Posted by We at The American Catholic often receive unsolicited manuscripts. What follows is from a lengthy collection of documents, smelling faintly of brimstone, that purport to be the notes of a Mr. Wormwood taken while he was attending a class colorfully entitled Damnation 201. The documents are dated, but the dates given are gibberish:
Notes on How Not to Be a Saint – The American Catholic
Ah, Sleek Sylph looks especially delicious. Oof, Professor Thornbit is saying this could be on the final. Concentrate Wormwood!
Thornbit: After what mortals call death patients who escape our clutches are designated Saints by the Enemy. The penalty for a tempter allowing a patient to become a Saint is as final as it is terrible, albeit succulent for those of us who gain sustenance from those of you who prove incompetent. Here are ten simple rules to prevent you from ending up on my table.
1. Encourage your patient to violate those laws the Enemy calls his Ten Commandments. Emphasize to the patient that these are unmerciful rules that do not allow for the complexity of life. You will find, at least those of you who are not a waste of Hellfire, that the term “complexity” is ever useful in causing a patient to ignore the clear commands of the Enemy.
2. Most patients, ludicrously, are proud of their intellects. Encourage the cretins in this, as one of the few true human sayings is that “pride goeth before a fall.”
3. If you can, make your patient an atheist; the shock of such patients when they arrive here is an amusement that is indescribable. Take care however, some who claim atheism merely hate the Enemy and the Enemy has a way of turning strong hate into strong love in an instant if you are not careful. Also, make certain that your patient embraces atheism as a substitute religion and not as a proposition that he may rethink given evidence to the contrary. The Enemy and his agents are too cursed good at argument, and in providing evidence against the useful absurdity of atheism.
4. The patient should be taught to regard every mortal he encounters as a potential victim for him to exploit. Although humans tend to be selfish animals, this isn’t as simple as it sounds. Sickening affection, and even that inversion of reality that the Enemy calls love, can emanate from the most unlikely of mortals if his tempter is not ever vigilant.
5. Sexual excess, especially if channeled into what the Enemy considers perversions, can be a useful aid to propel a patient along our Downward Path. However, lazy tempters view this as a foolproof temptation at their peril. That abomination that the Enemy calls love can spring from the most wonderfully sordid sexual entanglements if the tempter of a patient does not take proper precautions.
6. If your patient is religious, make certain that the religion he follows is on the approved list of faiths that are working unknowingly in Our Father’s cause. Needless to say, we have severe penalties for tempters who have patients who embrace the other faiths not on the list. However, every faith can be transformed from worship of the Enemy into a form of self worship if the tempter is clever enough.
7. The mortals have a wonderful expression, “Looking out for number one.” Make certain that your patient is a monument to human selfishness by the time he dies.
8. Humans have a very useful proclivity for making excuses for themselves while holding others to the strictest of standards. Encourage this form of self-deception unceasingly.
9. If you can’t quite get your patient to hate the Enemy and his neighbor, a usually sufficient fallback position is to have him ignore both.
10. Humans nearing death often have an all too clear view of how badly they have lived their lives, and the terrible event called repentance can occur, snatching soul food out of our very claws. Always remember that the proper tactic is to convince your patient either that repentance is no use, because his, what the Enemy calls sins, are too great, or that repentance is not necessary because the Enemy will save him from Our Father’s House no matter what. The last belief has become quite popular among humans as of late, to the vast amusement of all Hell.
Read the next 500,000 pages of Lucifer’s A Guide to Perplex, prior to the next class, and remember that your papers on Postmodern Damnation are due at the close of that class. Class dismissed.