Satanic Panics Are Not Productive
Satanic Panics Are Not Productive
Consider this post a follow up to my post about Sam Smith's Grammy performance. The Dodgers inviting the Sisters of Perputual Indulgence to their Pride Night and films like Habit and Immaculate are several instances of the secular entertainment world mocking Christianity. And I gaurantee you that every time, the goal is get a rise out of Christians, revel in the attention, cash that fat check, rinse, and repeat. They do it because they know it works.
And when Christians start boycotting baseball teams and blasphemous movies and clamor about it, we're only dumping fuel onto the fire.
Let me tell you a cool story about St. Jean Vianney. Our brother was harassed by the Devil quite a bit. One night, St. Jean was fast asleep, but loud banging sounds woke him up. St. Jean got and went to investigate the source of the noise. It turns out the Devil was in St. Jean's kitchen, tossing around pots and pans. And guess what St. Jean did?
Well, for starters, he didn't duck behind a cabinet, and rebuke Satan in a loud voice.
He simply said, "Oh, it's you," and went back to bed.
And a lot of these people who mock the Faith with these stunts are broken, traumatized, or just simply mad about the number of ways we've sinned and acted hypocritically. So when we preach to people about the sanctity of life, human sexuality, and marriage, it's understandable that they point out the sex abuse scandals, %50 of our own heterosexual marriages failing, rash judgement, and the division within the Church. More and more Catholics deny the validity of Vatican II and/or call for it to be repealed.
Our credibility and voice to the culture has been shot.
And even if we were perfect in our practice of our faith, these people were born for good and so they weren't born hating the Church and Christianity. This hatred is learned, which means it can be changed. We spent a lot of time condemning what's evil and need to invest more time and effort into promoting and praising what's good.