On Friday, March 28, Christians stood up for their faith in Kansas. I have grown the last 18 years under two activist parents, attending protests and rallies since I was in diapers. But what I witnessed today at the Topeka, Kansas, State Capitol stood out like nothing I’d ever experienced.
A day that began in desperate prayer to the Lord turned to provocative protests on both sides of the fence. Standing close to the Capitol, the satanists and pagans stood with frustrated looks on their faces. On the other side stood and knelt people of all Christian denominations, united in one goal: stopping the mockery of our Church.
As a student at Benedictine College, I had an hour drive to get to the Capitol. I committed to skipping my classes days in advance as soon as I knew I could make it down. This event would be so much bigger than schoolwork, which in any case I could make up in due time.
A friend from one of my business classes, Sarah Dunlap, offered me a ride with her family. Upon our arrival at 9 a.m., there were very few people at the Capitol. I quickly connected with a few I recognized as members of the Knights of Columbus. Slowly, others began to trickle in. On the other side of the Capitol building, Tradition Family Property (TFP) was beginning their own rally.
While time passed waiting for the 9:30 prayer service I had heard of, the first satanists arrived. This was 200 feet from where I stood, where the first microphones began to come into use.
CatholicVote soon began a prayer service rally (which was combated by the aggressive wind). Led by Logan Church and Tommy Valentine, the group I began with launched our rally with a few words by Logan and Tommy.
“A tiny group of satanists has managed to mobilize the church in Kansas and across the country to show up, and to pray, and to make reparation,” said Tommy. “Whatever blasphemy they are going to commit will be answered by Catholics across the country. Here, now, March 28th, is a victory for the Church!”
With that encouragement in mind, I helped to lead the prayer service by starting the Litany of the Most Blessed Sacrament with fellow Benedictine students.
As the prayer service continued, I made my way across the field of the Capitol grounds. I passed satanists and a protesting group arguing back and forth into microphones and reached the TFP rally. It was a beautiful and peaceful protest, which took place on the front steps of the Capitol. Around 100-200 members stood on the steps holding great banners and flags bearing scripture and symbols of hope. These people stood strong and proud, which demonstrated to me the power of the Catholic group. While it was adjacent to the actual protest, it exuded power that I did not feel when passing the microphone shouting match. With bagpipes and grit, the TFP marched in with a statue of Our Lady hoisted above their heads.
I made my way back to the other protest, which had grown from around 40 people protesting ten satanists to a hundred protestors against roughly 30 satanists, pagans, and atheists. Throughout the day, the number of protestors grew while the number of satanists shrank.
The satanists held vulgar signs and shouted offensive and rude things towards the protestors. They mocked and teased those who sang hymns or prayed aloud for them. A woman stood in a black dress, hiding her face behind a hat with opaque netting. She held a double-sided sign and approached the crowd of Christians with her middle finger held high. She shouted things about the prayerful singing, sneering at the efforts to tell her that she is loved.
That kind of exchange became a trend throughout the rally, with many satanists approaching the protestors and arguing or screaming back. A satanist woman stole a sign reading “sacrilege is not free speech,” ripped out the word “not,” and held it proudly for the crowd to see.
When they finished with their ritual, the satanic group left their protected area and moved to enter the Capitol. At this point, the two crowds mixed, allowing me to speak to some satanists. I could not make sense of most of what they said, because their reasoning was all distorted by lies and misinformation. I did, however, speak to one open satanist named Mr. Lominska, a second-generation Kansas farmer. He said that attending the satanic ritual was so he could “stand up for the right to practice religion freely.”
If he were a less calm person, Lominska said, he would have physically defended himself from what he suggested were the intimidation methods of the Catholics there. He claimed he had been confronted by “very large Catholic men with facial tattoos who were only six inches away from me, spitting in my face.” Originally he told me there were six men. The next time he mentioned it, there were 12.
I spoke with another satanist who showed me the packets they had handed out at the ritual. These packets were filled with satanic pamphlets, “ripped up bible pages,” cards with little plastic babies covered in red paint (he called them “abortion cards”), and little bags of unconsecrated bread and wine.
Upon seeing the things in the packets, I thought about the reason we were at this rally. How sidetracked I had gotten in my curiosity about why anyone could reasonably host a satanic ritual in public, attempting to desecrate the Body of Our Lord and make a mockery of one of the largest religions in the world!
I noticed a couple of things during the event that I had not thought of in a long time.
First, while these are satanists trying to desecrate the Catholic Church and all that she stands for, they are also scared and frustrated human beings. Humans, at their core, are weak beings who can only be made strong through God’s love. I noticed the absolute dedication and love that one side had for the other.
Despite the harsh words thrown around, despite the obnoxious chants and twisted attempts at using the Bible against Christians, one phrase stood out to me above all the others: “Jesus loves you.”
A simple phrase that outstripped all the other arguments and chants and talking points combined. No matter how far gone these satanists were, there was simply no way to argue around love. God loves them far more than Satan ever could. Christ, just as He died for us on the outside of the fence, died for those on the inside just the same.
There is a new zeal among young Catholics, a sentiment which is needed now more than ever. This generation of Catholics will have it harder than most, as the devil no longer intends to hide himself. Yet people will still follow him freely. To end this, we must proudly proclaim the truth that Christ is King, and that He died to save each and every soul on this planet, whether on the inside or on the outside of the fence.
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