Mary herself is already a large bone of contention between Catholics and Protestants. A somewhat smaller, but no less divisive, bone of contention is the issue of Mary's virginity; many Christians simply refuse to accept that Mary remained a virgin until the time of her Assumption into Heaven.

There are many good arguments in support of Mary's perpetual virginity, and I might cite some of them at a later date -- for now, I just wanted to post a thought I had this morning on the way to work.

We know that Joseph was of the house of David -- that is, he was descended from King David, the ancient ruler. We know that Jesus was said to be of the house of David because of the fact that He was born to the wife of Joseph, the young woman we know as Mary.

It seems to me, then, that one of the arguments in favour of Mary's perpetual virginity has to do with the line of David, and the fact that the Messiah would emerge from that line. There isn't anything in Scripture that suggests that the following is true, but I think there's a certain logic to it: would it not make sense for God to ensure that, upon the Messiah's arrival, that the line of David was closed off?

That is to say: would it not make sense for God to have moved Mary's heart to take an oath of perpetual virginity for the glory of the kingdom of Heaven (a not-unheard of ritual dedication in ancient Jewish practice, and also in keeping with Paul's teachings in 1 Cor 7) at some point prior to her being betrothed to the living descendent of David, so that after the birth of her Son -- Jesus, the Son of God -- no other children would spring forth from that tree which is David's, thus rendering the emergence of a false Messiah according to the line of David at some later date impossible?

* * *

For those who are fans of Battlestar Galactica, there are a few articles concerning it on my website, which include a few spoilers and predictions about where the series will go. This show really seems to be shaping up to be an eschatological tale, and I like that a lot.

* * *

I see that someone has decided to take it upon him/herself to debunk the Catholic Catechism. I'm not going to waste my time with lengthy rebuttals of his/her points -- if anyone has uncertainties about points of doctrine within the Catechism, they can PM me and I'll write up an explanation.

All I really can think to say to said someone is: Matthew 16:23. One wonders how it comes to be that a person can be filled with such passionate hatred?

While it is certainly possible to be a Christian and not practice Marian devotion, I would argue that one does not possess the fullest understanding of what it means to be a Christian if, in one's faith practice, one does not occasionally deign to offer up a few moments of recognition to the Mother of God.

As previously noted, I could perhaps trace the roots of modern secular evils that attempt to destroy or make meaningless the idea of motherhood to the early Protestant rejection of she who is our Mother also. But rather than explore that line of thinking, let us first perhaps look and see if the Catholic position -- Marian devotion -- is not Scripturally defensible. I've always liked Mark Shea's take on the matter:

If Catholics honor Mary too much, exactly how do we Evangelicals honor her "just enough"? For the reality was that my native Evangelicalism recoiled from any and all mention of Mary.

This was odd. After all, Evangelicals could talk all day about Paul and never feel we were "worshipping" him or giving him "too much honor." We rightly understood that God's word comes to us through St. Paul, and there's no conflict between the two (even though Paul exhibits more character flaws than Mary).

Yet the slightest mention of Mary by a Catholic immediately brought a flood of warnings, hesitations, scrutinies of her lack of faith (allegedly demonstrated in Mark 3:21), and even assertions that Jesus was less pleased with her than he was with his disciples (because he called her "Woman," not "Mom"; and because he commended his own disciples as "my brother and sister and mother" (Mark 3:35)). And all this was despite the fact that not just God's word (e.g. the Magnificat), but God's Word, came to us through Mary (John 1:14). As Evangelicals we could say, "If not for Paul, the Gospel would never have reached the Gentiles." But we froze up if somebody argued that, "If not for Mary, the gospel would never have reached the earth." Suddenly, a flurry of highly speculative claims about how "God would simply have chosen somebody else!" would fill the air, as though Mary was a mere incubation unit, completely interchangeable with any other woman on earth. "No Paul, no Gospel for the Gentiles" made perfect sense. But "No Mary, no incarnation, no death, no resurrection, no salvation for the world" was just too extreme.

...

And so, our claims to honor her "just enough" effectively boiled down to paying no shred of positive attention to her beyond singing "round yon Virgin, mother and child" each Christmas. The rest of the time it was either complete neglect or jittery assurances of her unimportance and dark warnings not to over-emphasize the woman of whom inspired Scripture said, "From this day all generations will call me blessed."

It was a startling paradigm shift to realize we treated her so allergically-and one which, I have since noticed, isn't unusual for converts. Dale Ahlquist, President of the American Chesterton Society, told me once that when he was still hanging back from the Church because of Mary, a blunt priest he knew asked him, "Do you believe her soul magnifies the Lord? It's right there in Scripture." Ahlquist reflexively answered back, "Of course I do! I know the Bible!" But even as he replied he was thinking to himself, "I never really thought of that before." It can be a disorienting experience.

But, in fact, it is right there in the Bible. Her soul magnifies the Lord, and from that day to this all generations have called her blessed. So why, when we Evangelicals looked at Jesus, did we never look at Him through the divinely appointed magnifying glass? Why were we so edgy about calling her "blessed" and giving her any honor? That realization was my first clue that it was, perhaps, Catholics who were simply being normal and human in honoring Mary, while we Evangelicals were more like teetotalers fretting that far too much wine was being drunk at the wedding in Cana.

The Cultural Obstacles

Part of the problem, I came to realize, was that Evangelical fears about Mary are visceral and not entirely theological. Indeed, much of the conflict between Catholics and Evangelicals is cultural, not theological. Evangelical culture (whether you're a man or a woman) is overwhelmingly masculine, while Catholic culture (again, whether you're a man or a woman) is powerfully feminine. And the two groups often mistake their cultural differences for theological ones.

The Catholic approach tends to be body-centered, Eucharistic, and contemplative. Prayer, in Catholic culture, is primarily for seeking union with God. Evangelical approaches to God tend to be centered on Scripture, verbal articulation of belief, mission, and on the Spirit working in power. Prayer, in such a culture, is primarily for getting things done. Both are legitimate Christian ways of approaching the gospel. Indeed, they should both be part of the Catholic approach to the gospel. But because of these unconscious differences Evangelicals and Catholics often clash about culture while they think they're debating theology. The feminine spirituality of the Catholic can regard the masculine Evangelical approach as shallow, noisy, and utilitarian, lacking an interior life. Meanwhile, Catholic piety can be seen by Evangelicals as a cold, dead, ritualistic, biblically ignorant, and cut off from real life. Thus, Evangelicals frequently criticize the Catholic life as a retreat from reality into rituals and rote prayers.

Not surprisingly, the heroes of the two camps are (for Evangelicals) the Great Human Dynamo of Apostolic Energy, St. Paul; and (for Catholics) the great icon of Contemplative Prayer Issuing in Incarnation, the Blessed Virgin Mary. As an Evangelical, I found Paul much easier to appreciate, since he was "biblical"-he wrote much of the New Testament, after all. You could talk about Paul since he'd left such a significant paper trail. Not so with Mary. Apart from the Magnificat and a couple remarks here and there-plus, of course, the infancy narratives-she didn't appear to occupy nearly as much psychic space for the authors of the New Testament as she did for Catholics. Marian devotion looked like a mountain of piety built on a molehill of Scripture.

Looks, however, can be deceiving. For as I got to know the Bible better, it became obvious to me that the authors of Scripture were not nearly as jittery about Mary as my native Evangelicalism. Furthermore, they accorded to her honors which looked a great deal more Catholic than Evangelical.

Luke, for instance, likens her to the Ark of the Covenant in recording that the Holy Spirit "overshadowed" her. The same word in Greek is used to describe the way the Shekinah (glory of God) overshadowed the tabernacle in Luke 1:35. Likewise, John makes the same connection between Mary and the Ark of the Covenant when he announces in Revelation 11:19-12:2:

Then God's temple in heaven was opened, and the ark of his covenant was seen within his temple; and there were flashes of lightning, voices, peals of thunder, an earthquake, and heavy hail. And a great portent appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars; she was with child and she cried out in her pangs of birth, in anguish for delivery.

The chapter goes on to describe the woman as giving birth to a male child who rules the nations with an iron scepter and who is almost devoured by a great red dragon.

As an Evangelical, my own tradition found it remarkably easy to detect bar codes, Soviet helicopters, the European Common Market, and the Beatles encoded into the narrative of Revelation. But when Catholics suggested that the woman of Revelation might have something to do with the Blessed Virgin occupying a place of cosmic importance in the grand scheme of things, this was dismissed as incredible. Everyone knew that the woman of Revelation was really the symbolic Virgin Daughter of Zion giving birth to the Church. A Jewish girl who stood at the pinnacle of the Old Covenant, summed up the entirety of Israel's mission and gave flesh to the Head of the Church saying, "Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word"-what could she possibly have to do with those images? Why, that would suggest that she was the Virgin Daughter of Zion and the Flower of her People, the Model Disciple, the Icon of the Church, the Mother of Jesus and of all those who are united with Him by faith and...

Come to think of it, Scripture was looking rather Catholic after all.

The Heart of Marian Doctrine

That was the revolutionary thought that made it possible for me to press on, as a new Catholic, to find out what the Church was trying to get at with her Marian teaching. In coming to understand this, it seemed to me, I'd come a long way toward understanding why Mary figures so prominently, not merely in the heads, but in the hearts of Catholics.

The first question that arises, of course, is, "Why Marian dogma at all?" Why not just dogmas about Christ and let Catholics think what they like about Mary? Why bind consciences here?

The answer is that Catholics do think what they like-not only about Mary, but about lots of things. And sometimes they think deeply erroneous things. When they do, and that thought imperils some revealed truth to the point it threatens the integrity of the Church's witness, the Church will, from time to time, define its doctrine more precisely. This is a process that's already at work in the New Testament (cf. Acts 15), and it continues until the return of Christ.

So, for instance, in the fifth century there arose (yet again) the question of just who Jesus is. It was a question repeated throughout antiquity and, in this case, an answer to the question was proposed by the Nestorians. They argued that the mortal man Jesus and the Logos, or Second Person of the Trinity, were more or less two persons occupying the same head. For this reason, they insisted that Mary could not be acclaimed (as she had been popularly acclaimed for a very long time) as Theotokos, or God bearer. Instead, she should only be called Christotokos, or Christ bearer. She was, they insisted, the Mother of Jesus, not of God.

The problem with this was that it threatened the very witness of the Church and could even lead logically to the notion that there were two Sons of God, the man Jesus and the Logos who was sharing a room with Him in His head. In short, it was a doorway to theological chaos over one of the most basic truths of the Faith: that the Word became flesh, died, and rose for our sins.

So the Church formulated its response. First, Jesus Christ is not two persons occupying the same head. He is one person possessing two natures, human and divine, joined in a hypostatic union. Second, it was appropriate to therefore call Mary Theotokos because she's the Mother of the God-Man. When the God-Man had His friends over for lunch, He didn't introduce Mary saying, "This is the mother of my human nature." He said, "This is my mother."

Why did the Church do this? Because, once again, Mary points to Jesus. The dogma of the Theotokos is a commentary on Jesus, a sort of "hedge" around the truth about Jesus articulated by the Church. Just as Nestorianism had tried to attack the orthodox teaching of Christ through Mary (by forbidding the veneration of her as Theotokos), now the Church protected that teaching about Christ by making Theotokos a dogma. That is a vital key to understanding Marian dogmas: They're always about some vital truth concerning Jesus, the nature of the Church, or the nature of the human person.

This is evident, for instance, in the definition of Mary as a Perpetual Virgin (promulgated in 553 at the Council of Constantinople). This tradition isn't so much explicitly attested as reflected in the biblical narrative. Yes, we must grant that the biblical narrative is ambiguous in that it speaks of Jesus' "brothers" (but does it mean "siblings" or merely "relatives"?). However, other aspects of the biblical narrative strongly suggest she remained a virgin.

For instance, Mary reacts with astonishment at the news that she, a woman betrothed, will bear a son. If you are at a wedding shower and tell the bride-to-be, "You're going to have cute kids" and she responds "How can that be?" you can only conclude one of two things: she either doesn't know about the birds and the bees or she's taken a vow of virginity. In short, the promise of a child is an odd thing for a betrothed woman to be amazed about... unless, of course, she'd already decided to remain a virgin even after marriage.

Likewise, Joseph reacts with fear at the thought of taking Mary as a wife. Why fear? Modernity assumes it was because he thought her guilty of adultery, but the typical view in antiquity understood the text to mean he was afraid of her sanctity-as a pious Jew would be afraid to touch the Ark of the Covenant. After all, think of what Mary told him about the angel's words: "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God."

I'm not even a pious Jew, but with words like that echoing in my ears about my wife, I'd find it easy to believe that Joseph, knowing what he did about his wife, would have chosen celibacy.

"But nothing is sure, based on the text alone. It's still ambiguous," says the critic. Right. The biblical text alone doesn't supply an unambiguous answer to this or a myriad of other questions, including "Is the Holy Spirit God?," "How do you contract a valid marriage?," and "Can you be a polygamist?" But the Tradition of the Church in union with the biblical text does supply an answer: Mary had no other children, a fact so commonly known throughout the early Church that when Jerome attacks Helvidius for suggesting otherwise, nobody makes a peep. In a Church quite capable of tearing itself to pieces over distinctions between homoousious and homoiousious, you hear the sound of crickets in response to Jerome, punctuated with the sound of other Fathers singing hymns to "Mary, Ever-Virgin." The early Church took it for granted and thought Helvidius as credible as Dan Brown.

But why a dogma about it? Because, again, Mary's life is a referred life. Her virginity, like Christ's, speaks of her total consecration to God and of our call as Christians to be totally consecrated as well. Her virginity is not a stunt or a magic trick to make the arrival of Messiah extra-strange. It is, rather, a sign to the Church and of the Church. And that matters for precisely the reason I'd thought it did not matter when I was an Evangelical: because Christianity is indeed supposed be about a relationship with Jesus Christ. But a relationship necessarily involves more than one person.

What it comes down to is this: Jesus can do a world of wonderful things, but there is something even Jesus cannot do-He cannot model for us what it looks like to be a disciple of Jesus. Only a disciple of Jesus can do that. And the first and best model of the disciple of Jesus is the one who said and lived "Yes!" to God, spontaneously and without even the benefit of years of training or the necessity of being knocked off a horse and blinded. And she continues to do so right through the agony of watching her Son die and the ecstasy of knowing Him raised again.

This is why the Church, like the gospels, has always called Mary our Mother: because Mom is the best model for training children. The command to call her "Mother" comes, of course, from Jesus himself. John doesn't record the words "Behold your mother" (John 19:27) because he thought his readers might be curious about domestic arrangements for childless Jewish widows. Rather, as with everything else John writes, "These are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name" (John 20:31). In other words, he doesn't record everything about Jesus, only those things that have a significant theological meaning. This includes Christ's words to the Beloved Disciple. For the Beloved Disciple is you and not merely John. Mary is your mother and you are her child. And so we are to look to her as mother and imitate her as she imitates Christ.

A certain GS user whom I seem to have annoyed has, of late, been attempting to paint a less-than-savoury picture of the Cathoic view of Mary which, I think, borders on slandering the Blessed Virgin herself. Be that as it may, O Reader, I implore you not to be fooled: recognizing the Mother of Christ and calling her blessed, as is done in the Catholic practice of Marian devotion, is a very Biblical, very Christian practice.

In some respects, it means less, now, to be a mother than it once did. I do not mean, in saying that, that those women who are mothers are possessed of less worth than their own mothers were; no, their worth is the same, and their "act" of being mothers equally noble and dignified.

I mean, instead, that so much which would have at one time been thought of as a nigh-unthinkable antithesis of motherhood -- no-fault divorce, abortion-on-demand, the proliferation of birth control -- has become nothing more, nor anything less, than a series of common commercial products in our society, as easily obtained as a pack of cigarettes once was (one could glibly note that today, in stark contrast to obtaining an abortion, one must still present convincing proof of age in excess of 18 years in order to obtain cigarettes legally).

And to an event and "product," each of those things in some way flies in the face of motherhood. Divorce deprives it of its logical, biological, necessary opposite -- fatherhood. Abortion abruptly ceases the natural course of nurturing and, in due time, birthing a child -- it prevents one entirely from becoming a mother. And birth control attempts to circumvent the possibility that, through allowing the sexual act between one man and one woman to run its natural course, motherhood might result from a random conjugal act.

But I wonder...could all this have been predicted, say, from some distant moment in history?

David Warren reflects, in his usual oblique way, on Mother's Day through the lens of she who is the mother of us all: Mary, Mother of Christ, Mother of God:

In a sentence, the veneration of Mary is an inevitable extension of the worship of Christ: for if there is God the Son, there must be a Mother of God. Or to be plainer still, in line with the Council of Ephesus in 431 A.D. -- the human "Jesus," and the divine "Christ," are not two different persons. They are one and the same, and He was the Son of God, and of Mary.

Hence the extraordinary veneration of Mary, from the earliest Christian times, and through the centuries -- so powerful that even the Muslims, appearing from the 7th century A.D., also venerate her. And long, long before even Christianity dawned upon the world, she is anticipated in every "Mother Goddess" known to anthropology.

A Darwinist, or a Jungian, or sociobiologist, or whatever, may hold that this is all merely a projection of the big raw fact of human motherhood -- onto a cosmos that is fearfully beyond the comprehension of the primitive human mind. This hypothesis has the glib plausibility that is required to monopolize teaching in the academy, today. It is itself a view of considerable antiquity, and the anthropologists have discovered essentially atheist primitive tribes.

This is a "secular" newspaper and I am only dealing with the pragmatic consequences of religious beliefs. What is the consequence of Marian "idolatry" (as my Protestant ancestors would call it, while turning in their graves), or as I would characterize it, the veneration of "Sancta Maria, Mater Dei" that has animated so much of this world's most magnificent art and poetry?

Its practical effect is to found all our intellectual and emotional ideas about motherhood, deep as they are, in something still deeper. It is to believe that real substance and significance underlies our natural love for our own human mothers, that it is not simply a biological quirk to be explained away by a few material causes. That it is instead the profoundest echo of what Dante finally called, "l' amor che move il sole e l' alter stele" -- "the Love that moves the sun and the other stars."

Buy into that, and one's own human mother is not reduced to a mechanism of "sexual selection" (to quote a zoological sage of the century before last), nor arbitrarily salvaged with the tearjerk posturing of a Mother's Day card. She is rather enlarged to her true proportions.

Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.

Were I of a combative mindset, I might speculate that one could have reasoned, from the first moment Protestant thought began to turn against Mary and Marian adoration (it serves to note that the first Reformer, Luther, was a devoutly Marian in his personal practice of Christian faith), that all this secular nightmare would come to pass. It is a tenuous thing to suggest, and not easily defensible.

But I wonder if there isn't, inherent in that historical rejection of Mary as the Mother of All (and, indeed, the Mother of God) that so infused Protestantism during its formative decades, to be found the seeds of modern secular society's rejection of motherhood on principle.

...are a sad and all-too-predictable lot, but there is some comedy to be derived from their blather.

Here are some more standard canards. Consider them a "starter kit" for your collection. Be the first Catholic on your block to get the whole set!

* * *

A. The Church is lax and lazy. It has mindlessly absorbed dozens of pagan myths and thoughtlessly added them to Scripture without so much as stopping to ask for a second whether these "pious fantasies" contradict the Bible. That's why the 3rd and 4th Century Church got snookered into believing in the Assumption of Mary, the collection of relics, the communion of saints and the doctrine of the Trinity. It's all just pagan nonsense that drifted into a Church that had stopped caring about doctrinal purity.

B. The Church is narrow and squinting and obsessed with doctrinal purity. It picks over minute theological controversies concerning the nature of Christ and the Trinity and is prepared to excommunicate those who vary from its minutely detailed theological formulae by a hair's breadth. This is especially true of the 3rd and 4th Century Church which squabbled endlessly over minute points of scriptural interpretation and took it upon itself to define (according to the authoritarian opinions of the bishops, of course) what books did and did not belong to the canon of Scripture in order to buttress their power. Thank God the Jesus Seminar has shown that these books are but a small part of the rich trove of early Christian writings ruthlessly suppressed by the hierarchy. There is no reason we must accept just the "official" New Testament of the bishops. Let us embrace the gnostic, Arian, and Docetist views of the Christ event as well!

* * *

A. The Church is cruelly restrictive of Christian liberty. It everywhere inhibits our freedom of choice and conscience.

B. The Church is absurdly supportive of the notion of human free will, while Scripture is abundantly clear that there is no such thing. God is sovereign and we are predestined according to his will, not ours.

C. The secular variation of A is that the Church is cruelly opposed to "freedom of choice" in the matter of abortion, daring to rebuke the absolute autonomy of individuals and imperialistically impinging on the right to reproductive freedom.

D. The secular variation of B is the Marxist/materialist/determinist claim that human free will is a ridiculous mystical notion and that all human behavior is determined, not by God, but by the motion of molecules and the forces of nature.

* * *

A. The Church is flabby and far too tolerant of sinners in her midst.

B. The Church is bigoted and intolerant of anybody who won't toe the party line. Catholics live in continual fear of excommunication if they depart from her dogmas by a hairsbreadth.

* * *

A. The Church is perpetually changing its tune and making up new doctrines.

B. The Church is hidebound and retrograde, refusing to change with the times and create new doctrines in light of new truths (as that homosexual practice, abortion, divorce and remarriage, women priests are A-OK).

* * *

A. The Church is dark and fearful, despising the goodness of life with her penances and fastings and exalting saints who went barefoot in the snow to earn their salvation.

B. The Church is luxurious and wasteful, building large cathedrals and art collections and exalting clergy who never worked a day in their lives. Didn't the Apostle tell us to "work out our salvation with fear and trembling?" Yet these parasites talk only of the forgiveness of God while forgetting his justice and his demand for sacrifice for the Kingdom. Sinning on Friday, repenting on Saturday.

* * *

A. The Church terrorizes us with the threat of hell and the terrible doctrine that no one gets a second chance.

B. The Church teaches that everyone gets a second chance in Purgatory.

C. The Church teaches a pink-and-fluffy heaven when science can prove no such thing. It's all a fantasy to speak of any chance at all. No one gets out of here alive.

* * *

A. The Church is patriarchal, worshiping God as Father.

B. The Church is idolatrous, acclaiming Our Lady as Mother of the Church.

* * *

A. The gospel is simple and the Church has made it complex.

B. The world is complex and the Church thinks it can go on relying on its simple little creeds and black-and-white dogmas and Scriptures.

* * *

A. The Church is too materialistic, relying on sacraments as means of grace when the gospel is purely spiritual.

B. The Church is too spiritual, taking seriously the unseen supernatural world and totally ignorant of Modern Science and the need to face physical reality.

* * *

A. Baptism is unnecessary for salvation, yet Catholics insist upon baptism as the normative means of salvation.

B. Catholics don't baptize, they sprinkle, and it is necessary to be baptized to be saved.

And the beat goes on. An apologist with a satiric bent might string this clamorous kaffuffle together in some way or other and draft something like an anti-creed, just to see if anyone catches on to the sheer Chestertonian irony and paradox of the complaints against the Faith. I offer the following for education or amusement (whichever comes first):

We, the faithful of the Holy Catholic Church are tritheists who insist on monotheism, while denigrating all that is feminine in the name of a primitive male sky-god and worshiping Mary as a goddess in defiance of the One True God of Israel. We are syncretists who began by stealing all our beliefs from Mithraism and the pagan mystery religions and then, suddenly and inexplicably, turned around (at some undefined point in the first, second, third, fourth or fifth centuries) and began to cruelly forbid all that was tinged with paganism. We are also dogmatists who believe that only Catholics will be saved and yet squishy Universalists who hold that everybody will be saved by works.

For us men and for our salvation, the Enigmatic Sage of Nazareth whom the Jesus Seminar has at last figured out came from no place in particular to say nothing special. For this reason early Catholics became obsessed with worshiping him and were willing to be crucified and burnt alive for his name's sake. In the process they naturally forgot everything they ever knew about the object of their obsession and, in single-minded devotion to a fanatical purity of faith, taught that we are saved by faith in him alone and that we get our salvation the old-fashioned way (by earning it and by observing Babylon Mystery Religions). Thus, we are obsessed with salvation by works and good deeds done on earth in utter ignorance of the true gift of heavenly grace God offers, but we are so wishful about pie in the sky, angels and saints that our faith in God's grace blinds us to the reality of the work that needs to be done right here on earth.

We pray to statues, while simultaneously being too spiritual to appreciate the truly earth-affirming nature of non-Christian creation-centered religions (which frequently pray to statues, whereas we only pray to some cloudy disembodied Spirit).

We anxiously buy indulgences to avoid spending eternity in Purgatory, yet we foolishly believe that we can have serene confidence of going to heaven merely because we have received Jesus in the sacraments and practiced holiness. We mindlessly do whatever the Pope tells us and believe in superstition rather than cold reason. Yet we think too much and have theologies, arts, philosophies and histories that are the creation of human wisdom rather than relying on the Spirit who is deeper than mere "head knowledge."

We ban the Bible for ordinary people but we also produce false, non-King James Version translations which we compel the faithful to read. We loathe sex while having thousands of children. The reason we have so many kids is because, unfortunately, it's the only way that a patriarchal religion of oppression can keep women down and force them into monotheistic tritheism that worships Mary.

I think that about covers it!

In some "non-denominational" circles, Mary Ann Collins is extolled as a "former Catholic nun" and an "expert" on Catholicism. In a lot of ways, her assertions about Catholicism are on par with those of Jack Chick (detailed below). Unlike Mr. Chick, however, there is little or no evidence that Ms. Collins actually exists, and no evidence of note that she was ever a nun as she asserts. Only one or two people have come forward with news of actually receiving a reply to their email correspondence with Ms. Collins, and the responses themselves are the sort one might expect from writing to Betty Crocker.

In other words, Ms. Collins may well be -- and probably is -- a fraud, a "sock puppet" identity of someone with more sinister intentions as opposed to actually being a concerned ex-nun.

If anyone is curious, the WHOIS information for Ms. Collins' website -- Catholic Concerns -- is as follows:

Registrant:
Mary Ann Collins;ez1asn@nameprivacy.com
Mary Ann Collins
ATTN: CATHOLICCONCERNS.COM
P.O. Box 430 c/o NameSecure
Herndon, VA  20171-430
US

Phone: 570-708-8782

Registrar: NameSecure.com 
Domain: CATHOLICCONCERNS.COM
Created on 10-28-2001
Expires on 10-28-2015

Administrative Contact:
Mary Ann Collins
Phone: 570-708-8782 
E-mail: ez1asn@nameprivacy.com 

Technical Contact:
Namesecure Inc. 
Phone: 570-708-8782 
E-mail: ez1asn@nameprivacy.com 

Name Servers:
DNS117.GZO.COM                 75.126.196.8
DNS118.GZO.COM                 75.126.202.33
NS5.READYHOSTING.COM           65.254.254.124
NS6.READYHOSTING.COM           65.254.254.125

This domain was confidentially registered using
NameSecure(r) WHOIS NamePrivacy private registration
services. Mail correspondence to this address must 
be sent via USPS Express Mail(tm) or USPS Certified 
Mail(r) to the physical mailing address above. All other
mail will not be processed.  And, you must be sure to 
include the registrant's domain name in the address, 
or your USPS Express Mail or USPS Certified Mail will 
be returned to you.

I'm generaly skeptical about people who go to added lengths to protect their identities in some ways while simultaneously making claims about themselves, and about Catholicism, that depend on an accurate understanding of the true identity and history of the person making the claims. The elusiveness that Ms. Collins demonstrates would seem to fly in the face of the various statements she makes concerning the Church and her participation in it.

To say nothing of the fact that her various claims, which another GS user links to, are about as defensible as those of Jack Chick (which are rebutted below).

If someone is going to go to such lengths as to cite the aforementioned Jack Chick as a credible source against Catholicism, and if one is going to go so far as to essentially assert a blood libel against Catholicism in general, why would one cite an author like Dinesh D'Souza as a credible Christian apologist, given that D'Souza is a very ardent Catholic?

I just don't get it.

I never understood the fascination of some people with Jack Chick -- but then, I've never understood the need of some people to engage in harsh, anti-Catholic bigotry. This is especially true of a user I recently crossed paths (and swords, so to speak) with here on GS, and who has evidently been getting a tad busy with his ability to report my posts for moderation.

Which strikes me as a tad odd since, after all, he had previously complained about someone moderating him. What is sauce for the goose evidently isn't always sauce for the gander. Some people, methinks, need to re-read Matthew 16:23.

At any rate, I'm just going to quickly replace the opening bit of the response to Jack Chick from Catholic Answers that got deleted when the previous post that occupied this spot got moderated.

Answering Chick Tracts

It's tempting to laugh off Jack Chick's tracts and comic books. Their lurid tales and paranoid conspiracy theories make them hard to take seriously. But millions of people take them very seriously. That is why Chick has been able to distribute more than half a billion of his tracts. What is worse, many are aimed directly at Catholics, attempting to convert them to Fundamentalism. His most anti-Catholic tracts tend to conclude with a final panel like this one, urging Catholics to repudiate their faith:

With many Catholics weak in their faith today, there are a lot of people who are vulnerable to appeals such as this, especially when they have just been told untruths that they don't know how to refute. Even Catholics who are strong in their faith can have a difficult time knowing how to answer specific anti-Catholic charges, because Chick makes so many and such bizarre ones.

This is part of the problem: With the sheer volume of errors, half-truths, and misrepresentations that Chick makes about the Church, there is simply no way to refute them all. Often even a single panel from one of his tracts contains multiple mistakes. Doing a thorough refutation of everything Chick says would require several book-length works.

The procedure this report recommends is to use critical thinking skills whenever one looks at a Chick tract—whether one is a Catholic seeking to answer the tract or a non-Catholic seeking to evaluate what it has to say. To that end, keep several principles of critical thinking in mind:

1. Use common sense. If something seems to violate common sense, it probably does. Think about it: Is it really plausible that the Vatican is operating a multi-century conspiracy during which it created Islam and Communism, started the American Civil War, World War I, World War II, arranged the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and the assassination attempt of John Paul II? That it keeps the name of all Protestant church members in a database so that they can be hunted down, interrogated, and if need be tortured or killed in a future persecution? That the Vatican created or runs the Masons, the Klan, the Mafia, the Mormons, the Jehovah's Witnesses, and the host of other organizations and religious groups that Chick says it does?

This is all a gross violation of common sense, and that ought to tell you that something is wrong with the picture Chick is painting. So if you encounter something in Chick's works that is incredible, outrageous, or unbelievable—go with your instincts and assume that it's false unless it can be backed up with solid evidence. This leads directly to the next point.

2. Identify, evaluate, and check sources. Chick tracts make many assertions but cite few sources—and fewer reliable ones—yet he needs to provide solid sources in order to give evidence for the preposterous claims he makes. Therefore, when reading a Chick tract, you should evaluate the sources he is using. Ask yourself: Does he even provide a source to document this claim? Often he does not. If there is one, ask: Is this a reliable source? Some of his main sources are notoriously unreliable, including Alberto Rivera, John Todd, and Alexander Hislop (discussed below). Finally, check the source. It may not say what Chick would lead you to think it does. For example, above we saw an instance in which CRI found Alberto Rivera erroneously claiming that a source said something it didn't say.

3. Check for misrepresentations. Very often when Chick cites a source (including the Bible), he misrepresents what it says. Sometimes this is because he doesn't understand how a word is being used. (We will see later that he is greatly mistaken about what the word anathema means.) Other times he will cite Bible verses that are on the general topic he wants but that don't really say what he wants. In other words, they are not relevant to the claim he is making. So ask yourself: Is this passage really relevant? Does it say what he wants it to say? What else could it mean?

4. Consult authentic sources. Don't let matters stop at what Chick and his sources say. Consult other sources—the best ones that you can find. If Chick says that a doctrine is taught by the Catholic Church, look it up in the Catechism of the Catholic Church and find out. If you don't know where to check out a claim he makes, call Catholic Answers.

5. Note admissions of lack of evidence. Sometimes when Chick doesn't have evidence for what he wants to claim he will try to conceal the fact by saying "this was all covered up" or that someone "secretly" was a Catholic. When this happens, take note of it and recognize it for what it is: an admission that he can't back up the claim with evidence.

6. Think through the implications. As part of using common sense to evaluate Chick's claims, think through the implications of what he says. Ask yourself: What else would have to happen for this to be true?
For example, take the claim that the Vatican has a database of "every Protestant church member in the world." How would the Vatican get such a list? Many countries (the U.S. among them) do not require people to register their religious affiliation. In these countries, most Protestant churches don't publicize their membership rolls. The Vatican would have to spies everywhere, gathering evidence about the members of every one-room, backwoods country church in the world. This violates common sense.

7. Look for double standards. Chick often will portray a particular belief or practice as an abomination when it is done by Catholics, even though the same thing occurs in Protestant circles.
For example, he points to the Catholic belief in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, belief in baptismal regeneration, and the practice of infant baptism as key points in his argument that Catholics are not Christian.[40] Yet each of these is paralleled among Protestants. Lutherans and many Anglicans believe in the Real Presence. The same also believe in baptismal regeneration. And infant baptism is practiced by the majority of Protestants in the world, including not only Lutherans and Anglicans but also Presbyterians, Dutch Reformed, Methodists, and others. Only the Baptist and Pentecostal traditions (and those movements stemming from them) oppose the practice.

8. Watch for prejudicial presentations. A key technique that Chick uses is to make Catholics, their beliefs, and their practices "look" or "sound" bad by presenting them in a prejudicial light. This happens when he takes something innocent and uses language that makes it sound sinister. Or when he shows Catholics as angry, ugly, and foul-mouthed. Or when he uses exaggerated, hysterical language. Or when he tries to play upon one's emotions by drawing demons lurking about. Be aware that this kind of subterfuge is a major part of what Chick does and be on the lookout for it. When you see it, ask yourself: How could this same thing be presented in a balanced, non-prejudicial manner?

These principles of critical thinking will go a long way toward helping you answer and evaluate Chick tracts. They will let you see through a large number of the errors, half-truths, and misrepresentations that fill their pages. But you also need specific facts to answer or evaluate many of the particular things he says. It is not possible in a special report to do a thorough refutation of all of Chick's claims, but here are some things you should be aware of concerning the most common themes in his tracts, as well as pointers for where to go for more information.

Anathema

Like many, Chick does not understand what the term anathema means. He thinks that it means "damned as a heretic."[41] Elsewhere he uses "damned as a heretic" in place of the word anathema.[42]

But this is not what the term means. In Catholic documents the term refers to a kind of excommunication. By the time of the Council of Trent (which Chick faults for using it), it referred to an excommunication done with a special ceremony. Thus when Trent says things like "If anyone says . . . let him be anathema," it means that the person can be excommunicated with the ceremony. It also did not apply to Protestants since they were not part of the Catholic Church. Only someone who is part of the Catholic Church can be excommunicated from it.

The purpose of excommunication is not to damn a person but to bring him to repentance—the same principle Paul uses in 1 Corinthians 5 and 2 Corinthians 2:5–10.

Further, though ordinary excommunication still exists, the ceremonial form of excommunication (anathema) does not exist. The 1983 Code of Canon Law ended the penalty. Thus, while one can still be excommunicated for holding beliefs against the Catholic faith, one cannot be anathematized.

Anointing of the Sick

Chick doesn't like the anointing of the sick,[43] but it has a firm biblical basis. The book of James tells us: "Is any among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord; and the prayer of faith will save the sick man, and the Lord will raise him up; and if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven" (Jas. 5:14–15).

Antichrist

Chick presents Alberto Rivera as saying that John's prophecy (cf. 1 John 2:18–22) of many antichrists and a final Antichrist "are fulfilled in the dynasty of the papacy and that the Antichrist will be the pope who is in power when Jesus Christ returns."[44] Chick himself agrees. He always shows the Antichrist wearing papal robes and says that "he rules from the Vatican."[45] In The Only Hope we are told bluntly: "The last pope will be the antichrist, or the Beast."[46]

This is not possible. John tells us: "Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son" (1 John 2:22; cf. 4:3; 2 John 7). The Antichrist will deny that Jesus is the Messiah. But the pope's authority as the vicar (representative) of Christ depends on Jesus being the Christ. The pope is the one man least likely to deny that Jesus is the Messiah. His job depends on it! For this same reason one cannot refer the "many antichrists" (cf. 1 John 2:18) to "the dynasty of the papacy."

Assurance of Salvation

Chick occasionally takes swipes at the Catholic Church for not teaching "assurance of salvation" and cites verses such as 1 John 5:13—"I write this to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life." He's taking this verse out of context. John has just been giving tests by which one can tell whether one is in a state of salvation (1 John 4:16–5:12). These tests include whether one believes in God and Jesus, whether one loves God and one's neighbor, and whether one keeps God's commandments. This means that one can have a reasoned assurance of salvation but not an absolute one. One cannot claim to "know" that one has eternal life without applying (and passing) the tests, and there is always the possibility that one could be self-deceived about whether one passes the tests. Thus assurance can be only relative, not absolute.

Baptism

Chick singles out two problems with baptism as understood and practiced by Catholics. The first is that one is born again in baptism and the second that Catholics baptize infants.

Scripture clearly indicates that we receive God's grace in baptism. Peter says that in the ark "eight persons were saved through water. Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body [i.e., not by the physical effect of baptism] but as an appeal to God for a clear conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ [i.e., by the spiritual effect of baptism]" (1 Pet. 3:20–21). Paul tells us that when we were baptized we were united to Christ's death so that "we might walk in newness of life" (Rom. 6:4), and when Paul himself was baptized, he was told: "Rise and be baptized, and wash away your sins, calling on his name" (Acts 22:16). On the day of Pentecost, Peter preached: "Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins" (Acts 2:38). The early Church Fathers were unanimous in understanding John 3:5 ("unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God") as referring to baptism.

Regarding infant baptism, when Peter preached baptism for the forgiveness of sins, he added: "For the promise is to you and to your children" (Acts 2:39). Jesus himself said, "Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them; for to such belongs the kingdom of God" (Luke 18:16), and he was speaking of infants (cf. Luke 18:15)! It is no surprise then when we see entire households being baptized at once (Acts 16:15, 33; 1 Cor. 1:16). This is natural when one recognizes that baptism is "the circumcision of Christ" (Col. 2:11) or the Christian equivalent of circumcision—which was applied to infants.

It also is worth noting that many Protestants believe in baptismal regeneration and practice infant baptism. The first Protestant of all—Martin Luther—did so, as does the Lutheran church to this day.

Bible Corruption

Chick is a supporter of the King James Version of the Bible. He denounces multiple other Protestant translations. His chief grievances are: (1) that the other translations are based on corrupt "Alexandrian" manuscripts rather than on the "Textus Receptus" manuscript tradition, (2) that even Protestant preachers "correct the Word of God" according to what the original languages say, (3) that some Bibles have footnotes, and (4) that some Bibles contain the deuterocanonical books of Scripture ("the Apocrypha"). All of this, Chick says, is a satanic and Catholic plot.[47]

1. The issues regarding what manuscripts are the closest to the original is too complex to go into here, but suffice it to say that the differences between the different manuscript traditions are tiny. They do not, as Chick says, "downplay" the deity of Christ, the Virgin Birth, or salvation by grace through faith.[48] Westcott and Hort (the textual scholars Chick blames most) were not "closet Catholics." They were Anglicans.

2. It is good for Protestant preachers to correct Bible translations in light of the original languages because no translation is perfect—even the KJV. For example, in Acts 12:4 the KJV says "Easter" where the Jewish holiday of Passover is being referred to.

3. While bad footnotes are a problem in many Bibles, footnotes also can help, given the complexity and obscurity of some passages. When Philip asked the Ethiopian eunuch if he understood the prophet Isaiah, he replied, "How can I, unless some one guides me?" (Acts 8:31).

4. The deuterocanonical books were reckoned as Scripture by the early Christians. As Protestant church historian J. N. D. Kelly writes, "It should be observed that the Old Testament thus admitted as authoritative in the Church was somewhat bulkier and more comprehensive [than the Protestant Bible]. . . . It always included, though with varying degrees of recognition, the so-called apocrypha or deuterocanonical books."[49] Further, some New Testament passages clearly allude to passages in the deuterocanonicals. (For instance, compare Hebrews 11:35 with 2 Maccabees 7.)

(cont'd below...)

I don't post this with intent to annoy; I post it to answer, directly, allegations about Catholicism that another GS user has made that are simply not true, and which fail upon even a basic analysis of Catholic teaching and Scripture. I post this because one GS user in particular has been taken in by a liar like Jack Chick, and I would be remiss if I didn't point out that a fellow Christian has given himself over to something dark and sinister.

(...cont'd)

Clergy & Religious

Chick has a big problem with the pope, priests, and religious (e.g., monks and nuns). We will deal with the pope in another section, but as for priests, the word priest is actually taken from the Greek word presbuteros ("elder").

Further, Paul tells us that God's ministers in the New Testament age do perform "priestly service" (Rom. 15:16).

Regarding monks and nuns, the Old Testament records people who took special vows of consecration to God (Nazirites, cf. Num. 6), the Old Testament equivalent of monks and nuns. In the New Testament, Anna the prophetess seems to have lived like a cloistered nun, as "she did not depart from the temple, worshiping with fasting and prayer night and day" (Luke 2:37). Paul tells us of an order of widows devoted to good works who had vowed to not marry again (cf. 1 Tim. 5:9–12).

Communism

Chick's claim that Communism is a creation of the Vatican is one that does not pass the common sense test. Historically, Communism has been militantly atheistic, and the Church has condemned it in extremely forceful terms.

Neither is the claim that "liberation theology"—the misguided attempt of some third-world priests to fuse Catholicism and Marxism—credible as a Vatican plot. The Vatican cracked down on the movement and censured its theologians.

The claim that John Paul II is a Communist is especially preposterous. He suffered under Communist rule, has written against it forcefully, and is credited by many as one of the key players in the downfall of the Soviet Bloc.

Confession

Chick tells us that "no man has the power to forgive sins." It's true that God's forgiveness is the one that counts, but this doesn't mean that God doesn't use men as the instruments by which he absolves people.

The Pharisees made the same charge against Jesus during his own public ministry (cf. Mark 2:7), but Jesus proved he had the power to forgive sins by healing the paralytic man. When the crowds saw it, "they glorified God, who had given such authority to men" (Matt. 9:8, emphasis added).

With the coming of Christ, God began to use men as instruments of his forgiveness, and after the Resurrection Jesus commissioned his disciples to do this, telling them: "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained" (John 20:22–23).

Conspiracy

One of the problems with Chick's grand, Vatican-centered conspiracy theory is that so many of the groups the Vatican allegedly created or controls are anti-Catholic. Muslims, Communists, Nazis, Masons, the Klan, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, etc.—all are anti-Catholic, some as much so as Jack Chick. Further, many of these movements are large enough that they have been specifically rejected by the Vatican. The idea that the Vatican started or runs them is simply absurd.

Demons

Demons lurk the pages of Chick tracts, sometimes guffawing at the misfortunes of humans, sometimes plotting devilry, sometimes just hovering sinisterly.

The extensive use of this theme is one of the ways Chick plays on the emotions of his readers. Instead of making a calm, rational appeal for why his readers should or should not believe certain things, Chick wants to engage the reader on a sub-rational level. He substitutes disturbing, even horrific imagery for reason and argument. He doesn't want the reader to think. He wants to generate emotions of fear and revulsion toward certain doctrines and practices and so associates demonic imagery with them. No proof is necessary to show why a doctrine or practice is bad; Chick just wraps demons around it to make the reader want to reject it.

Chick attributes many things he doesn't like directly to the devil. Again, no proof or argument is offered. He simply asserts that something was engineered by Satan. Sometimes he even shows the devil plotting the object of Chick's contempt. Once again, he substitutes fear and revulsion for offering evidence.

Frankly, he gives the devil too much credit. While one may reasonably assume that the devil looks favorably on every moral evil that occurs in the world, this is not the same as saying he causes every individual evil. While he may have set the human race on a bad road in the beginning (Gen. 3), this does not mean that he directly engineered every individual sin since that time.

Divided Loyalties

Chick occasionally takes swipes at Catholics for having divided loyalties between the Church and the U.S. (insinuating or directly stating that their loyalty to the former is greater than to the latter). This kind of argument was common in many older American anti-Catholic works. At the time these works were written, many Catholics in the U.S. were immigrants, and their loyalty to their new country was suspect. Most anti-Catholics today have dropped this allegation—and with good reason—yet Chick hangs onto it. It's essential to his Catholics-out-to-subvert-the-U.S. conspiracy theory.

The reason that most anti-Catholics no longer make the charge is that now most Catholics in the U.S. are native-born. They are as loyal to America as anyone. They have put their lives on the line for her whenever the nation has gone to war, and many are war heroes.

In addition, Chick's facts are wrong. Catholics are not "citizen[s] of two countries." The Vatican City State has a tiny number of citizens—fewer than a thousand.[50] They are mostly people who live and work at the Vatican. The vast majority of Catholics are citizens of only one state—their homeland—and they understand their civic duties as well as anyone. The Catechism of the Catholic Church stresses these duties,[51] and the Catholic Bible says just as much as the Protestant one, "Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's" (Matt. 22:21).

Eucharist

Chick makes the usual charges against the Eucharist. He doesn't like the Real Presence and the sacrifice of the Mass in particular. He even says that the Mass is not mentioned in Scripture, despite the fact that the very first Mass occurred during the Last Supper (cf. Luke 22:19–20). The charges he makes have been answered many times.

What is distinctive about his approach is the attempt he makes to link the Eucharist with paganism. He claims: "On the altars of Egypt were sun-shaped wafers made of unleavened bread. These wafers were consecrated by the Egyptian priests and supposedly they magically became the flesh of the sun god, Osiris."[52]

Although Osiris was an Egyptian god, he wasn't the sun god. That was Ra (in some cases identified with Horus). Osiris was the grain god and the god of the dead. There were grain cakes (little and not so little) connected with the worship of Osiris, but, since he wasn't the sun god, they were not shaped like the sun. They were shaped like a man since Osiris was pictured as a man. The use of these grain men was connected with Osiris's annual cycle as the god of grain. Every year, the Egyptians made cakes shaped like Osiris out of grain as an offering asking the grain god to reappear and make the land fruitful again. According to Egyptian wall art, priests even watered the cakes to get the grain in them to sprout and send up shoots. These Osiris cakes weren't anything like communion wafers.[53]

Another of Chick's attempts to link the Eucharist with paganism is found in his frequent depictions of the host imprinted with the letters IHS. He tells the reader that this stands for a trio of Egyptian gods (who were not a trinity, incidentally). Chick's claim is nonsense. The letters aren't English at all, but Greek. In fact, they are the first three letters of Jesus' name in Greek: iota-eta-sigma (capital eta in Greek looks like the English H). This has been a common abbreviation for Jesus throughout Church history.

Though you wouldn't know it from Chick, few Catholics have ever seen a host imprinted with these letters. Most hosts either have nothing on them or a cross design. What design, if any, is imprinted on a host is up to the maker. There is no Church regulation on this, and few makers have used the IHS design. Yet Chick would lead one to believe that it is omnipresent in Catholic churches.

Faith Alone

One would expect Chick to have problems with Catholic teaching on salvation, and he does. The verses he uses most often[54] to attack it are Ephesians 2:8–9—"For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God—not because of works, lest any man should boast."

Catholics agree with what is being said in these verses. Even if one grants Chick's understanding of "works" in this passage as "good works" rather than "works of the [Mosaic] Law," it remains true. Good works do not contribute to our coming to God and being saved. In fact, Catholic theology holds that it is impossible for a person who is not in a state of justification to do good works, because he lacks the principle—charity—that makes them supernaturally good. It is when one is in a state of justification and has the virtue of charity that good works become possible.

Inquisition/Death to Non-Catholics

Chick's lurid comics are filled with tales (and scenes) of Catholics killing non-Catholics. These images are often linked to one of the various historical inquisitions (though Chick does not seem to be aware that there was more than one of these). He sees the breaking out of a new inquisition as not only an ever-present danger but a certainty.

Regarding the historical inquisition, Chick credits it with killing 68 million victims from 1200 to 1800.[55] This is not accurate. The inquisitions that took place in Europe were localized—in France, Spain, and Italy—and there the total population never approached 68 million. Even spread out over six hundred years, that many executions is impossible. Chick is relying on sources using grossly inflated figures.[56]

Chick also is wrong about the identity of the people who were executed. He portrays them as "Bible-believing Christians"[57] (meaning those with Fundamentalist theology), many of whom were hiding the Textus Receptus to keep it safe,[58] and claims that English Bible translator William Tyndale was executed for translating the Bible.[59] These claims are false. Protestantism did not exist during much of the time in question, and there is an utter lack of evidence of anyone being put to death for hiding the Textus Receptus. Indeed, this Greek New Testament manuscript tradition springs from the work of the Catholic scholar Erasmus.

Chick does not seem to understand what a heretic is. Heretics are baptized individuals who obstinately reject an obligatory part of Christian dogma.[60] They do not include Jews, though Chick appears to think they do.[61] Further, the fact that someone may be a heretic does not give anyone the right to kill him. The penalties for heresy specified in the Code of Canon Law include things like not being able to receive the sacraments and not being able to exercise a Church office.[62] Death is not one of these penalties. Yet Chick assures his readers that Trent created the right to "slaughter Jews and non-Catholics alike."[63] It didn't, though Chick thinks it did based on his misunderstanding of anathemas.[64]

He further tells his readers: "Still in effect? Yes! All the popes during the Vatican II council and since have accepted the ratification of the entire council on this decree [of Trent]."[65] This isn't the case, since Trent did not order the death of anyone and the penalty of anathema has since been abolished.

As for the prospect of a looming attempt of the Catholic Church to exterminate non-Catholics, apply the common sense test: Canon law contains no provisions calling for the death of anyone (read the entire Code of Canon Law from front to back; you won't find any). The penalty of anathema (which did not mean death) has been abolished. Rome is very reluctant to see the death penalty used at all.[66]

Anti-Catholics of Chick's ilk often wish to portray the Catholic Church as bent on bloodshed and their own religious forebears as opposed to religious violence. But this is erroneous. Both sides have things to apologize for. Religious violence tainted every stream within the Protestant Reformation. To cite a few cases: Henry VIII executed St. Thomas More, Elizabeth I executed St. Edmund Campion, John Calvin executed the heretic Michael Servetus, Martin Luther advocated the killing of Anabaptist leaders and the burning of Jewish synagogues, and Anabaptists seized the town of Münster in 1534 and killed many people before their attempt to establish a "New Jerusalem" in the town fell apart the next year. Protestants have the same fallen human nature as Catholics and are just as prone to violence.

Mary

Chick makes a lot of the conventional anti-Marian arguments that are common in Fundamentalism: that Mary is not the Mother of God, that we are not to ask for her intercession, that statues of her should not be venerated, that she was not preserved by God's grace from sin, etc.[67]

What is distinctive about Chick's approach is his is claim that "the 'Mother of God' that Catholics worship is not the Mary of the Bible. Satan has tricked them into worshiping a counterfeit goddess."[68] The basis for this claim is a story he borrowed from Alexander Hislop, according to which there was a queen in ancient Babylon named Semiramis. She married her son, Nimrod. After his death, she claimed to have had a virgin birth of another son, Tammuz, who was Nimrod reincarnated. This pair of Semiramis and Tammuz was often depicted in artwork as a mother and child. They form the basis of all of the mother-child statues in the different religions of the world, and when Catholics worship Mary and the Baby Jesus, they are actually worshiping Semiramis and Tammuz.

What is one to make of this? Setting aside the fact that Catholics do not worship Mary, it is still complete nonsense. Hislop's wild ideas cannot be substantiated historically.[69] We have mother and child images from cultures that predate Babylon. Further, if you want to depict a famous mother, a good way of doing it is by picturing her holding her child. Thus before literacy became widespread Christians often would picture Mary holding the Baby Jesus, and it became an established image in Christian art.

Millennium

All Christians recognize the existence of the time period known as the Millennium, which is spoken of in Revelation 20:1–10. During this period Satan is bound so that he cannot deceive the nations (Rev. 20:3). The question is: When in history does this period refer to? Chick belongs to a school of thought known as pre-millennialism or millenarianism, which holds that the Millennium is a future time period during which Christ will reign on earth as its King. He further holds that the Millennium will be preceded by an event known as the Rapture. These views are common among Evangelical and Fundamentalist Protestants, though the idea of the Millennium being preceded by the Rapture goes back to only about 1830.

The Catholic position is similar to the position of traditional Protestants. In Protestant circles the position is called amillennialism, and it was held by Luther, Calvin, and the majority of traditional Protestants. It holds that the Millennium is a present reality—that the devil is bound now in such a way that he cannot deceive the nations by stopping the proclamation of the gospel. This is why the world is no longer swallowed in pagan darkness the way it was at the time of Christ. The devil has not been able to stop the spread of Christianity, and now a third of all men are Christians, and half are believers in one God. Today, the prophecy is fulfilled that "the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea" (Is. 11:9), and Christ reigns from heaven (1 Cor. 15:25–26) and through his Church on earth (Rev. 20:4). At the end of the Church age, there will be a period of bitter deception and persecution of the Church as the devil is again freed to deceive the nations (Rev. 20:7–8). Then Christ will return, as the Creed says, "to judge the living and the dead" (Rev. 20:11–15).

(cont'd...)

(...cont'd)

Nazism

Chick makes the bizarre claim that not only was Pius XII sympathetic to Nazism (as some in the popular press have claimed) but that Hitler and his cohorts were trying to conquer the world in order to bring about the "Millennial Kingdom" under Pius XII. This doesn't pass the common sense test since Catholics view the Millennium as a present rather than a future reality.

Further, Pius XII was not sympathetic to Hitler at all. On April 28, 1935, four years before the war started, Eugenio Pacelli (the future Pius XII) caught the attention of the world press. Speaking to an audience of 250,000 pilgrims in Lourdes, France, Pacelli stated that the Nazis "are in reality only miserable plagiarists who dress up old errors with new tinsel. It does not make any difference whether they flock to the banners of social revolution, whether they are guided by a false concept of the world and of life, or whether they are possessed by the superstition of a race and blood cult."[70] It was talks like this—in addition to his private remarks and numerous notes of protest that he sent to Berlin as Vatican secretary of state—that earned Pacelli a reputation as an enemy of the Nazi party.

Other Christs

Chick periodically rails against Catholics worshiping multiple Jesuses, as in this picture:

Let us see if Chick's charge of idolatry holds up:

* Images of the Baby Jesus: Catholics do not worship these. They worship Jesus by venerating images of him, just as one might kiss a photo of a departed loved one.

* Crucifixes: First, who says that Jesus on the cross is dead? He is depicted being crucified, and there is no reason to suppose that crucifixes depict only the brief time between when he died and when he was taken down from the cross. Second, we worship the real Jesus in heaven by venerating his image on earth. The crucifix is an image of the most important thing he did for us on earth.

* The Pope: The pope is not "Jesus on earth," and Catholics don't worship him. He is the vicar (representative) of Christ. What is wrong with treating one of Christ's representatives with respect?

* Priests: Priests aren't worshiped, but they do represent Christ as his ministers. Don't Protestants treat their own ministers with respect (1 Thess. 5:12)?

* The Eucharist: The Eucharist is worshiped, but since it is Jesus himself it does not amount to worshiping "another" Jesus. Many other Christians, including Lutherans, believe in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist (although they do not in fact have the Real Presence in their churches) and recognize that Jesus is to be worshiped wherever he is.

* The "Angry Jesus" in Heaven: Literal anger is not compatible with being in the beatitude of heaven. In keeping with the language of Scripture one can speak of God being "angry" with our sins (Eph. 5:6), but Catholics recognize this as a metaphor for divine justice.[71] It is far less clear that Chick understands the concept of divine wrath as a metaphor, and his Jesus sometimes seems very angry. In any event, the Jesus ruling in heaven is still the real Jesus, not another one.

Paganism/Idolatry

One of the major themes of Chick tracts is the attempt to portray Catholicism as a form of paganism. According to Chick's mythology, ancient Babylonian paganism spread all over the world, with deities taking new names in different cultures but remaining fundamentally the same. He holds Catholicism to be one of its expressions and devotes many pages to showing that the Catholic Mary is actually the ancient Babylonian queen Semiramis and that the Eucharist is based on the worship of ancient sun gods.

Unfortunately, Chick gets his mythology all wrong. For example, he claims that "in ancient Babylon, they worshiped the sun god, 'Baal.' Then this religion moved into Egypt using different names."[72] In reality, ancient Babylonians worshiped the sun god Shamash. Baal was neither a Babylonian deity nor the sun god. In fact, he was the Canaanite storm god. Chick could not have had his ideas more muddled.

The source Chick depends on for his mythological ideas is The Two Babylons by Alexander Hislop, an eccentric nineteenth-century Anglican clergyman. Chick essentially recycles Hislop's central thesis of Catholicism being a revival of Babylonian paganism. This allows him to identify the Catholic Church with the Whore of Babylon.

Yet the book lacks credibility. Hislop was writing when anthropology and archaeology were in their infancy, and the idea that all world religions spring from a common source (especially one in Babylon) has been completely disproven. We have knowledge of multiple mythologies from all over the world that are unrelated to Babylonian paganism. Fundamental differences between them are easy to illustrate. For example, Indo-European paganism (to which Babylonian mythology is related) typically has the sky deity being male and the earth deity as female. But in Egyptian mythology this is reversed: The sky deity is female and the earth deity is male.

The most thorough refutation of The Two Babylons was written by one of its chief twentieth-century popularizers. As a young man, Ralph Woodrow wrote a book called Babylon Mystery Religion, which introduced many to Hislop's ideas. It was very popular in Fundamentalist circles. Yet with time Woodrow realized that Hislop's claims and logic were deeply flawed, and he wrote a new book—The Babylon Connection?—to refute them.

Pope

Chick's problems with the pope seem to be as follows: (1) The line of popes is a fulfillment of the biblical prophecy of there being many antichrists, and the final pope will be the Antichrist. (2) The popes have been engaged in a global conspiracy spanning centuries, with tendrils in almost every major world event. (3) There is no biblical basis for the office of the pope.

It is very clear in Scripture that Jesus told Peter, whose name means "rock," that "you are Peter [rock], and on this rock I will build my church" (Matt. 16:18). To undermine this, Chick makes the familiar claim that two different words are used here in Greek—petros and petra—and that the first means a small stone or pebble while the latter means a huge rock or boulder.[73]

This simply is not true. The difference in meaning can be found only in Attic Greek, but the New Testament was written in Koine Greek—a different dialect. In Koine, both petros and petra simply meant "rock." The argument shows a faulty knowledge of Greek.[74] Further, Jesus' native language was Aramaic, not Greek, and in the Aramaic underlying this passage, the same word—kepha—would have been used in both instances.

Purgatory

Chick claims: "Purgatory is NOT in the Bible! It was created by the Vatican as one of the greatest sources for money ever invented. Billions have made 'the Whore' rich from poor Roman Catholic survivors who paid to get their loved ones out of purgatory."[75]

What Chick is referring to (as he makes clear in context) is the paying of Mass stipends when a priest says Mass for a departed loved one. This does not make the Vatican rich. A typical Mass stipend is five dollars, and if a priest gets an occasional five dollars for saying Mass for someone's loved one, it doesn't make him or the Church rich. The priest himself keeps the stipend, and the practice is closely regulated to prevent abuse.[76] As a moneymaking scheme, purgatory leaves a lot to be desired.

But then that isn't what it is. It has been part of the Judeo-Christian tradition since before the time of Christ. Judah Maccabee and his men prayed for and took up a collection for an offering (the Old Testament equivalent of a Mass) for men who, although they "fell asleep in godliness" (2 Macc. 12:45), nevertheless needed to be purified from the consequences of their sins. Similarly, Paul tells us: "The fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work which any man has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If any man's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire" (1 Cor. 3:13–15). Even common sense tells one that, since we will be totally pure in heaven, we must be purified if we are still impure at our deaths. Purgatory is the name the Church gives to this purification.

Rapture

"The Rapture" is the name given in Evangelical circles to an event where living and dead Christians are caught up in the air to be with Christ. When this term is used, it usually is assumed that the event will occur shortly before the Millennium, conceived of as a period in which Christ reigns in person on earth, before the end of the world. This idea dates back to around 1830, when it was popularized by John Nelson Darby and by a school of thought called "Dispensationalism," which stems from his work. Chick is a big believer in the Rapture, and it appears in his tracts.[77]

Though it does not use the term Rapture, the Catholic Church acknowledges that Christians will be gathered to Christ (likely not with exploding graves), but at a different time. The Church's view is like that of traditional Protestants: The dead in Christ will be raised and caught up together with him and living Christians at the Second Coming, at the end of the world. Thus Paul speaks of the event happening in the time of those who "who are left until the coming of the Lord" (1 Thess. 4:15, cf. 4:16–17).

Repulsive Catholics

A typical tactic in Chick tracts is to portray Catholics as being unpleasant or revolting in various ways. They drink. They smoke. They cuss. They are mean-tempered. They may even be willing to kill non-Catholics. Some are eager to do so. Frequently, Catholics are drawn to be physically ugly as well. The only good Catholics in Chick tracts are ex-Catholics—those who have left the Church to become Fundamentalists. (Apparently becoming a Fundamentalist helps your appearance, too, because the ex-Catholics are better looking than their former co-religionists.)

When you see this in Chick tracts, recognize it for what it is: an attempt to avoid calm and rational discussion by substituting emotional manipulation, making Catholics "look bad"—literally and figuratively—so that you won't like them and will transfer this dislike to their beliefs. This is a prejudicial way of presenting Catholics, and it illustrates the prejudice Chick harbors against Catholics.

Tradition

Chick makes the typical charges against tradition, for example, quoting Matthew 15:3—"Why do ye also transgress the commandment of God by your tradition?"[78] What Chick fails to note is that the Bible does not condemn all tradition, only traditions of men that are contrary to the Word of God. Traditions of men that are not contrary to the word of God (e.g., having carpeting in churches) are not a problem.

Then there is a whole other ****of tradition: apostolic ones, traditions coming from the apostles. These not only are not problematic, but the keeping of them is praised and commanded by Scripture. Thus Paul tells the Corinthians, "I commend you because you remember me in everything and maintain the traditions even as I have delivered them to you" (1 Cor. 11:2). He commands the Thessalonians: "So then, brethren, stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by letter" (2 Thess. 2:15).

Vatican Riches

Like many, Chick faults the Catholic Church for having too much money.[79] It is true that the Church does have a lot of money invested in churches. You need a lot of churches for a billion Catholics to worship in. It also is true that many of these churches are beautiful and ornate, but it is the natural impulse of Christians to honor God by making the places where he is worshiped beautiful and ornate. This same impulse is reflected in the Old Testament, where God actually ordered his house to be made of costly materials, down to gold clasps for its curtains (Ex. 26:6).

In terms of its liquid assets, the Vatican has a remarkably small budget and regularly runs deficits. For example, in 2002 it spent $260 million but only took in $245 million, with a deficit of $15 million.[80] This budget—much of which is devoted to human relief efforts—is quite modest on the scale of world affairs. Many individual dioceses have budgets this size, and it is dwarfed by numerous companies and by every state in the U.S.

Whore of Babylon

Chick identifies the Catholic Church as the Whore of Babylon described in Revelation. He frequently cites Revelation 18:4 as a biblical imperative to leave the Church—"Come out of her, my people, lest you take part in her sins, lest you share in her plagues."[81] This would be a good proof text—if the Catholic Church were the Whore of Babylon. But it isn't.

When the Whore falls we read, "Rejoice over her, O heaven, O saints and apostles and prophets, for God has given judgment for you against her! . . . And in her was found the blood of prophets and of saints, and of all who have been slain on earth" (Rev. 18:20, 24). This shows that the Whore persecuted not just Christians but apostles and prophets. Apostles existed only in the first century, since one of the requirements for being an apostle was seeing the risen Christ (1 Cor. 9:1). Prophets existed as a group only in the Old Testament and the first century (Acts 11:27–28, 13:1, 15:32, 21:10).

Since the Whore persecuted apostles and prophets, the Whore must have existed in the first century. This demolishes the claim that Christian Rome or Vatican City is the Whore. Rome was not a Christian city at that time, and Vatican City did not even exist, so neither of them could be the Whore. Furthermore, Chick (wrongly) claims that Catholicism itself did not exist in the first century but was created by the emperor Constantine.[82] This means that on his very own argument Catholicism could not be the Whore.

Who is the Whore? Most likely first-century Jerusalem, which was renowned for persecuting both apostles and prophets. The fall of the Whore is likely a depiction of the fall of Jerusalem in a.d. 70.

FOOTNOTES

* this would seem to be a reference to the Colonial's polytheism ('denial of the one true path') and the nature of their worlds (colonies could technically be considered worlds 'not their own')

** this would seem to be a reference to the four Cylons revealed at the end of the third season

*** this would seem to be a reference to Lee meeting up with Starbuck in the Ionian Nebula, after she was supposedly killed several weeks prior

**** rumours about the fourth season suggest that there will be much more human/Cylon interaction, and that the Cylons, upon learning of the existence of some of the Final Five amongst the Colonials, will cease attacking the Fleet

***** this would seem to be a reference to the seven Cylon models known as of the end of the second season (one of which, the Threes, was subsequently 'boxed')

****** another rumour about season four involves one or two Cylon models orchestrating a rebellion by the Centurions that results in the deaths of two or three other Cylon models

******* Jamie Bamber, the actor who plays Lee Adama, let slip that the Colonials do in fact reach Earth by at least the middle of the fourth season