You Don’t Have To Tolerate Everything

Last week in Topeka, Kansas, the followers of Jesus Christ clashed with the slaves of Satan, and Christ won. A relatively obscure group called the Satanic Grotto tried to stage a “Black Mass” outside the Kansas State Capitol and was met by thousands of Catholic protesters who had no intention of standing by and allowing the devilry to proceed in peace.

These Catholics had exactly the right idea: We don’t have to tolerate every insult and sacrilege against the Christian faith out of a misguided notion of toleration or a misunderstanding of religious liberty. Contrary to how the U.S. Supreme Court began to re-interpret the First Amendment in the mid-twentieth century, freedom of religion in America should never have been construed so broadly as to allow Satanists to perform a Black Mass on the steps of a state capitol — or anywhere else.

First, it’s important to understand that a Black Mass is a Satanic ceremony based directly on the Catholic Mass, mocking and inverting it for demonic purposes. Black Masses have been around for centuries, and used to be done in secret because the Catholic Church and secular authorities alike would not tolerate them. To perform one, Satanists must steal a consecrated Eucharistic host, which they then desecrate in an act of hatred toward God. (This is one reason Catholic churches keep the consecrated host in a locked tabernacle, and Catholic priests do not allow parishioners to take the host with them back to their seats during Holy Communion.)

In this, Catholics share at least one belief in common with Satanists: they both believe the bread and wine used in Holy Communion, once consecrated, are the actual body and blood of Christ. That’s why Satanists will only use a host consecrated by a Catholic priest for a Black Mass.

Knowing this, Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann of Kansas City, Kan., filed a petition in the civil division of the District Court of Leavenworth County, Kansas, to recover the consecrated host the Satanists claimed to have secured. (The Satanic Grotto swore in court that it didn’t have a consecrated host, and the judge dismissed the case.)

Having failed to stop the Black Mass in court, the Catholic faithful didn’t just throw their hands up and allow the devil-worshippers to do as they pleased. When the Satanic Grotto showed up by the dozens to perform their sacrilege last Friday, they were met by vastly larger numbers of peaceful Catholic protesters, who were supported in prayer by thousands of fellow Catholics at four different parishes in Topeka for reparation Masses that same day.

The Satanists, jeering at the crowds of singing and praying Catholics, proceeded with their Black Mass on the steps of the Kansas Capitol. When the moment of desecration came and the founder and leader of the Satanic Grotto, a bald man with face tattoos named Michael Stewart, threw a consecrated host to the ground apparently to stomp on it, a Catholic man named Randy Blasi rushed forward, dove on the host and immediately consumed it. The Satanists struck Blasi on the head and neck, but it was too late, their sacrilege had been thwarted.

But the Satan-worshippers weren’t ready to give up, and went inside the capitol hoping to complete their ceremony. A widely-circulated video clip shows Stewart holding up a bag containing what appeared to be another consecrated host. But before he could finish his blasphemous incantations, a young man named Marcus Schroeder grabbed the bag and would not let go. Stewart punched Schroeder in the face twice, knocking him down. Police immediately tackled Stewart and arrested him, hauling him off in handcuffs as he shouted “hail Satan!” He was later charged with disorderly conduct and illegal assembly, along with at least two of his followers. (Marcus was also charged with disorderly conduct.)

Before and after the events at the capitol, Stewart and his fellow Satanists argued that they were simply exercising their constitutional rights under the First Amendment. They’re technically right, but only because the Supreme Court in the 1950s abandoned First Amendment jurisprudence upholding the constitutionality of laws against blasphemy and sacrilege, which had been on the books in every state since our nation’s founding.

Ironically, the case that changed everything had to do with the state of New York’s decision to ban an anti-Catholic film by Italian filmmaker Roberto Rossellini called “The Miracle” on grounds that it was “sacrilegious.” In 1952 the Supreme Court ruled in Joseph Burstyn, Inc. v. Wilson that the provisions of New York law that allowed for the banning of the film were a “restraint on free speech,” and violated the First Amendment.

That landmark decision overturned a unanimous 1915 Supreme Court ruling that the free speech protections of the First Amendment do not extend to films because “they may be used for evil,” and that censorship of films is not “beyond the power of government.” The exhibition of films, the court said in its 9-0 ruling, was not to be regarded “as part of the press of the country, or as organs of public opinion.” Just as government can regulate the theater or circus through licensure, the court reasoned, so too can it regulate the showing of films.

We have now come so far from that previous understanding of the First Amendment, which held firm from its ratification in 1791 until the middle of the last century, that it’s hard to imagine we ever had free speech in this country prior to 1952. But we did. What we didn’t have was a public square so corrupted and devoid of any objective moral standards that a Satanic Black Mass could be considered a valid expression of free speech or free exercise of religion. 

Today, we’re asked simply to tolerate this kind of sacrilege in public—something not a single one of our Founding Fathers would have done. The idea that any of them or any of their successors for a century or more would have countenanced a Black Mass, or a public Satanic ritual of any kind, on the grounds that it was protected speech or a valid exercise of religion, is frankly ridiculous.

Like them, we don’t have to tolerate it. As these heroic Catholics showed last week, you can press your case in court. Failing that, you can press your case in the form of peaceful and orderly protest. And if it comes to it, you can defy the sacrilege and blasphemies of the Satanists by enduring their blows to preserve what is sacred, and in doing so give an example to the world of the selflessness and piety that true religion inspires.

John Daniel Davidson is a senior editor at The Federalist. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Claremont Review of Books, The New York Post, and elsewhere. He is the author of Pagan America: the Decline of Christianity and the Dark Age to Come. Follow him on Twitter, @johnddavidson.