Making evil look good

By: Modesto P. Sa-onoy

SEVERAL times in the recent past, I had been receiving requests to join petitions to stop well-known businesses and institutions from publicizing the satanic and insults against God. Imagine an international online business as Amazon selling satanic gadgets and even toilet bowls with the image of Christ on its cover. Or consider a Catholic university giving space for a rally in support of Satanism and the Black Mass that ridicules the most sublime and highest form of Catholic worship.

There are movies depicting evil as good and theaters and institutions featuring the supremacy of the demonic. Personalities practicing devilish manners have become not only acceptable but profitable that they entice others to follow suit. Their proliferation is not secret. Illegal drugs, despite their disastrous effects on the user that eventually result in criminal and hideous behavior are big business.

While governments are exerting efforts to curtail the manufacture, sale and use of these substances, they remain strong because many see them merely as abuse and not the work of evil. Thus illegal drugs are treated as criminality and not a battle for the souls.

There are also reports of leading citizens groups demanding that the figures or statues of Satan or its followers in the demonic world, like the goat, be enshrined in public places as one is demanded in the state capitol in the United States. One group insisted that there should be also a holiday to celebrate Satan and all satanic practices as Christians and Muslims have in honor of their founders or important events in their lives.

At one time I wrote about satanic services in American campuses and satanic parades in some American cities. They invoke their constitutional rights to freedom of religion and expression of beliefs as of the same category as freedom of political and social beliefs.

They had debunked the defense that the promotion of evil undermines morality and public welfare; the satanic forces are adept in presenting evil as good.

Another American state took a step forward to promote Satan. The Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly, in Alaska, reportedly will allow a woman to give a Satanist “invocation” before a council meeting on June 18.

In August 2016, a woman named Iris Fontana started a meeting with an invocation calling up Satanism and ended her “prayer” with “Hail Satan”. She was scheduled to give the June 18 invocation. Because of this “freedom” other groups with various beliefs or non-beliefs are also asking that they be allowed to open the assembly with their own version of invocation.

There was no report whether indeed Fontana delivered the invocation as scheduled, but what is important is that such a request was made at all.

The issue there as well as elsewhere in a civilized world is how could a public institution, as a publicly elected council which is meant to uphold the common good grant a representative of Satanism to lead the invocation at its session. Considering what the satanic represents, does it mean that this particular council is promoting immorality, corruption and vice? Does not allowing this kind of invocation show that evil is also good?

Invocations in gatherings are important part of the program because the assembly of citizens is intended for the common welfare and thus the participants should be conscious of their duty as members of a human family. How then can the satanic be the guiding voice in such assemblies? If the meeting is among the demonic others should not intervene, but the session of a publicly elected council is intended for the common good.

Evil is being pushed as acceptable. Moves such as these break the barriers of horror of what we believe and reject as evil.

There are actually actions that are evil but hidden or camouflaged as good. Corruption in government is evil but it proliferates because people allow it to prevail. Praying to Satan in public is despicable why then should corruption that our laws prohibit be any different?

One reason is that voices against corruption are being muted and many religious leaders never mention evil in them. Some never speak against evil at all as if evil does not exist. People “worship” the fruits of corruption, if not participate in their consumption. Many have become inured to the true nature of corruption because it is generously shared to perpetuate its evil.