Anti-Catholic tract found in Tarver Library attacks
November 28, 2012
Filed under Opinions
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On Tuesday, Nov. 13, as I was washing my hands in the women’s restroom of Tarver Library, my eyes happened upon a pamphlet entitled “The Death Cookie” that was conveniently placed by the paper towels.
Intrigued, I picked it up, read a few pages, and with a sinking heart, put it back down on the counter in shock.
In all of my years at Mercer, up until this point, I had never read any material that has so blatantly scorned my Catholic faith.
In “The Death Cookie,” the author, Jack Chick, describes how a man consorts with the Devil who tells him that he shall be his “Papa,” in reference to the Pope. It goes on to say that he should trick his followers into thinking that a cookie, in reference to the Eucharist, contains the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ, when in reality it doesn’t and will condemn them to hell.
In the latter pages of the tract, Chick suggests that the only way to be saved is “to leave that occult system before He [God] destroys it,” and then he proceeds to outline four steps to salvation:
1. admit that they are sinners,
2. be willing to turn from sin (repent),
3. believe that Jesus Christ died, was buried, and rose from the dead, and
4. invite Jesus into their lives as their personal Savior.
In concluding his tract, Chick asks his readers to pray the following prayer to strengthen their commitment to God by the rejection of Catholicism before checking “yes” or “no” as to whether they will choose to be faithful Christians.
The prayer is as follows:
Dear God, thank you for showing me what You think about Catholicism. I also reject it! I accept Christ’s sacrifice as perfect and complete. Please forgive me in Jesus’ name. I invite Jesus Christ to come into my life and I place my trust in Him alone for my salvation. Thank you for giving me eternal life right now.
Heather Ziemba, a member of Mercer Catholic Newman says, “This tract represents a gross misunderstanding of Catholic theology. The ignorance on every page is incredibly offensive.”
My fellow Christians, as we are all brothers and sisters in Christ who are made in the image and likeness of God, are called to love one another and as an extension of that love, show one another respect.
An illustration of this love and respect can be echoed in the words of Peter Scholtes who wrote “They’ll Know We are Christians by Our Love”: “We are one in the Spirit; we are one in the Lord and we pray that all unity may one day be restored. We will work with each other; we will work side by side and we’ll guard each one’s dignity…and they’ll know we are Christians by our love.”
In secular terms, we are called to recognize our common humanity that demands of us to respect others’ beliefs in the same way that we would want others to respect and not antagonize our beliefs.
There are other avenues for discussing religious or other differences aside from distributing literature that is antagonistic – namely through one-on-one and group discussions.
It is my hope that “The Death Cookie” and any of Chick’s other nine anti-Catholic tracts will not be found on campus in the future.
Chick Tracts are actually hilarious: They are examples of a form of “Christianity” that inspires only guilt, hate, and division. It’s this type of so-called “Evangelism” that is driving so many Americans away from religious affiliation.
If you want to read more hateful stuff you can look here: http://www.chick.com/catalog/tractlist.asp
They have all the tracts, even out-of-print ones. Jack Chick is an equal-opportunity hate-monger.
FULL DISCLOSURE: I was raised Baptist but I am now non-religious. I am posting anonymously for my own safety.
I am in no position to tell anyone what to believe, nor do I find forced evangelism acceptable. I understand that you are upset by what you found, but did you or Heather Ziemba, whose opinion you quoted in this article ever actually read the tract? If the “ignorance on every page is incredibly offensive”, then it should be easy to cite a specific erroneous claim, refute it, and move on. It’s facile to have your position based off of how offended you were. I reiterate that I have no loyalty to the document in question nor any like it.
The tract, which can be read here (http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0074/0074_01.asp), implies that the Church used subterfuge, by “speaking things that no one understands”, and by “appearing to to have magical powers” in order to control Western Civilization to gain power and wealth. It has just enough truth to be convincing.
It is true until Gutenberg that no European Catholic layman could read the bible in his or her own native language. I would define many of the Church’s claims and practices as “appearing to be magical”. Among these allegedly magical things would include incorruptibles (which range from body parts to full corpses that defy nature by never decaying) and to any of the countless miracles attributed to saints (my personal favorite being Padre Pio, who allegedly levitated to the level of a squadron of WII-era American bombers and stopped them from destroying his monastery).
The tract does make some more specific claims later, like eucharist having its origin in the myth of Osiris in which practitioners would ingest food and drink that was supposed to be the blood and body of Osiris. While my brief research on this topic suggests that it is plausible, this claim is the beginning an overarching and hilarious fallacy. It doesn’t take much to connect the dots that if all of the claims about Catholicism (the origin of the protestant religions) are true, then it means that the tenets of Chick’s own hyper-religious propaganda are also false.
The whole point of Chick’s anecdote was to outline the faulty premise of Catholicism, which can trace its papal lineage back to the Apostle Peter. The tract does a good job of arguing that anyone who makes a claim that only their religious movement is the only way to salvation or who threatens eternal punishment if you don’t subscribe to their ideals is probably lying to you in order to use you to gain money and influence. The tract finishes by offering that Jack Chick’s religious movement is the only way to salvation and that anyone who does not scribble their check-mark into the “Yes” column at the end of his pamphlet is going to none other than burn-for-all-eternity-with-rockstars-and-gays Hell. Apparently, he was too preoccupied with brainwashing to develop a sense of irony.
It is hard to ignore that the Church has done some awful things, but I personally blame that on individuals corrupted by the near limitless power their institution wields. It’s possible to be a good person no matter what your beliefs are. Things like this Chick Tract are not worth your anger, but the people who are convinced by them deserve your pity. Their folly is ignorance. Rise above and overcome.All else being equal, I don’t understand why you didn’t find it conveniently close to the toilet paper.
Correction:
The Death Cookie can be read at the following link:http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0074/0074_01.asp