Boston City Council.
In public forums or on public property where Nativity scenes are displayed, where Ten Commandment monuments have been erected, or where veterans memorials contain crosses, the Satanic Temple counters with demands to exhibit statues of the demon Baphomet.
The temple actually succeeded in placing a “Baby Baphomet” next to a Menorah and a Nativity Scene in the Rotunda of the Illinois State House in 2021, adding a “Serpent of Genesis” in 2022.
The temple has also imposed “After School Satan Clubs,” targeting children, in a number of public schools in the country, including ones in Portland, Oregon and Taylorsville, Utah.
Beyond self-promotion, it is evident that the Satanic Temple has a carefully considered plan of campaign in America’s culture wars, with the objective of marginalizing Christians.
The temple is attempting to turn the First Amendment on its head, using religious freedom guarantees to drive traditional religion from the public square. Public officials are placed in the invidious position of accepting overt and obnoxious displays of demonic blasphemy or banning all religious representations and activities from public forums, public property, and public schools.
A History of Blasphemy and Lies
The Black Mass is an obscene, occult, and demonic parody of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, intended to effect a ritual desecration, destruction, and humiliation of the Holy Eucharist. It is impelled by a preternatural hatred of God, the Person of Jesus Christ, and the Catholic and Apostolic religion.
A Black Mass invariably entails the theft of a consecrated host, a crime made easier in recent years by the lamentable practice of Communion in the hand.
On its website, the Satanic Temple lists the Black Mass as one of four rituals it performs, characterizing it as “a celebration of blasphemy, which can be an expression of personal liberty and freedom.”
Such a muted, even anodyne, description of this sacrilege was not conveyed by the Satanic Temple of Houston—an official affiliate of the Satanic Temple—when it boasted of a Black Mass in the Texas city: “The Catholics and their fati-mama Mary did not stop our Black Mass. The consecrated host was defiled, destroyed, and swept into the trash where it belongs. Hail Satan!”
In 2014, the Satanic Temple arranged for a Black Mass to be performed in Cambridge, Massachusetts in Harvard University’s Memorial Hall. It was to be sponsored by the Cultural Studies Club of the Harvard Extension School.
The decision by Harvard to host this obscenity ignited a firestorm of protest among Catholic students and alumni from Harvard, and from Catholic students at other universities in Greater Boston.
Catholic students at the nearby Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) organized a Eucharistic Procession to the historic Church of Saint Paul near Harvard Square, bringing 1500 faithful on to the streets of Cambridge.
More than eighty Catholics—including the former U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See, Ray Flynn—joined the Catholic Action League in a Rosary of Reparation in front of Memorial Hall.
Three hours before the start of the event, the leadership of Harvard cancelled it. The Satanic Temple moved to the back room of a small Chinese restaurant in Harvard Square, whose proprietor insisted that no Black Mass ever took place in his establishment.
On its website, the Satanic Temple makes the preposterous claim that the real reason it was moved was because Memorial Hall—which seats 1,600 people—could not accommodate the overflow crowd.
It is not known, with certainty, whether a Black Mass will be performed at SatanCon 2023 in Boston. According to the Catholic News Agency, the Satanic Temple denies any intention of performing one.
The Catholic Response
The Archdiocese of Boston has issued two public statements on SatanCon 2023. The first, on April 3rd, was from the Vicar General, Auxiliary Bishop Mark O’Connell.
In it, O’Connell warned against any public protest or Catholic counter witness to the event. “Our response must be balanced and focused on prayer. The balance is between countering its intended evil effects, and drawing attention to it and making it more prominent. To that end, we ask you to not organize or encourage any of your parishioners to go to the event to protest. It will only fuel the hate of those who support it and feed the media with images.”
Media images of Catholics praying the Rosary on the streets of the Back Bay is, apparently, viewed as deleterious by the Archdiocese of Boston.
Bishop O’Connell counseled: “Rather than protesting in person, we hope to storm the Heavens with prayer,” urging Catholics, appropriately, to recite Pope Leo XIII’s Prayer to Saint Michael the Archangel.
The letter also contained some useful practical suggestions, including vigilance against attempts to steal Hosts during the distribution of Holy Communion, not leaving sanctuaries and their tabernacles unattended while churches are open, and watchfulness about those entering churches during Mass.
The Bishop of Worcester, the Most Reverend Robert J. McManus, in an April 13th letter, gave an even more explicit warning: “If necessary, remind people that they should be consuming the sacred species immediately, to assure that the Blessed Sacrament is not being carried off for nefarious use.”
In a second Boston statement, issued on April 26th, the archdiocese reiterated O’Connell’s previous admonition against public protests, saying: “We ask Catholics not to organize or encourage others to go to the event to protest. It will only make it more prominent and give the organizers the attention they seek.”
The archdiocese did produce an impressive list of forty-five shrines, chapels, and parish churches where effective instruments of spiritual warfare would be available to the faithful to counter the Luciferian aggression.
These instruments include Eucharistic Adoration, Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, Holy Hours of Reparation, the Act of Reparation to the Sacred Heart, the Chaplet of Divine Mercy, the Prayer to Saint Michael, and the Most Holy Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Not all initiatives have come from the archdiocese however. One lay Catholic activist, Robert Sullivan, a leader of the Church Militant Resistance Chapter in Boston, sponsored a series of billboards in Metropolitan Boston spreading a message of devotion to the Divine Mercy.
Some Catholics, despite official disapproval, will be present outside of the Satanic gathering. TFP Student Action will hold a Rosary Rally of Reparation on each day of the conference, on Huntington Avenue in Boston, in front of the Marriott Hotel.
Why Boston?
One unanswered question remains. Why was Boston chosen as the site for this demon fest? Certainly, proximity to the Satanic Temple’s headquarters in Salem, Massachusetts made for convenient logistics.
Retribution was also a factor. The mocking dedication of the conference to Boston Mayor Michelle Wu speaks to the continuing anger of the Satanic Temple over its failure to prevail in a frivolous lawsuit demanding that it be allowed to deliver an invocation before the Boston City Council.
Perhaps the memory of its decisive defeat in the Harvard Black Mass controversy of 2014 still lingers.
One suspects that Boston was chosen because it represents the model and triumph of de-Christianization in America.
Catholics are now a minority in a city where, sixty years ago, they were an overwhelming majority. Not a single elected official now supports Catholic teaching. The media environment is radically hostile to the Faith, as are all elite institutions.
The leadership of the Church has, effectively, surrendered on virtually all issues of public morality, maintaining a discreet silence, and accepting a kind of dhimmitude towards the dominant secular culture.
Catholic institutions, and most of the Catholic population, have embraced secular values.
Boston represents the very vision of a neo-pagan, post-Christian society which the Satanic Temple wishes to impose on the rest of America.
Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us!
Joseph Doyle is the Executive Director of the Catholic Action League of Massachusetts and has spoken at various Fatima Center events.