Where do I begin? Here are some of my favorite “comment hooks” in this tract:
“If the Pope is the holiest man on earth, why isn’t everybody Catholic?”
– followed by “Is there something I don’t know?” – GLAD YOU ASKED! Mr. Sick will be happy to answer you, through the key protagonist of this tract.
Naturally, there is the slur about Catholic priests and altar boys. (Not that I’m pro-RC, but what are the stats on this?)
“You mean ‘Caesar’? … Hey, they’re the same thing!”
Does this sound familiar? “… all a big show” --Chick has called it (RCC) religious show business before.
“Now… it’s only bread! --But watch what happens next!” Funny, I was raised in a Catholic home, and I can’t recall any of this from the Missal. Maybe it was in the Latin, but dropped when Mass in the vernacular (local language) was extended.
“Who are you going to believe? This guy, or God?” – Isn’t it great how simple a question Chick makes it? I’ve actually witnessed a conversation across denominational lines (not involving Roman Catholicism) that included: “I’m not going to listen to you, I’m going to listen to Christ!” So, once again, things in Chick tracts have a very familiar ring."
(Hmm. Obama called “that one” in one of the debates.)
And so on…
At least Chick embodies a rare and interesting cultural relic. Protestant anti-Catholicism has played such an important part in American history, and it’s such a rare animal nowadays, when conservative Catholics and conservative Protestants and even conservative Jews are more likely than not to make common cause.
Actually, vaticanus means “uninhabited,” not “foretelling the future.” (But there was a circus there once, and the Vatican Obelisk really does date back to it.)
I wonder if Chick is surrounded by many people who don’t know who the pope or Jesus are… Perhaps he’s only been driven to tract-writing by some odd demographic quirk that has him surrounded by the most religiously ignorant people on the planet?
Or maybe they’re just stringing him along by now. He got all into this and now he’s making all those cute little cartoons and nobody really has the heart to tell him any more.
Nope. My eldest brother (who’d be horrified at the things which go on here) reads 'em, and I’ve had nutters hand me them when they were trying to convert me.
What I love is how Jimmy has apparently never heard of the Pope. This is sort of the reverse for Chick’s usual tracts where someone has never heard of Jesus.
CaerieD, I’ve had plenty of sleep and I giggled at “Father O’Toole” myself, so don’t feel bad.
And I have to wonder why Chick doesn’t reference this book, which manages to take the anti-Roman aspects of the New Testament (some of which would not be familiar to a modern reader of the NT) and bizarrely apply them to the Catholic Church.
Heh, Erasmus did a better job, way back during the later Renaissance.
I read an essay of his in which the Pope is knocking on the gates of Heaven. When St. Peter asks him who he is the Pope refers to the PM(Pontifex Maximus) initials, asking “don’t you know what they stand for?” St.Peter answers “I believe they stand for Pestis Maximus, the Supreme Plague”
In the Chickiverse, the Masons are but puppets of the Vatican despite the appearance of mutual hostility. Same with the Nazis and the Communists and the Illuminati – and the Muslims. And the Pope himself is but a puppet of the Jesuit General, who is a puppet of Satan. I’m not making any of this up. I’ve got some of his Crusader Comics in plastic bags. It’s a sickness.
Now, when I was in Catholic Sunday school, the teacher made it very clear to us that, yes, the bread actually is being transmogrified…err transubstantiated, and it isn’t mere symbology. [I renounced all that silliness years ago btw]