Pope on a Rope
Jan. 2nd, 2009 11:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vovatJack Chick is back, and taking aim at a new target, if by "a new target" you mean "a target he's attacked about 80 billion times in the past." And that would be a very bizarre use of the word "new," so I wouldn't recommend doing that. Yes, it's another anti-Catholic tract, this time featuring a guy with a Catholic uncle learning from his neighbor Bayou Billy that the Popes are the same as the Roman Emperors (a few minutes after learning who the Pope even was, because apparently Jimmy has been living under a rock for his entire life). Surprisingly, the bit about the Circus of Nero on the Vatican Mons being the site of Nero's persecution of Christians, and the obelisk there being the only one left standing after the fall of the Empire, is more or less true, at least based on the minimal online research I did. On the other hand, the implication that the Vatican was where Catholicism started doesn't appear to be true at all. While St. Peter's Basilica was built there in the fourth century (based on the tradition that Peter was killed at the Circus and buried in the cemetery nearby), it didn't become the seat of the papacy until the late fourteenth century. And does Chick actually think Protestantism would have existed if Catholicism (which, for Western Europe, WAS Christianity) hadn't already become the dominant religion? But apparently Rome dominates the world now, even though the nation considered the most powerful on Earth (i.e., us) has only had one Catholic president. Why Satan needs to work through some kind of vast conspiracy when other tracts have him doing pretty well with a more personal approach is beyond me, as is why this hypothetical Anthony character suddenly comes to dominate the comic starting in the twenty-first panel, especially when Chick had already given himself Catholic characters to work with (Uncle Frank and the nerd whose perpetual anger probably stems from his receding hairline). Also, the copyright date on this is 2008, when John Paul died in 2005. Actually, this is surprisingly good timing as far as Chick goes. The tract is also sort of up-to-date in that Jimmy's family is watching the news on a computer monitor. Well, either that or the world's smallest flat-panel TV.
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Date: 2009-01-03 08:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-03 02:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-03 07:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-05 05:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-04 07:05 pm (UTC)since you've been following his opinions for some time (uh, by "following" you know I mean "keeping track of" rather than "modeling oneself after" of course. Just thought I ought to point that out), what is Chick's opinion on the Orthodox churches, seeing how they broke off the Catholic Church way before the Protestants did but are also way less Protestant in typical Protestant practice? Or, even more interesting, what about the non-Roman Catholic sects? Or what about whatever sect that is that Mel Gibson belongs to, the pre-Vatican-II Catholics, who see themselves as MORE ROMAN although they are no longer affiliated with the Pope and all?
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Date: 2009-01-04 08:52 pm (UTC)By the way, don't Coptic Christians have their own Pope, or am I mistaken?