Jack Chick Obit: Adios to One Crazy Chick

Jack T. Chick died at the age of 92 in Glendale, California.  Chick was infamous for publishing fundamentalist Christian tracts in the form of comic books for six decades and distributed over 750 million copies and has been translated into over 100 languages.

Early in his evangelizing apostolate, Chick discerned that the most effective way to reach those who "weren't saved" was via comic books. Chick supposedly was inspired by the propaganda comics of the Chinese Communists in the 1950s.  Chick was not a skilled artist but started to use others artists sketches and not attributing the pieces for a decade, until it came out that he was using Fred Carter's handiwork.

Chick was an intensely private person.  He evangelized through comics because he was too shy to talk to others about his faith. Later, Chick became a recluse having no pictures taken of him (aside from two pictures from his teens).  Chick also refused all professional interviews after 1975 because he was fearful that Catholics (particularly the Jesuits) would kill him.

Chick's personal paranoia carried over into his funny paper tracts. While he railed against rock and roll, homosexuality and witchcraft, Chick saved most of his spite for Catholicism.  If one were to believe Chick. Catholicism was created by Satan, that Popes take their marching orders from the devil.  Chick blamed the Jesuits for starting the American Civil War (and that the "men in black" backed the Confederacy) as well as the Ku Klux Klan (which hated Catholics).

In addition, Chick claimed that the Catholic Church supposedly started Nazism, Communism, Islam, Masonry, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons and the New Age movement. Chick pinned the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy on the Vatican as well as the Holocaust. Continuing in this craziness, Chick surmised that the Vatican runs the United Nations and global finances and the Illuminati..  Amongst the biggest whoppers was that the Vatican has a super computer that tracks the names of every Protestant in the world.

Naturally, in the end times Chick proclaimed that the Antichrist would be the last Pope. It must have really freaked Chick out that Pope Francis is from the Society of Jesus (i.e. a Jesuit). No surprise that Catholic anti-defamation groups chronicled Chick tracts for over three decades.

During the 1980s, Chick did eight comic books based on the testimony of Alberto Riviera, allegedly a former undercover operative of the Jesuits in Spain who was sent to infiltrate and destroy Protestant churches and institutions.  Riviera claimed to have been secretly made a bishop but he had a conversion and became a fundamentalist preacher who saved his sister from a nunnery in London. Unfortunately, there are no public records of the clerical adventures of Alberto Riviera aside from Chick Publications.

Catholics weren't the only Christians spared from Chick's emnity, as he also attacked Southern Baptists (N.B. Chick was an Independent Baptism who believed in premillenial dispensationalism), and Latter Day Saints et ali.

Aside from the great volume of work that Chick Publications produced, Chick tracts were featured by the Smithsonian American History Museum in an exhibit on American Pop Culture.  Even comic strip critics had to acknowledge Chick's work.



One of Jack Chick's early successes was an early 1960s tract of a playboy who dies and is forced to watch all of his life's foibles on a big screen before the pearly gates of Heaven. Perhaps during this Extraordinary Jubilee Year of Mercy, Chick's imagined screening of "This Was Your Life" at the Pearl Gates Cinescreen won't be taken as "The Nightmare World of Jack Chick" but will be viewed as a Comedy of Manners.

As word of Chick's death spread on social media, perhaps the kindest yet most ironic tribute came from a Catholic priest.

H/T: Catholic Answers 
        Los Angeles 
        Comic Strip Critic

Remembering the Feast of St. Juan Diego

Juan Diego was a simple aboriginal American who had converted to Catholicism.  On December 9th, 1591, Juan Diego saw an apparition of the Virgin Mary, who asked that a church be built on that hill. Juan Diego conveyed the message to the bishop, who wanted proof for his incredible apparition story.  Juan Diego returned to the sight and bought back a tilma of out of season roses as proof.  

When the peasant revealed what was in his tilma, the bishop and the entourage dropped to their knees as the simple garment had a portrait of a mestizo Blessed Virgin Mary, replete with symbolic Aztec hermanuetics.

Within a decade, nearly the entire Mexico people converted to the faith.  And the humble tilma, which should have only lasted for 25 years has lasted for over 400 years.

Cardinal Edwin O'Brien on the Threats to Christianity

Sinicization Means Persecution of Chinese Christians

In May 2015, Chinese President  Xi Jinping announced a policy of Sinicization during a  central United Front Work Department meeting.  Xi Jiping had been seen as a leader who was open minded about religion so long as the faithful are "harmonious".  However, Xi displays a certain tolerance towards homegrown faiths like Confuciusism, Buddhism and Daoism as distinguished from a chary attitude toward foreign influences like Christianity and Islam. 

Following that lead, provincial Chinese officials forced churches in Songmun, Xinhe, Muyu and Dasi  as well as the Sacred Heart of Jesus Church in Xioshan to take down crosses from their churches lest the buildings be demolished. In Hangzhou, only the Catholic Cathedral and two Protestant churches will be spared that fateful choice.  A Protestant catechist estimates that at least 1,100 Christian churches have been denuded of their crosses, although the figure might be much higher.

Alas, this is not the first time in recent memory that the Chinese government have persecuted Christian churches. In 2014, there was a rash of cross removals and threats of demolishing Christian churches.

What made international headlines was how the Christian faithful  encircled the Sanjiang Church near Wenzhou as human shields. China trying to save the Jerusalem of the East. Initially, officials backed away from their plan and negotiated a compromise withe the Sanjiang pinyin (Chinese Christ followers).  Unfortunately, the bright prominent crosses on Sanjiang Church in a central business district proved too much for Communist Party sensibilities and the church was demolished.

G.K. Chesterton on Christianity

Jeb Bush on Faith

Pope St. John Paul II on Advent

Archbishop Oscar Romero Speaks About the Truth

Óscar Romero was the fourth bishop of San Salvador, El Salvador.  He led the church there during a turbulent time.  Progressives bemoaned his appointment in 1977, as his conservative reputation did not align with priests openly favoring Marxism.  But Romero’s weltanschauung became shaped by the estrangement of secular governments to the faith.  Moreover, when the Revolutionary Government right wing junta came to power in 1979, Archbishop Romero dared to speak up against human rights abuses, poverty, social injustice, torture and assassinations.

Divine Provence Chapel after Romero's assassination

Archbishop Romero was assassinated as he elevated the chalice of Divine Blood while celebrating Mass at “La Divina Provincia" Chapel in San Salvador on March 24th, 1980.  Monsenior Romero was fatally shot one day after he urged 
Salvadoran soldiers to be Christians and stop carrying out the government’s agenda of repression and basic human rights. 




{Actual audio of Archbishop Romero's assassination 03/24/1980}

At the martyred prelate’s funeral, the representative of the Holy See Mexico City Archbishop Ernesto Cardinal Corripio y Ahumada eulogized Romero as “a beloved, peacemaking man of God” and that “his blood will give fruit to brotherhood, peace and hope.”  Alas, these words were uttered as the crowd of 250,000 mourners were pelted with smoke bombs and were shot at by rifles from rooftops, with between 30 and 50 fatalities. 

In La Violencia Del Amor (The Violence of Love) , a collection of Archbishop Óscar Romero’s teachings, he seemingly anticipated the suffering that the Church needed to endure to remain faithful and challenge secular society to follow divine teaching.

La iglesia tiene que sufrir por decir la verdad, por señalar el pecado, para arrancar de raíz el pecado. Nadie quiere tener un punto delicado tocado, y por lo tanto una sociedad con tantas llagas tics cuando alguien tiene el coraje de tocar y decir: 'Hay que tratar eso. Hay que deshacerse de eso. Creer en Cristo. Convertíos'.

The church must suffer for speaking the truth, point out sin, to uproot sin. Nobody wants to have touched a sore spot, and therefore a society with so many sores twitches when someone has the courage to touch and say, 'You have to try that. We must get rid of it. Believing in Christ. Repent '. 

                                  

While Archbishop Romero was martyred by a right wing paramilitary, the Church may have to stand firm against militant secularism and progressive praetorianism. 

In  2010, Chicago Archbishop Francis Cardinal George opined: 

I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison and his successor will die a martyr in the public square. His successor will pick up the shards of a ruined society and slowly help rebuild civilization, as the church has done so often in human history.

As he gave the Keynote to a College of Cardinal's meeting at St. John Lateran's Basilica in February 2012, New York Archbishop Timothy Cardinal Dolan deflected any insinuations of glory that some might associate with being a  a cardinal.   Dolan, the jocular President of the U.S. Council of Catholic bishops jested: 

"Holy Father, can you omit the 'shedding of your blood' when you present me with the biretta?" 
The pope responded-- "Of course not! We are but 'scarlet audio-visual aids' for all of our brothers and sisters also called to be ready to suffer and die for Jesus." 

This is a reminder of Archbishop Romero’s witness to the truth to the point of his death.

With Western progressive governments pushing same sex marriage, broad ability to divorce and liberal abortion, leaders in the Church who wish to defend traditional, scripturally inspired societal practices which chaff against the current.  Moreover, the application of Obamacare’s HHS Qualified Health Plan Contraception Mandate is anathematic to following their faith as well as the natural right of free exercise of religion as guaranteed by the Constitution. 

The fervency of faith and fearlessness for speaking the gospel certainly ought to be qualities considered when the College of Cardinals has its mid-March conclave in the wake of Pope Benedict XVI's abdication,[Ed. note which eventually chose Pope Francis].

POST SCRIPTUS 02/03/2015  Pope Francis has decreed that Oscar Romero, the slain Archbishop of El Salvador, is a martyr for the faith.  A date has not been set for Blessed Oscar Romero's beatification.