Sunday, January 17, 2010

Invoking Satan: Being the devil’s advocate

Last week Satan made headlines when Pat Robertson said that the Haiti earthquake was caused by the Haitians invoking the Devil.

Robertson claims that the Haitians wanted to be rid of the French at all costs, and the Hatians made a pact with Lucifer to banish the French.


Which is worse, Hell or France?

Don;t say "The Devils advocate: I invokes Satan

Well, Satan must be on people’s minds because I recently got chastised by a lady for saying the words “To be the devil’s advocate . . . ”.

She told me that saying "devils advocate" was “invoking” Satan. Fortunately, my accidental satanic invocation was not effective . . .



Afterwards, I decided to research my faux paux.

I learned that there are many ways to invoke Satan.

I try very hard to respect people of all faiths and creeds (except Atheists, of course, who are going to Hell), so I needed to learn more so that I did not accidentally offend another thumper by invoking the prince of darkness.

On the other hand, I don’t want to appear anti-satanic, because Americans are supposed to tolerate every religion, no matter what they worship!




The history of the Devil’s Advocate

I thought that the term “devil’s advocate” was a part of Christian history. I was correct. In Christian history, the term Devil’s advocate originated when they debated on whether a person was worthy of sainthood.


Satan incarnate

The Devil’s Advocate was formally known as The Promoter of the Faith. The job of the Devil’s Advocate was to argue against canonization of the saint, claiming that the miracles were due to natural causes.

The last devil’s advocate was Christopher Hitchens of Vanity Fair who was asked in 2002 to be “advocatus diabolic” (Devil’s advocate), and testify against the beatification of Mother Teresa.