The Devil is Real, and Hell is a Real Place

“Go to the pole!” the gray-haired woman in the worn peach cardigan urged. “Go to the pole!” she whispered again hurriedly. The pole? Claudia and I looked at each other silently with perplexed expressions. “The prayer pole! Over there,” she pointed, a clutched rosary peeking out of her curled fingers. With rain threatening, we wasted no time uprooting the homemade sign that Claudia had thrust into the ground, bearing the message that Hell is real and so is the Devil, in case anyone was wondering. The “pole,” as it turned out, happened to be the flag pole in front of the main entrance of the Lebanon (CT) Elementary School, the “prayer pole” where students gather outside of school hours to pray. And so, pleased with our new location, we began anew, “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee ….”

What led Claudia and I and a half dozen middle-aged women to unite together to recite the Rosary on a damp, chilly afternoon in December? For the past two years, the Christian “Good News Club” has been offering the Gospel message to students as an extra-curricular choice at the school in Lebanon. In a time when children are incessantly bombarded by a mountain of worldly and more often than not perverse messages, the club is a ray of hope and is well attended, according to the teacher who established it. We were not there to pray with the Good News Club. No, we were there for something entirely different. Enter Satan. Or … the After School Satan Club.

Enter Satan

I first heard about the After School Satan Club through a flyer that was making the online rounds. My first impression was that it had to be a joke!! I found out a day or two later it was all too real. The flyer appeared innocuous, offering snacks, arts & crafts, puzzles and games to unsuspecting youngsters. It was very appealing.

The After School Satan Club is organized by The Satanic Temple, based in Salem, Massachusetts. They were meeting for the very first time in Lebanon at 3:30 p.m., the exact time that Claudia and I and our new acquaintances began praying the rosary. According to their website, “The After School Satan Club does not believe in introducing religion into public schools and will only open a club if other religious groups are operating on campus. ASSC exists to provide a safe and inclusive alternative to the religious clubs that use threats of eternal damnation to convert school children to their belief system.” The ASSC was invited by a parent from Lebanon Elementary School as an option to the Good News Club that meets there. A brochure promoting the club states, “Trained educators provide activities and learning opportunities which students are free to engage in, or they may opt to explore other interests that may be aided by available resources.” Currently, there are nine such clubs operating around the US. They have well established legal protection, including the Supreme Court decision from 2001, Good News Club v. Milford Central School, 533 U.S. 98, and most recently a court victory in Saucon Valley, Pennsylvania.

According to an article in the Stamford Advocate (Steven Goode, Staff Writer, Dec. 1, 2023), club campaign director and Satanic Temple minister, June Everett, said, “For the first meeting … there would be fun and less-structured activities such as rock painting and the making of friendship bracelets. But going forward, the participants will take part in activities based on the group’s seven tenets, which include: acting with compassion and empathy towards all creatures with reason; the struggle for justice is an ongoing and necessary pursuit that should prevail over laws and institutions; and that one’s body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone. Those activities will emphasize a scientific, rationalist, non-superstitious world view.” This is when the real agenda kicks in.

Bait and Switch

As soon as they begin introducing their “seven tenets” (in opposition to the Ten Commandments), the molding and indoctrination of unsuspecting youngsters begins. Their belief that “one’s body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone” is the justification for the real purpose of The Satanic Temple: ritual child sacrifice.

One can quickly see past the warm fuzzy attraction of puzzles, snacks and games. It won’t be long before rock painting and friendship bracelets turn into “my body, my choice.” From the front page of the Satanic Temple website:

TST DEMANDS TEXAS RECOGNIZE RELIGIOUS RIGHT TO PERFORM ABORTION POST-ROE

TST has petitioned the state of Texas to allow Satanic Temple members the ability to continue receiving voluntary abortions as part of a religious ritual. Texas’s trigger ban on abortions took effect after the reversal of Roe v. Wade, which prohibited all abortions for any reason, including instances of rape or incest. TST claims that this ban infringes upon its members’ right to practice their religion and requests Texas recognize its members’ religious rights.

On September 1, 2021, Texas passed S.B. 8, which prohibited anyone from getting an abortion after a detectable fetal tone. The law also allows citizens to sue people who obtained, performed, or helped to perform an abortion. TST filed a lawsuit against Texas, stating that this law prohibits TST members from performing a religious ritual to remove nonviable fetal tissue up to 24 weeks of pregnancy.

This motion was made prior to the reversal of Roe v. Wade in late June 2022. After the Supreme Court ruling, Texas enforced its “trigger ban” on abortions, whereby abortion procedures became illegal within Texas state lines. TST is requesting an immediate injunction because the law inhibits TST members’ ability to practice their religion freely.

There are also links on how to prepare for and perform the abortion ritual, as well as information on current and past legal battles pertaining to the right to abortion as a religious right. I wonder how many meetings before the “trained educators” provide “learning opportunities” and “available resources.”

The ancient battle

Back to the chilly First Friday (a day dedicated to making reparation to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus) in December … “St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle …” we continued to pray between decades of the Rosary. It is a battle. An ancient battle. One that must be fought until Her heel crushes his head. The same battle which caused St. Maximilian Kolbe to establish the Militia Immaculatae. According to St. Maximilian’s account in the November 1935 issue of Mugenzai no Seibo no Kishi, “When in Rome the Freemasons started coming out in the open daringly, flaunting their banners under the windows of the Vatican, depicting, on the black banners of the followers of Giordano Bruno, St. Michael the Archangel crushed under the foot of Lucifer, and openly lashing out against the Holy Father in propaganda pamphlets, the thought came of setting up an association committed to fighting Freemasonry and other servants of Lucifer …”

One wonders what has changed much in a hundred years. The banners are still being flaunted, instead of black they have usurped God’s covenantal rainbow. Freemasonry is rampant in the Vatican and the world’s political systems. Our littlest ones, if they aren’t being torn apart under the guise of religious freedom or the deceptive heresy of individual autonomy, are being scandalized from the tenderest of ages. According to a news report, one Lebanon mother enrolled her five- and six-year-old children in the afore mentioned ASSC. Perhaps if they were enrolled in the Good News Club, they might have heard Matthew 18:5-7: “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me. But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea. Woe to the world because of scandals. Such things are bound to occur, but woe to the one through whom they come.”

Our Bullet and Shield

Saint Maximilian Kolbe had a supernatural confidence in the Immaculata and in the medal requested by Our Lady to St. Catherine Laboure. “It is all very true, [what] you write, that is, that the Miraculous Medal, revealed by the Immaculata herself and desired by her, is our bullet and shield.”¹ One can feel so helpless in the darkness and empty promises that this world has to offer. In times like these we have a choice. One can sit and do nothing and feel defeated, or one can have great confidence, like St. Maximilian, and turn to Our Lady. She will aide us in our battle. Two weeks ago, I made my solemn consecration to Our Lady using the Kolbean formula: “ … If it pleases You, use all that I am and have without reserve, wholly to accomplish what has been said of You: ‘She will crush your head,’ and ‘You alone have destroyed all heresies in the whole world.’ Let me be a fit instrument in Your immaculate and most merciful hands for introducing and increasing Your glory to the maximum in all the many strayed and indifferent souls….” Little did I know that I’d soon be fearlessly standing at the flagpole, newly clothed in the Miraculous Medal and holding a prayer card of St. Maximilian Kolbe, fighting the same Satan that, a little over one hundred years ago in 1917, St. Max was battling. In the end, we know who triumphs. Our Lady only asks us to do our part. It is not a battle of us against them. We did not come to protest, we came together to pray. Some things can only be overcome by prayer and fasting: “And when he was come into the house, his disciples secretly asked him: Why couldn’t we cast him out? And he said to them: This kind can go out by nothing, but by prayer and fasting.” (Mark 9:28)

The Immaculata: Vanquisher of Satan

“To approach her, become like her, permit her to take possession of our heart and all our self, that she may live and act in and through us, that she may love God with our heart, that we may belong to her without any restriction: this is our ideal. To radiate in the surroundings, conquer souls for her in a way that, before her, the hearts of our neighbors may be opened so that she may extend her dominion in the hearts of all those who live in any corner of the earth, without regard for racial, national, linguistic differences, and similarly in the hearts of all those who will live in any moment of history till the end of the world: this is our ideal. Besides, may her life be ever more rooted in us from day to day, from one hour to another, from one moment to another, and this without any limitation: this is our ideal. Again, may her life develop in the same way in every soul that exists and will exist in any time: this is our cherished ideal … the Heart of the Immaculata, the Mother of God, the Mother of Jesus our Brother, the Mother of our supernatural life, the Mediatrix of all graces, our Queen, our Sovereign, our Leader and the Vanquisher of Satan.”²

Winning Souls for the Immaculata

We want to win souls for her and for Jesus, so “that she, the Refuge of Sinners, may as soon as possible reign in the hearts of all and of each single person.”³ St. Maximilian writes in an article in Ryerz Niepokalanej, February 1925 (pp. 25-27), speaking of a Knight of the Immaculata: “He does not confine his heart only to himself or to his family, his relatives, his neighbors, his friends, his fellow countrymen. Rather, along with them he embraces the whole world, each and every person individually, for all were redeemed by the Blood of Jesus, without exception, and all are our brothers and sisters. He desires true happiness for all, enlightenment through the light of faith, purification from sin, a rekindling of the heart through love for God, a love that sets no limits. The happiness of all humanity in God through the Immaculata: there lies his dream.

Thus, he is not at all indifferent to the evil that rages on. Rather, he hates it with all his heart and at every opportunity, in every place and at all times he attacks any evil that poisons the souls of men. … They know that they will do nothing without her, while with her help nothing will be able to resist them.

O Immaculata, Queen of Heaven, may you be as soon as possible the true Queen of the whole earth and of every single soul.”⁴

We pray with great confidence, through the intercession of St. Maximilian Kolbe and the Immaculata, that the hearts of those unfortunate souls, blinded by the snares of the devil and all his false promises, be turned to the most Immaculate and Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary and may all of the present and future After School Satanic Clubs fall apart and fail to come to fruition through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.