By REY FLORES
This past week the famous, or rather infamous, Jack T. Chick passed away at the age of 92.
Chick, as you may know, is the fundamentalist writer, artist, and publisher of those curious little religious comic-book tracts you have probably found on top of a gumball machine at the grocery store, at the gas pump, or even in a public restroom.
How many of us haven’t been handed one of these silly little tracts by some poor lost soul who truly believes he is trying to save our souls?
Usually when a practicing Catholic hears or reads the name of Jack T. Chick, he is usually repelled by him and his tracts and with good reason.
Catholics and Catholicism were usually derided by Chick in his tracts. He went as far as calling a consecrated Host a “death cookie.” As a matter of fact, one of his tracts was titled The Death Cookie and told the incredibly ludicrous tale about how the Host is all about a conspiracy to dupe people and control them.
This might be one of Chick’s most dangerous tracts, which I hope didn’t cause too many souls to be lost.
It didn’t stop with the “death cookie” with Chick. He also accused Catholics of a Vatican plot that was behind the Holocaust because Catholics are the ones who wanted to kill the Jews.
Chick went after the Blessed Mother, Popes, and priests and also accused the Church of destroying translations of the King James Version of the Bible.
I am curious and would like to hear from readers about how they reacted to the first time they read a Jack Chick tract. My first experience with a Chick tract was during my sophomore year in high school.
After having been hit on by one of my male classmates at a school assembly, I nearly pummeled him and called him all sorts of foul names. I eventually backed off and made it clear to him that I was definitely not interested in his or any other boy’s advances. He walked off more embarrassed than anything else, especially since I deliberately caused a scene meant to humiliate him.
Two days later the same boy came up to me trembling, barely whispered “I’m sorry,” and handed me what I thought was one of the weirdest things I’d ever seen. It was a Chick tract that told a story about a boy who started off viewing pornography and by the end of the story he was in Hell. Before he got to Hell, however, the boy’s interest in pornography eventually led him to experiment with homosexuality.
Here was a kid probably no older than 15 at the time, trying in his own way to let me know he was sorry not only about making an unwelcome advance to me, but that he truly was frightened about his attraction to members of his own gender. Probably still too frightened and confused, the only way he could tell me he was sorry was through a Chick tract.
I never interacted much with him afterward for obvious reasons. I would say hi to him once in a while as we passed each other down the hall, as a gesture of forgiveness that I thought was the decent thing to do. I still pray for that kid sometimes and ask you to add him to your prayer lists as well. God only knows where he is today.
After that experience, I started to notice those little comic-book tracts being left in the weirdest of places. I would often find them left on the seats of buses and trains on the CTA, Chicago’s public transportation system.
Though I was a lapsed Catholic during my teens and twenties, I knew well that Jack Chick tracts were definitely not Catholic. But I was nevertheless fascinated by the illustrations and the funny way they would tell the different tales of people misbehaving, but eventually realizing the errors of their ways.
My favorite one was titled This Was Your Life. It tells the story of a grown adult man, proudly holding a cocktail, pipe in mouth, standing next to his sports car, all prideful and patting himself on the back for his successes, when the specter of death appears behind him.
Each page usually included biblical passages to accompany the illustration. The Scripture accompanying this page was from Luke 12:10 “. . . And I will say to my soul thou hast much goods laid up for many years, take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry.”
When the grim reaper shows up, the Scripture verse says, “But God said unto him, thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee” (Luke 12:20).
The next page shows the guy having a heart attack and dropping dead. A funeral follows with a burial, then we see a picture of the man’s soul rising out of his dead body from the coffin in the ground. An angel takes him up to the heavens and tells him that he has an appointment with God.
In Chick’s world, God is a giant bald and faceless figure sitting on an unadorned throne. This is where our main character faces judgment, and in this particular tract, judgment is based on a movie of the man’s life presented to him on a huge movie theater-like screen.
Quickly remembering some of the more sordid thoughts, words, and actions of his life, the man is in fear before this faceless God, knowing that “everything has been recorded.” The movie shows the man as a baby, telling filthy jokes as a teenager, leering at women, to a host of other improprieties and sinful behavior.
This is one facet I liked about Chick’s illustrations: The man’s numerous misdeeds are drawn on one page with multiple faces the man made during his life, faces which represent the words right next to them like “lies,” “theft,” “deceit,” “hypocrisy,” “envy,” “pride,” as well as “false accuser,” “whoremonger,” and “disobedient to parents.” The largest representation of the man in this same page shows him looking all worried and asking, “Why didn’t someone warn me about all this?”
The movie further shows him attending a religious worship service, yet not paying any attention to the preacher, and then he is seen in the heavens, naked and on his knees repenting before God Almighty where the Lord asks the angel if the man’s name is in “The Book of Life.” The angel’s response is of course negative, leading the man to a set of stairs going downward.
The rest of the tract shows how the man, if he had changed his ways and been a Godly man, even when struck with a fatal heart attack, would show no fear, but know well that he would be coming home to our Lord Jesus. “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints” (Psalms 116:15).
The bottom line is Jack Chick tracts may have been a source of entertainment, mockery, and derision for me, but they are also very dangerous in the wrong hands. Children and impressionable adults should never, ever read these tracts.
Since Chick did pass away last week, I finally had a reason to write the column I always wanted to write about him. I hope he repented at his last moments and realized the one true Church was his only salvation.
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(Rey Flores will be the guest speaker for the Catholic Citizens of Illinois monthly Forum Luncheon on Friday, November 11, 2016 in Chicago. Visit CatholicCitizens.org for tickets. Contact Rey at reyfloresusa@gmail.com.)
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