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They’re playing Devil’s advocate.
The New York-based Satanic Temple will be staging a black mass on Harvard University’s main campus next Monday — and the thought of calling demons into being has the Church all riled up.
Perhaps that’s the point.
The black mass is an inversion of the traditional Catholic Mass that medieval people associated with witches. The witches were accused of stealing a consecrated piece of Communion bread for the mass and worshipping the Devil.
However, there’s little evidence that the specter of black masses was anything more than myth that was used by people in power to justify witch hunts and trials.
Satanic Temple spokesperson Lucien Greaves says his group contacted the Harvard Extension Cultural Studies Club to organize a re-enactment of a black mass based on the imaginings of French writer Joris-Karl Huysman in the novel “La-bas.” Huysman wrote the novel during the French Occult Revival of the 1800s.
Greaves says next week’s black mass at Harvard’s Queen’s Head Pub is meant to be educational. Members of the Satanic Temple don’t have anything diabolical planned — the group is not planning to use a consecrated host or provoke the spirit world. In fact, Greaves says he is an atheist.
“This is not a supernatural ritual,” Greaves told the Daily News. “We don’t believe in the supernatural. And I don’t think belief in the supernatural should give you any privilege, since any deeply held belief should be protected.”
This makes The Satanic Temple’s activities more of a political statement than a cohesive religious ritual — in other words, closer in theology to the Church of The Flying Spaghetti Monster than the Church of Satan.
Still, the Devil is essential.
“There’s no stronger cultural symbol for the revolt against the general idea of arbitrary authority and revolt against ultimate tyranny,” Greaves said of Satan. “There’s no better a construct that can act as a narrative for our works and goals.”
All this talk about Satan has spooked the Catholic Church.
The Catholic Archdiocese of Boston issued a statement blasting the Satanists’ scheduled demonstration and announced plans to conduct a “Holy Hour” during the same time at a nearby church.
“For the good of the Catholic faithful and all people, the Church provides clear teaching concerning Satanic worship,” the statement read. “This activity separates people from God and the human community, it is contrary to charity and goodness, and it places participants dangerously close to destructive works of evil.”
But the show will go on. Harvard University emphasized that they do not endorse the view of the Cultural Studies Club. Still, the school said in a statement that they supported the rights of the students to assemble freely.
As part of a series exploring different cultures, the Cultural Studies Club is also hosting a Shinto tea ceremony, a Shaker exhibition and a Buddhist presentation on meditation.
The Satanic Temple, on the other hand, has been actively involved in the church-state debate in the past. Currently, the group is trying to plant a monument to Satan at the Oklahoma Capitol as an alternative to a Ten Commandments monument that has been there since 2012.