Knoxville bishop says anti-Catholic tracts "reprehensible"

Calling upon the goals and beliefs his church shares with Baptists, Roman Catholic Diocese of Knoxville Bishop Richard Stika is calling anti-Catholic tracts distributed by a Pigeon Forge church "reprehensible" and containing "outright lies and blatant exaggerations."
The tracts drew public attention after a member of Conner Heights Baptist Church distributed them at Pigeon Forge High School. Despite admitting he knew little about the Catholic Faith, Conner Heighs Baptist Pastor Jonathan Hatcher felt confident that publisher Chick Publications was spreading the gospel.
Bishop Stika said the characterization of Catholicism is simply inaccurate--and "hateful, discriminatory, and full of prejudice and bigotry."
In a written statement, Stika clarified some differences in doctrinal belief between Catholicism and what many Baptist churches believe. But ultimately, he stressed the similarity between the faiths and common goals.
"As bishop of the Diocese of Knoxville, I pray that all Christian pastors will develop a spirituality of ecumenism, with a willingness to explore with other Christians the common beliefs of our Christianity-primarily our belief in the one Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ-rather than focus on our differences."
You can read Stika's full statement in the sidebar to the right on this story, on wbir.com.

Previous: Baptist pastor stands by anti-Catholic booklets passed out at local high school
A Pigeon Forge baptist church is drawing attention after one of its members passed out anti-Catholic literature at school.
One of the teens who received the tract at Pigeon Forge High School attends Holy Cross Catholic Church just down the street.
"This girl came up to her and said, 'This will make you very mad,'" said Holy Cross Catholic Church Pastor Father Jay Flaherty.
One of the booklets is titled "The Death Cookie".
"It says that our eucharist is of the devil," Father Flaherty said.
In it, cartoon caricatures of the devil and the pope make an agrement to take over the world with a eucharistic wafer.
"It irritates me that in today's age, with the tolerance we're learning, that this stuff still exists," Father Flaherty said. "The reason they do this is they believe what these things say. They're trying to save Catholic souls. They feel and believe we are devil worshippers and that are souls are lost because we don't see the Christ that they see. It's just ignorance."
On the back of the tracts, a stamp reads "Compliments of Conner Heights Baptist Church."
The church's pastor stands by the literature, saying it helps spread the Gospel, which he says he's called to do.
"It's what saved my life. Why would I not want to share it if I believe it's the right way to go?" said Conner Heights Pastor Jonathan Hatcher.
Pastor Hatcher says he's not trying to target Catholics specifically, just the belief that the eucharist will save one's soul.
In fact, he says he doesn't even really know much about the Catholic faith.
"I'm obviously not schooled in the Catholic religion, I've not read the Catholic canons. I study the King James Bible and that's what I preach from, what I study from," Pastor Hatcher said.
When asked if he's concerned about passing out literature targetting a religion about which he admits he doesn't know much, Pastor Hatcher says he trusts the publishers of the material.
"The people who distribute these tracts, or put them on the market, say they are schooled in it," Pastor Hatcher said. "Our goal is not to spread not to start violence, not to spread hatred, but to share the Gospel."
However, not all baptist leaders say the tracts spread the Gospel.
First Baptist Church Pigeon Forge Student Pastor David Huskey says the literature is divisive and hopes the theological conflict can be worked out, especially since the two churches are neighbors.
"One way we can honor God is to spend less time focusing on our differences and pointing people to how great God is," Huskey said. "My prayer is that this [conflict] doesn't give people outside the church another reason to say, 'That's why I don't go to church'."
http://www.wbir.com/news/watercooler/st ... &catid=141

"Hateful, discriminatory, and full of prejudice?"

LOL, it's amazing the effect a little Chick tract can have on people. I guess Bishop Stika should qualify as an authority on "hateful, discriminatory, and prejudiced" behavior, considering how many people the Catholic Church bludgeoned, burned and butchered in 500 years of their Inquisitions...

"The officers of the Inquisition, preceded by trumpets, kettledrums, and their banner, marched on the thirtieth of May, in cavalcade, to the palace of the great square, where they declared by proclamation, that, on the thirtieth of June, the sentence of the prisoners would be put in execution.

Of these prisoners, twenty men and women, with one renegade Mahometan, were ordered to be burned; fifty Jews and Jewesses, having never before been imprisoned, and repenting of their crimes, were sentenced to a long confinement, and to wear a yellow cap. The whole court of Spain was present on this occasion. The grand inquisitor's chair was placed in a sort of tribunal far above that of the king.

Among those who were to suffer, was a young Jewess of exquisite beauty, and but seventeen years of age. Being on the same side of the scaffold where the queen was seated, she addressed her, in hopes of obtaining a pardon, in the following pathetic speech: "Great queen, will not your royal presence be of some service to me in my miserable condition? Have regard to my youth; and, oh! consider, that I am about to die for professing a religion imbibed from my earliest infancy!" Her majesty seemed greatly to pity her distress, but turned away her eyes, as she did not dare to speak a word in behalf of a person who had been declared a heretic.

Now Mass began, in the midst of which the priest came from the altar, placed himself near the scaffold, and seated himself in a chair prepared for that purpose. The chief inquisitor then descended from the amphitheater, dressed in his cope, and having a miter on his head... The Mass was begun about twelve at noon, and did not end until nine in the evening...

After this followed the burnings of the twenty-one men and women, whose intrepidity in suffering that horrid death was truly astonishing. The king's near situation to the criminals rendered their dying groans very audible to him; he could not, however, be absent from this dreadful scene, as it is esteemed a religious one; and his coronation oath obliged him to give a sanction by his presence to all the acts of the tribunal...

At the first time of torturing, six executioners entered, stripped him naked to his drawers, and laid him upon his back on a kind of stand, elevated a few feet from the floor. The operation commenced by putting an iron collar round his neck, and a ring to each foot, which fastened him to the stand. His limbs being thus stretched out, they wound two ropes round each thigh; which ropes being passed under the scaffold, through holes made for that purpose, were all drawn tight at the same instant of time, by four of the men, on a given signal.

It is easy to conceive that the pains which immediately succeeded were intolerable; the ropes, which were of a small size, cut through the prisoner's flesh to the bone, making the blood to gush out at eight different places thus bound at a time. As the prisoner persisted in not making any confession of what the inquisitors required, the ropes were drawn in this manner four times successively.

The manner of inflicting the second torture was as follows: they forced his arms backwards so that the palms of his hands were turned outward behind him; when, by means of a rope that fastened them together at the wrists, and which was turned by an engine, they drew them by degrees nearer each other, in such a manner that the back of each hand touched, and stood exactly parallel to each other. In consequence of this violent contortion, both his shoulders became dislocated, and a considerable quantity of blood issued from his mouth. This torture was repeated thrice; after which he was again taken to the dungeon, and the surgeon set the dislocated bones.

Two months after the second torture, the prisoner being a little recovered, was again ordered to the torture room, and there, for the last time, made to undergo another kind of punishment, which was inflicted twice without any intermission. The executioners fastened a thick iron chain round his body, which crossing at the breast, terminated at the wrists. They then placed him with his back against a thick board, at each extremity whereof was a pulley, through which there ran a rope that caught the end of the chain at his wrists. The executioner then, stretching the end of his rope by means of a roller, placed at a distance behind him, pressed or bruised his stomach in proportion as the ends of the chains were drawn tighter. They tortured him in this manner to such a degree, that his wrists, as well as his shoulders, were quite dislocated. They were, however, soon set by the surgeons; but the barbarians, not yet satisfied with this species of cruelty, made him immediately undergo the like torture a second time, which he sustained (though, if possible, attended with keener pains,) with equal constancy and resolution. After this, he was again remanded to the dungeon, attended by the surgeon to dress his bruises and adjust the part dislocated, and here he continued until their auto da fe, or jail delivery, when he was discharged, crippled and diseased for life."
From Fox's Book of Martyrs, Chapter 5:
http://www.jesus-is-lord.com/inquis1.htm

Here is "The Death Cookie" in case anyone missed it...
http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0074/0074_01.asp