Plans for a Satanic Monument to be erected in a veterans park has sent shockwaves through Belle Plaine, Minnesota.
Per CBS:
A small Minnesota town is getting a lot of attention for a Satanic monument coming to their veterans park.
The monument going up for The Satanic Temple — which features an upturned helmet atop a black cube — will soon be at the site of the Veterans Memorial Park in Belle Plaine.
It is being built by a group of Satanists out of Massachusetts, and it will be the first Satanic monument on public property in United States history.
The city is allowing the monument to be built after a religious freedom group threatened to sue over another statue, which features a soldier praying over a grave marked with a cross.
City officials say the memorial, which is not inside the park yet, is finished, but they are still working out a date for when it will go in.
It has to be put in a small area called “The Free Speech Zone.” It is an area designated to 10 or fewer memorials, as long as they honor veterans.
“They said they were putting it up and I did not like it,” said resident Donna Karnitz.
Residents of Belle Plaine plan to protest the Satanic monument.
According to the Daily Caller:
Catholics in Minnesota will gather to ask for God’s protection and to pray against the nation’s first Satanic monument approved for display on public land.
Lay members of the Catholic church will gather July 15 for a rosary rally to pray for America’s protection from Satan, in light of a Satanic monument approved in May for display in a veterans memorial park in Belle Plaine, Minn. The monument, a large black steel cube engraved with a golden inverted pentagram topped with an upturned soldier’s helmet, is the first such monument approved for display on public grounds in the U.S. The rosary rally is organized by America Needs Fatima (ANF) and Return to Order (RTO), two campaign branches of a Catholic lay organization called Tradition, Family, and Property.
“The best way that Satan can accomplish his mission of luring souls into damnation is to erode the horror, the natural horror, that men have of the devil,” said Robert Ritchie, director of America Needs Fatima, in an interview with The Daily Caller News Foundation.
Satanic rituals are hardly new to the U.S., and in fact, appear to be rising throughout the West, as the number of Christian exorcisms has been rising, in a bid to rid people of their inner demons.
The Telegraph UK reported:
An “astonishing” rise in harmful Christian exorcisms is being partly driven by migrant communities, a think tank has warned.
A report by Theos, a think tank focusing on religion, found that experts were concerned that the “booming industry” in exorcisms was putting Christians’ mental health at risk.
The report, which examines the relationship between Christianity and mental health, said: “Exorcisms are now a booming industry in the UK, with a number of interviewees noting the astonishing increase in demand – often, as one noted, in defiance of any actual rules or procedures put in place by any church.”
It said that this industry was in part “driven by immigrant communities and Pentecostal churches which are very open about their exorcism services”.
