The Archbishop of Atlanta this month asked Catholics to offer “prayers of reparation” in front of the Eucharist, ahead of a “Black Mass” scheduled to take place in Atlanta Friday night.
Archbishop Gregory Hartmayer called the scheduled ritual, set to be conducted by the Satanic Temple of Atlanta, a sacrilege which “mocks our Lord Jesus Christ, whom we Catholics believe is truly present under the form of bread and wine in the Holy Eucharist when it has been consecrated by a validly ordained priest.”
Area parishes are planning holy hours to coincide with the event, as Hartmeyer and Satanic Temple officials have traded comments in local media this week.
But what exactly is a Black Mass? What happens during one? And where does the ritual come from?
The Pillar explains.
What’s happening in Atlanta?
In an Oct. 8 memo, Atlanta’s Archbishop Gregory Hartmayer wrote to priests, religious, and staff of the archdiocese, commenting on a Black Mass to be held Oct. 25 at the MJQ Concourse, a dance club in northeastern Atlanta, and organized by the Satanic Temple of Atlanta.
Hartmeyer said the event would be “a blasphemous and obscene inversion of the Catholic Mass.”
“This terrible sacrilege is a deliberate attack on the Catholic Mass as well as the foundational beliefs of all Christians. It mocks our Lord Jesus Christ, whom we Catholics believe is truly present under the form of bread and wine in the Holy Eucharist when it has been consecrated by a validly ordained priest,” the archbishop said.
Urging holy hours scheduled to coincide with the event, Hartmayer said he was “calling on all Catholics of the Archdiocese of Atlanta to face this attack to our faith through prayer, penance and prayers of reparation.”
The Satanic Temple, an IRS-recognized religious institution, advertised the event as a “most sacred night of darkness,” and “a night of dark rituals, sinister music, and devilish fun,” which would “summon three demonized beings,” and — in addition to the Black Mass liturgy — feature a burlesque show and costume contest.
The organization, which sold tickets for the event at $33.85 each, said the events were meant to “help the Temple fight for separation of church and state.”
What is the Satanic Temple?
The Satanic Temple says it is a non-theistic organization founded in 2013, which says its mission is to promote skepticism about religions and other “superstitious beliefs,” in favor of, it claims, self-reliance, empathy, personal autonomy, and rationality.
The organization is complicated to describe, because it was started as a bit of a joke — or more like a troll. In 2012, cofounders Douglas Mesner and Malcolm Jarry decided to launch a Satanic-themed religious organization, which would meet IRS qualifications to be counted as a church, and other government tests to receive grants for religious organizations, while making the mockery of religious belief its central dogma — and taking up the image of Satan as its central figure.
The cofounders intended to be provocative, and to make uncomfortable politically conservative advocates of government collaboration with religious organizations for the provision of social services or other grant programs.
The group says it is atheistic and non-theistic, and that its belief in Satan is as a literary figure, a kind of figurative foil to what it sees as disordered religious obedience, superstition, and hypocrisy.
Because of its recognized religious status, the group does not file IRS 990 reports, making its finances hard to assess. But the group claims more than 700,000 members, and some 54 congregations in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and Europe.
But while the group claims not to be theistic, it does regularly host “Black Mass” liturgical rituals, in which Satan is invoked in prayers, and which includes a ritual which the group calls “Eucharistic.”
What happens at a Black Mass?
The Satanic Temple’s organizers have insisted that each of their group’s Black Masses is different, and that some elements of the ritual change according to local circumstances. And the group does not make its liturgical texts available.
But a 2022 Satanic Temple Black Mass held in Philadelphia and published on YouTube offers insights into the group’s ritual practice.
The 23-minute liturgy began with a procession of hooded and masked figures, followed by a naked and heavily tattoed man and woman, bound in chains and seemingly blindfolded.
As the group processed in —the leader bearing a thurible which did not emit much incense, if any — they walked toward an area with a neon-lit upside down cross and a lectern, adorned with a pentagram, which looked much more like a large pulpit than like any kind of altar.
As they walked, the processing figures chanted or recited several mantras: “I have no gods. I am the master. Only the sheep await the slaughter.”
When the group reached the pulpit, the naked man and woman knelt on the floor, while the presider and two other robed figures (concelebrants?) removed their face masks.
After a brief welcome to a congregation of roughly 30 people, Minister of Satan Jack Mongoose (presumably a pseudonym!) spoke about the group’s beliefs, while offering an invective against Christianity.
“Our world dies because science and reason have never truly held ground in the face of lazy superstition,” he said, reflecting the Satanic Temple’s “anti-religion” talking points.
“The continued dominance of superstitious thinking is the single greatest threat to our world,” he said. “While all religions of the world are a cancer to our planet, in the US of A, the dominant religion of Christianity is particularly galling.”
Mongoose then explained the group’s sense of Satan, which he seemed to regard as mostly allegorical:
“We see the allegory of Adam and Eve in reverse; Eden was a prison of blind obedience where naked slaves lived in ignorance of the horrors of the outside world. We venerate the snake, who provides us with the fruit of knowledge, he who allows us to take action. We use the name of the fallen rebel, the great other — who tempts us to question our world, and see with our eyes wide open.”
“We will make a better, kinder, loving society — we will save this planet. Because clearly, there is no one else who will,” he said. “We are a congregation of no gods and no masters … here, there are no sluts, no freaks, no rejects, and no limits to our members’ imaginations in crafting their own vision of the world.”
“The future,” Mongoose told his small congregation, “is Satanic.”
When he finished, with a cry of “Hail Satan,” Mongoose was met with a rousing response from the group.
“Hail Satan,” attendees cheered.
Subsequently, the group said it would begin its “Eucharist” liturgy.
The congregation lined up to receive some unspecified bread, and to drink purple Kool-Aid, Mongoose said, from pewter goblets.
The group concluded with a Litany of Satan, published in the 1850s by the odd French poet and noted opium advocate Charles Baudelaire.
“O Satan, take pity on my long misery,” they chanted.
“Adopted father of those whom in black rage/God the Father drove from the earthly paradise, O Satan, take pity on my long misery,” they exclaimed.
And then, after less than half an hour, the naked man and woman stood, the robed figures put their masks back on, they walked out of the room, and the ritual was over.
The small congregation clapped and cheered “Hail Satan.”
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While the Satanic Temple’s Black Mass aims to emphasize its anti-religious viewpoint, there have been other iterations of “Black Masses” in history, and may be other versions today.
In the early centuries of the Church, at least one gnostic group intent on desecrating the Eucharist was documented by Church historians.
Some historians say that in the late middle ages and early modern periods, disgraced priests consecrated the Eucharist for the purpose of mockery, desecration, and sacrilege, in the presence of people who practiced witchcraft. Others say those practices are hard to document or verify.
French literature from the 18th and 19th century recounts Black Masses offered by alleged practitioners of witchcraft, who would reportedly step on, urinate on, or spread sexual fluid upon hosts stolen from Catholic Masses. But it is not clear — and widely disputed among historians — whether those accounts were descriptions of actually occurring events, or had been exaggerated or contrived by authors of the era.
Nevertheless, contemporary Satanic groups, including the Satanic Temple, base much of their own ritual practice on those groups, and some have derived ritual rubrics which they claim reflect the practices of earlier eras. And it is not clear whether other contemporary Satanic groups have ritual practices which include directly defiling the Eucharist.
So will the Satanic Temple Black Mass defile the Eucharist?
When Archbishop Hartmayer made a statement on the planned Black Mass earlier this month, he condemned that the group would directly desecrate the Eucharist.
“Using a consecrated host they claim they obtained illicitly from a Catholic church and desecrating it in the vilest ways imaginable, the practitioners offer it in sacrifice to Satan,” he wrote.
Archdiocesan attorneys contacted the Satanic Temple this week, notifying the group that the archdiocese planned to seek a restraining order to stop the Black Mass, because the Satanic Temple had reportedly stolen a Eucharistic host, and would seemingly destroy it during the ritual.
But in an Oct. 25 Facebook post, the Satanic Temple said it had not taken any hosts, while describing Eucharistic hosts as “crackers enchanted through incantations that serve as a central talisman in specific Catholic ritualistic ceremonies.”
“We didn’t steal your crackers,” the group said, in reference to the Eucharist.
In a statement issued Friday, Hartmayer said that while the Satanic Temple “continued to mock the Eucharist and our beliefs, it also demonstrated an understanding of how seriously we have taken this threat to our core belief in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. They called their event entertainment and defended their right to express their beliefs by mocking ours. But importantly, the representative for The Satanic Temple of Atlanta has now provided us with their assurances that they do not have, and will not be using at their event tonight, a consecrated host.”
What happens now?
The Satanic Temple plans to continue with its ritual, and has similar rituals planned for other cities.
For his part, Hartmayer urged prayer “both in reparation for all insults to Christ our Lord, but also prayer for those who do not yet know of his love for them. Let us pray for those who turn to darkness. Let us pray that they will come to know that they are welcome in the arms of Jesus; that they will come to experience his true presence and experience true conversion.”
