From LifeSiteNews
On the one hand, critics of the mascots have argued that they were…
- Motivated by triviality and a lack of gravitas, both of which undermine the Church herself
- Condescending towards the young people at whom they were supposedly aimed, a form of tone-deaf pandering similar to that engaged in by politicians towards various minority groups
- Associating the Church with an anime fandom subculture which, even at its least troublesome, habitually glorifies the rejection of basic moral principles around modesty, occasions of sin, and scandal
- Tarred by their association with a designer who has openly promoted degenerate sexual vice and produced degenerate products, including with devil themes.
However, one particular observation has been met with scorn from critics and defenders alike—and that is concerning the names of the characters.
What are the names of these mascots all about?
Although most of the attention has been focused on the Luce character, she is accompanied by three other “pilgrim friends” called Fe, Xin, and Sky—as well as a winged baby and a dog.
Luce and Fe mean “light” in Italian and “faith” in Spanish. The name Xin appears to mean “heart” or “mind” in Chinese.
However, critics quickly suggested that the names were an allusion to other matters—most importantly, Lucifer (“Luce+Fe”).
As mentioned above, this observation has been rejected, but this dismissal appears to be rooted in a misunderstanding of the point being made. Suggesting that the names may be an allusion to Lucifer is not the same as asserting that “Luce means Lucifer,” and still less that the mascot or character is somehow demonic.
Rather, it is a prosaic observation based on the mainstream philosophical trends over the last few centuries and the expressed philosophical commitments of those involved.
What does ‘Lucifer’ mean?
In Latin, “lucifer” means “light bearer” or “morning star.” It is applied to Christ in the Roman Liturgy, including in the Exsultet on Holy Saturday. Similarly, as Luce’s defenders have been quick to point out, there is a long tradition of referring to Christ as “the Light.” Light is not a bad thing and symbolic of all that is good.
In recent times, Benedict XVI beatified the Italian teenager Chiara Badano, whose nickname was “Chiara Luce.” “Lucifer” was itself a given name in previous times, including of the fourth century Lucifer of Cagliari to whom many of Luce’s defenders have misleadingly referred (due to long disputes over whether he was a saint).[1]
It is very obvious that there could be many innocent reasons for naming a mascot “Luce” and her friend “Fe.” But plausible deniability does not equate to innocence, nor to proof that the suggestion is wrong or foolish. In fact, raising such elementary points of etymology betrays an ignorance of centuries of general philosophical and political context, and decades of specific context in the ecclesiastical landscape.
The Enlightenment as the dominant philosophical movement
Since the 18th century, the West has been living in a world of Enlightenment revolution. The presuppositions of this philosophical movement have progressively become the defaults of our society, to the point in which they dominate.
These ideals include the French Revolution’s classic trio of liberty, equality, and fraternity. They include rationalism—a presumption that there is no knowledge possible outside of what is available to natural human reason. They include also the sovereignty of nature over supernature, of individual licence over authority, and a general philosophical scepticism when it comes to epistemology and the knowability of divine revelation.
It also includes a rejection of the anciens regimes, the older orders of Church, Throne and Patriarchy—against which the enlightenment revolutions rebelled.
The importance of “light” to this intellectual rebellion against God is clear from the name “enlightenment.” This is why what Catholics might call “the ages of Faith” are called, under the influence of the Enlightenment, “the dark ages.”
Lucifer as the mascot of the Enlightenment
A central “mascot” in the Enlightenment—and the Romantic movement which grew out of it and responded to it—has been Lucifer himself, reimagined along benevolent and Milton-inspired heroic lines. John Milton himself was a republican and a revolutionary, and it is notorious that the figure of Satan in Paradise Lost is portrayed as sympathetic and inspiring proto-republican against the “tyrannical” monarchy of God.
In this general philosophical movement, Lucifer takes a role similar role to the Greek god Prometheus: he is cast as a friend of humanity who has rebelled against authoritarian structures to bring us the light of knowledge and freedom. Prometheus was a favorite theme of the Romantics for these same reasons.
These ideas were taken up by the Romantic poet and artist William Blake, who produced illustrations of Paradise Lost according to this theme, as well as inventing his own mythology along gnostic lines.
Siobhan Lyons states:
The Devil in Romantic literature and poetry became a figure of insight and necessary rebellion, being seen as a tragic, heroic figure. Moreover, in various Romantic works, the Devil incorporates the basic theme of human desire, as epitomized in the works of William Blake, Percy Shelley, and Lord Byron, all of whom perceived Satan as their hero. […]
The Devil in Romanticism, far from being the personification of evil, is instead posited as an essential, if not experimental, figure of human psychology.[2]
Although the Romantic movement was in some ways a rebellion against aspects of the Enlightenment, they are united in many of its presuppositions and goals.
As well as constituting the predominant ideology of modern society, these Enlightenment/Romantic values are expressed by groups such as The Satanic Temple, which claims not to believe in a personal Satan, but rather uses him as literary figure representing a liberty and rebellion against unjust authority. The Church of Satan similarly rejects the notion of a personal Satan, with both groups professing to pursue merely naturalistic values.
The religion of the Enlightenment—rationalism and Freemasonry
The emphasis on light is even more pronounced in the quintessential Enlightenment movement of Freemasonry. In some ways, it is the central theme of Freemasonry and the central link with the Enlightenment.
Albert Pike, the author of a classic masonic text Morals and Dogmas of the Accepted Scottish Rite, wrote:
Humanity has never really had but one religion and one worship. This universal light has had its uncertain mirages, its deceitful reflections, and its shadows; but always, after the nights of Error, we see it reappear, one and pure like the Sun. [3]
This “true religion of mankind,” a kind of “meta-religion” above and behind all the other religions of the world, is conceived as purely rational and shorn of supernatural and “superstitious elements.” It reduces the particular religions of the world to optional flavors, with the “true religion” being a more minimalist set of ethical principles to which they all must conform. This Enlightenment conception is now the predominant way in which most of the West views religion.
Without in any way suggesting that the designer of the Luce mascots is a Freemason or Enlightenment philosopher, it is notable that Simone Legno describes his “Catholic upbringing” in words which conform to this conception of religion:
I grew up in Rome in a Catholic family, where I learned the principles of a faith grounded in generosity and respect for others. [4]
This theme of a new light being brought to mankind appears throughout Masonic writings and ritual. In his study Darkness Visible, the Anglican clergyman Walton Hannah—who became a Catholic precisely because of the Anglican church’s refusal to take seriously the dangers of Freemasonry—stated the following:
For Masonry claims to impart to its initiates a spiritual and esoteric light. [5]
The ceremony of initiation which Hannah cites echoes the questions at the door of the Church in the traditional rite of baptism, replacing “faith” with “light”:
Worshipful Master: Having been kept for a considerable time in a state of darkness, what in your present situation is the predominant wish of your heart?
Candidate: Light. [6]
Hannah also cites a very disturbing ceremony used at higher degrees, which refers to the death of Our Lord Jesus Christ on the Cross:
Most Wise Sovereign. Excellent and Perfect First General, what is the hour?
1st General. The ninth hour of the day.
Most Wise Sovereign. Then it is the hour when the Veil of the Temple was rent in twain and darkness overspread the earth, when the true Light departed from Us, the Altar was thrown down, the Blazing Star was eclipsed, the Cubic Stone poured forth Blood and Water, the Word was lost, and despair and tribulation sat heavily upon us.
(A solemn pause).
Since Masonry has experienced such dire calamities, it is our duty, Princes, to endeavour, by renewed labours, to retrieve our loss. May the benign influence of Faith, Hope, and Charity prosper our endeavours to recover the lost Word; for which purpose I declare this Chapter of Princes Rose Croix of Heredom duly open, in the Name of the Great Emmanuel.
At first glance, this may appear to be a lament for the death of Christ. A second glance shows this to be at best more ambiguous. Hannah explains:
For any Christian to declare that Masonry experienced a “dire calamity” at the Crucifixion, or that Masons suffered a “loss” in the triumphant redemptive death of Our Saviour on the Cross which the Excellent and Perfect Princes of the Rose Croix of Heredom can by their own labours “retrieve” seems not only heretical but actually blasphemous. The only interpretation which makes sense of this passage would appear to be that it is not the death of Our Lord which is mourned, but the defeat of Satan.7
In addition to this focus on Lucifer, we find the closely related idea of “the cult of man,” or the worship of man himself.
It is important to emphasise that this discussion of Freemasonry, and its links with the Enlightenment and the Revolution, is based on objectively verifiable facts and history.
The goals of this Enlightenment ‘religion’
Now, the sectaries of these Enlightenment movements—be they Jacobins or other revolutionaries, freemasons, or anyone else—long stated that their intention was to have the Church accept and endorse their ideals. In his book on St Athanasius, Bishop Rudolph Graber of Regensburg quoted a Freemason who said that:
[T]he goal [of Freemasonry] is no longer the destruction of the Church, but to make use of it by infiltrating it. [8]
There are many texts that could be cited along these lines. One such text was The Permanent Instruction of the Alta Vendita. Although others may or may not be authentic, the Permanent Instruction is of undoubted authenticity, and the popes have treated it as such. It has also been confirmed by the course of history ever since in many ways, including by mainstream post-conciliar churchmen.
The Permanent Instruction states its goal explicitly and in detail:
Our ultimate end is that of Voltaire and of the French Revolution—the final destruction of Catholicism, and even of the Christian idea…
What we must ask for, what we should look for and wait for, as the Jews wait for the Messiah, is a Pope according to our needs […]
And this Pontiff, like most of his contemporaries, will be necessarily more or less imbued with the [revolutionary] Italian and humanitarian principles that we are going to begin to put into circulation. […]
You wish to establish the reign of the chosen ones on the throne of the prostitute of Babylon [Rome]; let the clergy march under your standard, always believing that they are marching under the banner of the apostolic keys.
You intend to make the last vestige of tyrants and the oppressors disappear; lay your snares [nets] like Simon Bar-Jona: lay them in the sacristies, the seminaries and the monasteries rather than at the bottom of the sea: and if you do not hurry. We promise you a catch more miraculous than his. The fisher of fish became the fisher of men; you will bring friends around the Apostolic Chair.9
The Permanent Instruction ends with the avowal:
You will have preached a revolution in tiara and in cope, marching with the cross and the banner; a revolution that will need to be only a little bit urged on to set fire to the four corners of the world.” [10]
The fulfilment of this goal
Although this may seem shocking to conservative defenders of the Second Vatican Council today, it is an undisputed fact that the Council was heralded by friends and foes alike as a fulfilment of this goal.
Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, one of the Council Fathers and the founder of the Society of St Pius X, echoed critically Cardinal Suenens’ praise of Vatican II as “the French Revolution in the Church.” [11]
Lefebvre cited this Cardinal in his explanation:
The parallel I have drawn between the crisis in the Church and the French Revolution is not simply a metaphorical one. The influence of the philosophes of the eighteenth century, and of the upheaval that they produced in the world, has continued down to our times. Those who have injected that poison into the Church admit it to themselves. It was Cardinal Suenens who exclaimed, “Vatican II is the French Revolution in the Church,” and among other unguarded declarations he added “One cannot understand the French or the Russian revolutions unless one knows something of the old regimes which they brought to an end… It is the same in church affairs: a reaction can only be judged in relation to the state of things that preceded it.”[12]
Lefebvre also cited Yves Congar:
Père Congar, one of the artisans of the reforms, spoke likewise: “The Church has had, peacefully, its October Revolution.” Fully aware of what he was saying, he remarked “The Declaration on Religious Liberty states the opposite of the Syllabus.”13
He cited other “Catholics liberals,” including Mgr Prelot:
“We had struggled for a century and a half to bring our opinions to prevail within the Church and had not succeeded. Finally, there came Vatican II and we triumphed. From then on the propositions and principles of liberal Catholicism have been definitively and officially accepted by Holy Church.”[14]
Cardinal Ratzinger himself said the same thing of Vatican II’s Gaudium et Spes—that it represented a reconciliation with the world as established in the Revolution of 1789:
If it is desirable to offer a diagnosis of the text as a whole, we might say that (in conjunction with the texts on religious liberty and world religions) it is a revision of the Syllabus of Pius IX, a kind of counter-syllabus. Harnack, as we know, interpreted the Syllabus of Pius IX as nothing less than a declaration of war against his generation. This is correct insofar as the Syllabus established a line of demarcation against the determining forces of the nineteenth century: against the scientific and political world view of liberalism. In the struggle against modernism this twofold delimitation was ratified and strengthened. Since then many things have changed. […]
[T]he one-sidedness of the position adopted by the Church under Pius IX and Pius X in response to the situation created by the new phase of history inaugurated by the French Revolution was, to a large extent, corrected via facti, especially in Central Europe, but there was still no basic statement of the relationship that should exist between the Church and the world that had come into existence after 1789.
In fact, an attitude that was largely prerevolutionary continued to exist in countries with strong Catholic majorities. Hardly anyone today will deny that the Spanish and Italian Concordats strove to preserve too much of a view of the world that no longer corresponded to the facts. […]
Let us be content to say here that the text serves as a counter-syllabus and, as such, represents, on the part of the Church, an attempt at an official reconciliation with the new era inaugurated in 1789. Only from this perspective can we understand, on the one hand, its ghetto-mentality, of which we have spoken above; only from this perspective can we understand, on the other hand, the meaning of this remarkable meeting of Church and world. Basically, the word “world” means the spirit of the modern era, in contrast to which the Church’s group-consciousness saw itself as a separate subject that now, after a war that had been in turn both hot and cold, was intent on dialogue and cooperation. [15]
It has been alleged that this is not just evident in certain individual statements in Vatican II, but rather suffuses all the documents in its presuppositions and priorities. However, it could be summarised in Gaudium et Spes:
According to the almost unanimous opinion of believers and unbelievers alike, all things on earth should be related to man as their center and crown.16
This is summed up in even greater clarity by Paul VI himself in his address at the last general meeting of the Second Vatican Council:
Secular, profane, humanism has finally revealed itself in its terrible shape and has, in a certain sense, challenged the Council. The religion of God made man has come up against a religion – for there is such a one – of man who makes himself God.
And what happened? An impact, a battle, an anathema? That might have taken place, but it did not. It was the old story of the Samaritan that formed the model for the Council’s spirituality. It was filled only with an endless sympathy. Its attention was taken up with the discovery of human needs – which become greater as the son of the earth (sic) makes himself greater.
Do you at least recognize this its merit, you modern humanists who have no place for the transcendence of the things supreme, and come to know our new humanism: we also, we more than anyone else, have the cult of man. [17]
Finally, while much has happened since 1965, Francis’ recent statements on false religions—the necessary fulfilment of the doctrine of religious liberty—are themselves expressions of the Enlightenment and Masonic conception of the transcendental unity of religion, as expressed by Alfred Pike above:
- “All religions are a path to reach God.” (13 Sep 2024)
- “The diversity of your cultural and religious identities is a gift of God.” (17 Sep 2024)
- “We need […] to allow ourselves to be guided by the divine inspiration present in every faith.” (17 Sep 2024)
Are the mascots’ names linked to Enlightenment ideology?
In short, in the worldviews discussed in this piece, “light” refers to liberty, rationalism and naturalism, free from tyranny and shorn of superstition and supernaturalism. In these paradigms, Lucifer represents something imagined to be good, rather than a hideous devil figure—even though that is precisely what lurks behind the mask of these false naturalising philosophies.
It might be understandable that those ignorant of this context might see the suggestion of a link between Lucifer and the mascots’ names as contrived or paranoid. One can see how this may be misunderstood as a suggestion that the mascots themselves are demonic—rather than an observation on the intentions of those responsible for them.
But for the reasons discussed, it is radically insufficient to dismiss such a speculation by pointing to basic etymology, the presence of “light” in Christian language, or Christian figures named “Luce” or even “Lucifer.” The phrase for the phenomenon we see before us is “plausible deniability.”
Far from being far-fetched, such allusions to Lucifer are probable in light of the designers’ naturalist philosophy and promotion of degenerate sexual vice, and the Vatican’s open expressions of reconciliation with the ideals of 1789, Freemasonry, and Enlightenment.
Need we also recall that the designer is responsible for “adult products” emblazoned with an actual devil in the same “kawaii” style (a term in the anime subculture meaning “cute”) as “Luce and Friends”?
RELATED: Pro-LGBT creator of Vatican ‘Luce’ mascot also behind demon adult sex toy designs
On the contrary, if anything seems far-fetched, it is the idea that a public promoter of degenerate sexual vice could not possibly have inserted some of his values into designs for the Catholic Church—which is still seen as the great enemy of sexual degeneracy in the world.
Regardless of whether this is so or not, the commissioners of “Luce and Friends” have been self-confessedly promoting for decades the same Enlightenment values of 1789 and the Revolution for which Lucifer is the historical mascot. This is the primary fact, of which speculation about the names is the fruit; and this primary fact remains regardless.
We are obliged to make our judgments according to the whole of reality; we are not obliged to pretend that we cannot draw reasonable conclusions just because known bad actors hide behind plausible deniability.
ENDNOTES
[1] This Lucifer is sometimes referred to as “St Lucifer of Caligari,” even though he appears to have been a problematic figure who may not even have died a Catholic. The Catholic Encyclopaedia refers to his sect as a schism. He does not appear listed as a saint in The Roman Martyrology, Butler’s Lives of the Saints or Guéranger’s The Liturgical Year.
[2] Siobhan Lyons, Nietzsche, Satan and the Romantics: The Devil as ‘Tragic Hero’ in Romanticism (2015), p 33.
[3] Albert Pike, Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, p 102. Charleston A.M., 1871.
[5] Walton Hannah, Darkness Visible: A Revelation & Interpretation of Freemasonry, p 31. Augustine Publishing Company, Devon, 1980.
[6] Hannah, p 41.
[7] Hannah, p 203.
[8] Bishop Rudolph Graber, Athanasius and the Church of Our Time, p 39. Christian Book Club, Palmdale, CA, 1974.
[9] Cited in John Vennari, The Permanent Instruction of the Alta Vendita, p 7, 10. Tan, Rockford, IL, 1999.
[10] Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, Open Letter to Confused Catholics, Ch. 15. Angleus Press, Kansas City MO, 1986. 2010 edition.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Ibid.
[14] Ibid.
[15] Joseph Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology, pp 381-2, 391. Ignatius Press, San Francisco CA, 1989. On 391, he added:
The task is not, therefore, to suppress the Council but to discover the real Council and to deepen its true intention in the light of present experience. That means that there can be no return to the Syllabus, which may have marked the first stage in the confrontation with liberalism and a newly conceived Marxism but cannot be the last stage. In the long run, neither embrace nor ghetto can solve for Christians the problem of the modern world. The fact is, as Hans Urs von Balthasar pointed out as early as 1952, that the “demolition of the bastions” is a long-overdue task.
[16] Vatican II, Gaudium et Spes n. 12. https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19651207_gaudium-et-spes_en.html Cf. Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, interview two Years after the consecrations.
[17] Translation taken from: https://crc-internet.org/further-information/liber-accusationis/in-paulum-sextum/2-heterodoxy.html. Latin here: https://www.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/la/speeches/1965/documents/hf_p-vi_spe_19651207_epilogo-concilio.html
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