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).
Code:
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).
The Last Rites and the death Cookie then come back and give me your thoughts
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.
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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]
**http://www.catholic.com/images/Image34.gif
****From *Man in Black***
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.
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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.
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]
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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.
Cont’d
post is worth another reading.
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