Turris Fortis - Jack Chick: The Attack

Jack Chick: The Attack

The following is edited from a post I made to a Christian history mailing list, in response to someone submitting Jack Chick's comic book, "The Attack," as historical evidence of Catholic manipulation of the Biblical Canon. You can read that little piece of "scholarship" here: http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0031/0031_01.asp

Ok, whenever I see a Chick tract, my first instinct is just to laugh and toss it. However, every now and then (like now) I am reminded that there are some people out there that still take this absolute and utter garbage seriously, so I'm actually going to devote some time to dealing with this. (And those of you who know me and have read my posts for a long period of time know how charitable I usually am to people in these kinds of discussions, or at least sincerely try to be, but in this case, garbage is all these things are).

Regarding your web link, without even clicking on it, I knew I couldn't trust a single word on that page, just from the base URL, www.chick.com . Jack Chick is the foremost "Christian" comic book publisher in the world. He's been self-publishing millions of his little "evangelical" tracts out of his base in Ontario, California, for about 40 years now. His little comics are marked by a very simple "accept Jesus now and be saved" fundamentalist theology, but more remarkably by an obsession with conspiracy theories that borders on paranoia, and an almost incalculable hatred for the Catholic Church, which he deems responsible for more or less every evil in the world. The complete and utter disregard for history and the facts, especially regarding Catholicism, that he has displayed in his works for over a 40 year period cannot be chalked up to simple ignorance. Here are some of the doozies you can read about in his comics.

According to Chick's published material:
-The Catholic Church keeps the name of every Protestant church member in the world in a big computer in the Vatican to use in a future persecution.
-In the sixth century, the Catholic Church manipulated Mohammed into starting Islam, so that he could conquer Jerusalem for the Pope.
-The Jesuits started the American Civil War, assassinated Abraham Lincoln, and then founded the KKK.
-The Vatican was in secret control of the Nazi regime, because they wanted to exterminate the Jews.
-The Vatican also controls the Mafia, and the New Age movement.
-The Jesuits also started the Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormonism, and other similar sects.

I hope anyone reading the above list can see just how ridiculous these claims are without having to be explained why. If anyone wants a more detailed investigation into Jack Chick, his background, and some of the claims he makes, you can find an excellent report here:
http://www.catholic.com/library/sr_chick_tracts.asp

But let's look now just at this one comic that has been put before us, "The Attack." (Ooo, how ominous..) Notice that at the top of the very first page, Chick thanks a certain Dr. Alberto Rivera, a supposed ex-Jesuit priest, for the information in the book. So who is this guy? If we are going to believe the information from him, that's an important question. This man first came to Jack Chick in 1970, claiming to have been a Jesuit priest on a secret mission from the Vatican to infiltrate and bring down Protestant churches. He was so successful in this mission that the Vatican secretly made him a bishop. Then he "found Christ" and became a Fundamentalist. He supposedly "rescued" his dying sister, a nun, from a convent in London. And now he wanted Chick to tell his story. Most of those wild claims I listed above about the Catholic Church founding groups like the KKK, the Nazis, Islam, the Mormons, etc., come from information given by Rivera.

When Chick started publishing Rivera's story, quite a large number of Christian booksellers quit carrying the Chick material because of the blatant and obvious lies it contained. (Evangelical Protestant booksellers, mind you). A lot of well know Protestant publications published exposés on Rivera exposing him as a fraud. These included Christianity Today, Cornerstone, and Forward. The exposés included revealing information such as Rivera's soliciting of funds for various fraudulent Evangelical organizations. He was arrested in 1969 for charging over $2000 on a stolen credit card. His sister that he "rescued" from a convent in London turned out not to be a nun, but a maid, and not to be in a convent, but employed in a manor house. Unsurprisingly, his claims to be a Jesuit priest also turned out to be false. In fact, during the time he was supposed to be living as a celibate priest in Spain, he was actually married, living in Costa Rica, and fathering three children.

I could go on, but why? You can see that this man is hardly a credible source for reliable information about the Catholic Church. But, let's soldier on through this and see what else the comic has to say.

Chick makes the claim that the Apocrypha (which as I have at various times pointed out is a misnomer when referring to the dueterocanonical books of the Old Testament -- "apocrypha" means hidden away, and the Church has never hidden these books) was "canonized by the Council of Trent" and "always rejected by Christians from the first century." Is this true? No, it is not. The Council of Trent was in the sixteenth century. And yes, it did officially declare the canon of the Bible, and yes, that canon included the dueterocanonical books. The question everyone should be asking is, why on earth did the Church wait for over 1500 years to officially declare the canon of the Bible, the most important book for our faith? The answer is that she did not. That answer was settled more than 1100 years previously. But in light of the new Protestant heresy, part of which involved the removal of certain books from the canon, the full canon was officially re-defined to settle any doubts.

This same list of 73 books, which included the dueterocanon, was officially declared to be the canon by Pope Innocent the I in 405 AD. Prior to that, two fourth century councils agreed upon the same canon. The first list that we find by any bishop anywhere in the Church of "official inspired books" was in 187 AD, by Sardis of Melito, and his list contained the same 73 books. A cursory knowledge of Church history and how the Bible came to be puts the lie to Chick's claims and shows them to be the exact opposite of what really happened. It was the Protestants who changed the canon in the sixteenth century, not the Catholic Church, who kept what she always had.

(I want you to notice when you read this how Chick ascribes certain things to Satan. Satan wrote the Apocrypha. Satan tried to get it accepted in the canon, etc. My question is how does Chick know? I haven't talked to Satan lately to ask if he really did these things, but apparently Chick has him on speed dial.)

The next claim made is that that Jewish rabbis rejected these books, therefore we should, too. Of course, Chick completely fails to mention that the Jewish rabbis who decided to reject these books met in council in Jamnia in the year 100 AD, and these same Jewish rabbis, of course, also rejected Christ. Should we follow their lead in that decision, as well?

Chick says that neither Christ nor the Apostles are ever recorded quoting from the dueterocanon. This is a red herring, because the dueterocanon was an official part of the version of the Old Testament known as the Septuagint, which was translated into Greek in the third century BC, and was commonly in use in the Palestinian area at the time of Christ. Over 300 Old Testament references in the New Testament can be shown to come from the Septuagint version, which contained the dueterocanon. Again, the facts prevail.

Moreover, though not directly quoted, some of the teachings to be found in the dueterocanon that Chick finds so abominable (like prayer for the dead, taught in 2 Maccabees), are repeated in the New Testament, in this case, in 2 Tim. 1:16-18, where Paul prays for his dead friend Onesiphorus.

Chick makes a big deal about various translations of the Bible being based upon the Alexandrian texts, which he says "Satan corrupted" and that these texts "downplay the divinity of Christ, the Virgin Birth, salvation through grace, etc." While the various differences between the Alexandrian manuscripts and other contemporary manuscript versions we have available are too complex to go into detail on here, suffice it to say that they are small, tiny differences and do not do any of the things that Chick claims them to do. I mean, for goodness sake, open up any Catholic edition Bible and tell me if it downplays the deity of Christ, or His Virgin birth!

The next farcical historical claim made by Chick is that Constantine, the "first pope" as he calls him, ordered 50 of these corrupt Bibles to be made. I want you to pay special attention to the footnote listed here. It's to another Chick publication! Well, if I didn't believe him before, I believe him now, that proves it! Even if you don't believe that Peter was the first pope, as Catholics do, you have to realize how ridiculous the claim is that Constantine was the first pope. First of all, you have to ignore the fact that Constantine corresponded with the pope at the time. Second of all, the Pope, by definition, is bishop of Rome. Not only was Constantine not a bishop, and not even a priest, he wasn't even baptized a Christian until shortly before his death.

Now I want to address another whopper. Chick, in detailing how the Catholic Church has relentlessly attacked the Bible, tells us that in 1229, the Bible was placed on the Index of Forbidden books by the Council of Valencia. Plain enough statement, right? Until you consider some facts.

Fact: The Index of Forbidden books was not created until 1543. So how could any book, let alone the Bible, be placed on it in 1229?
Fact: There never was a Church council held in Valencia, not in 1229, or in any other year.
Fact: In 1229, Valencia, Spain, was under Islamic occupation, so even if they Church wanted to hold a Council there in that year, they would not have been able to.

Chick then implies that the Vatican will still today, in theory, burn anyone at the stake who is caught in possession of the "true" Word of God. He's even got a little caricature of the pope proclaiming "death to heretics!" so you know it must be true. Yeah, right, and so is everything else he has written.

The next lie that Chick hoists upon us is that the Inquisition was founded to seek out and destroy any contraband Bibles people might be stowing away. He conveniently leaves out some pertinent information, such as which Inquisition he is talking about. First, it has to be understood that there has never been any Church-wide Inquisition. Inquisitions were usually local affairs in a particular region or country. I'm going to assume, since we have been dealing with things in the sixteenth century in this little comic, that Chick means the Roman Inquisition, begun in 1542. This was actually the least active and most benign of all the Inquisitions. The Roman Inquisition, or the Holy Office at Rome, was pretty much just set up as the final court of appeals for Catholics accused of heresy. When it was first established, it consisted of six cardinals. That's it. And I'm sure those guys had more to do than sneak around Europe looking for Protestant Bibles.

The thing to realize here is that none of the Inquisitions had as their goal the removal and destruction of the Bible. They were usually concerned more with things like people making false conversions to the faith and the like.

Chick next makes the claim that between the years 1200 and 1800, the Catholic Church murdered 68 million people. Impressive number. Problem is that there are no facts to back it up. Really. Where did this number come from? It's so easy to make an impressive claim like that, because the numbers themselves carry weight, and usually people don't ask for information to verify them. I can claim all sorts of silly things. In the sixteenth century, Anabaptist Protestants were responsible for the death of 12 million Catholics. See how easy that was? I didn't read that number in a book anywhere. I just made it up. Maybe now someone will cite me as a source and it will get repeated in a high school text book.

Chick then tells us how brave men such as Luther and Tyndale translated the Bible to give it to the people. He makes no mention of the fact that before Luther made his German translation, there were no fewer than eighteen German language translations of the Bible made, or that only a few years after the German Gutenburg invented his printing press in 1450, a complete German Bible was printed. Yet he claims that Luther "gave the Bible to the German people."

As far as Tyndale goes, I could write volumes on him. But let's just say that he wasn't the first to produce an English Bible, either. And that his English Bible was so full of mistakes that it was not only condemned by the Catholic Church, but by the Protestant Anglican Church, as well. And that Rome did not burn him at the stake, like Chick claims - not if, by Rome, he means the Roman Catholic Church, which is implied. He was tried and condemned by the secular court of the Holy Roman Emperor.

What makes this funny, is that in the next panel, Chick extols the "English royalty" who rebelled against the Pope. He doesn't mention that Henry VIII only rebelled because he wanted a divorce that the Church wouldn't grant, and that this same Henry VIII - after he broke with Rome - had this to say about Tyndale's Bible. "All manner of books of the Old and New Testament in English, being of the crafty, false, and untrue translation of Tyndale . . . shall be clearly and utterly abolished, extinguished, and forbidden to be kept or used in this realm."

The whole scene that Chick describes about the conspiracy between Jesuit spies and Puritans in translating the King James Bible is farcical. Needless to say, it was no doubt thought up as a way to explain why the "authorized" Bible for the Protestant, Anglican Church was first printed in 1611 with the dueterocanonical books. For the record, Chick is a "KJV Bible-only" type who rejects even more modern Protestant translations. He also makes a brief mention of the fact that Bibles ought not to have footnotes, because you can't "add to the word of God." Which is also funny, because if you look at the stated reasons why many editions of the Bible, like Tyndale's, were condemned, it wasn't necessarily because they were bad translations (though they were) but also because of the footnotes and commentary that was included in the text that railed against the established Church and her clergy!

By Chick's own standards, he would have condemned Tyndale!

Chick then makes the ridiculous claim that The Revised Version of the Bible was made by two Catholics, Westcott and Hort. These men were not Catholics. They were Anglicans. Furthermore, he says that the Bible is now being taught in virtually every Protestant seminary by Jesuit imposters, who are doing such heretical things as comparing the King James English translation with the original Greek. Oh, how dare they!

Only the King James Version - the old one, not the new edition - is the inspired Word of God, says Chick. Now that you know the real story, beware!

Yes, beware indeed, now that you know the real story behind Chick and his lies. The reason I take so much time in going through this comic detail by detail, and the reason that I hope you read this, is that far too many unsuspecting people out there are still propagating this nonsense! And it's harmful. All of Chick's comics are like this, equally full of untruths. I had a little old lady hand me a Chick tract one time and I quickly handed it back. "I have nothing to do with Jack Chick," I told her.

She looked confused. "Why would you say that?" she asked.

"For one," I said, "I'm a Catholic, and I can tell you from experience that absolutely everything he says about the Catholic Church in his tracts are lies."

"Well," she said, "I don't have anything against Catholics. I just like the message he has about Jesus."

I told her then that, "Christ is the Truth, and the Truth cannot be served by lies." I hope she gave that some consideration. And I hope you do, as well.