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Tom Friess
Inquisition Update
This ridiculous article appeared in our local newspaper attacking Jack Chick, and bible-believing Baptists for passing out gospel tracts exposing Roman Catholicism. Mr. Maricondo is the type of narrow-minded Catholic who would like to see freedom of speech censored.
This article is available at: http://articles.lancasteronline.com/local/4/251755
I wanted to make this video to show what has happened since the article against Chick tracts appeared in our local newspaper. The radical Catholic Roy Maricondo, sent an unadressed letter to my father and pretended that he was someone else writing in defense of Roy Maricondo.
Church takes its stamp off controversial tract
Passed out in Ephrata area, it mocks Catholics. Publisher is tracked as hate group.
Roy Maricondo holds anti-Catholic pamphlets at his home in Akron.
By JON RUTTER
Staff Writer
Staff Writer
Roy Maricondo has strong opinions.
He's a supporter of Israel, according to one of the many letters he's written to local newspapers over the years.
Against same-sex marriage. Underwhelmed by President Obama.
Pro-Catholic.
Now, the 68-year-old Akron man is incensed by the appearance of fundamentalist Protestant pamphlets blasting his religion.
Maricondo said he first got hot under the collar back in May 2008, when someone slid a Chick Publications tract under the windshield wiper of his car while he was attending Mass at Our Mother of Perpetual Help Roman Catholic Church in Ephrata.
That pamphlet, published in California and featuring cartoon panels, mocked Catholic beliefs and claimed that Catholics are not Christians.
Then, a couple of weeks ago, Maricondo was shopping at the Kmart store in Ephrata when he came across another Chick pamphlet left on a bench.
The more recent broadside was titled "Papa?" and asserted that Satan enabled the pope to take control over the United Nations and the world's finances. An address on the pamphlet identified the source as Liberty Baptist Church, Ephrata.
Maricondo said he left a phone message with Liberty Pastor Guy Mosebrook but did not speak with him.
"I was ticked," Maricondo said. "The second booklet really got to me."
Mosebrook termed Maricondo's message "very rude" and "profane" but said he was inclined to let it blow over until a reporter contacted him.
Then, Mosebrook said, he had Ephrata police listen to the recording. He is not taking any other action, he added, except to cease distribution of "Papa?" and stop putting the church's name on other tracts.
"I really don't want to get into a battle with [Maricondo] at all," Mosebrook said.
Chick materials have surfaced periodically over many years, according to an office worker at Maricondo's church. But she said they're usually distributed anonymously.
Joe Aponick, a spokesman for the Diocese of Harrisburg, said he has heard no complaints about Chick tracts recently.
The publishing house's work will show up again, predicted Mark Potok, who tracks hate groups for the nonprofit Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala.
"Their attacks on the Catholic Church essentially never end."
Saving his soul
SPLC classifies Chick Publications as a hate group.
One of the claims made in the Chick oeuvre is that the Catholic Church backed the Ku Klux Klan, according to Potok, who said such assertions are nonsensical, considering that the 1920s KKK movement was based on anti-Catholic hatred.
Chick was founded in 1961 by born-again cartoonist Jack T. Chick. The company sells its ware worldwide and defines itself as a "ministry" on its website.
The website claims that Chick loves Catholics but opposes Catholicism because it is "unscriptural."
Chick's secretary, Karen Rockney, said he scrutinizes biblical teachings and then checks to see if various churches are following them.
"If they don't line up with Scripture," she said, "he writes a tract. It's all biblical-based."
Mosebrook, an occasional religion column contributor to The Ephrata Review, a sister publication of the Sunday News, said an elderly member of his congregation distributed the "Papa?" tract. The pastor added that he gave his OK to put the Liberty Baptist stamp on the pamphlet.
"We believe that the Catholic Church is responsible for a lot of problems in the world," Mosebrook said. However, he noted, "I do not have a thing against any Catholic person."
While much of the dispute seems to be over doctrine, "Papa?" makes a passing reference to the priest sex abuse scandal rocking the Catholic Church.
Another Chick tract caused a stir last month in Tennessee when Diocese of Knoxville Bishop Richard F. Stika denounced a pamphlet called "The Death Cookie" as bigoted and discriminatory.
"The Death Cookie" refers to the Catholic sacrament of Holy Eucharist.
Pastor Jonathan Hatcher said his Baptist church in Pigeon Forge, Tenn., would stop handing out "The Death Cookie" because it caused too much negative attention, according to the Knoxville News Sentinel.
Aponick called the appearance of Chick pamphlets here "unfortunate." Whenever such propaganda pops up, he said, "It is then incumbent on the church to tell the real story to combat these malicious falsehoods."
Andrea Ostrowski, also a parishioner at Our Mother of Perpetual Help, said she has seen Chick Publications, though not recently.
"They're incredibly offensive" and "ignorant," she said.
But their message is not coming from the Protestant mainstream, said Maricondo, who added that he has Protestant friends. "They don't go, you know, 'I'd like you better if you were Protestant.' "
Still, the outspoken ex-New Yorker said he's perplexed by the outrageousness of the tracts.
"Listen," he joked, "I feel a lot better now that the pope has taken over the United Nations" and dominated world governments. "Now we have all the money. I'm waiting for my rebate check from the church."
His emotional reaction to the pamphlets was not just Catholic defensiveness, he added; he gets steamed when any religion is denigrated.
Contributing to Maricondo's ire in recent months was yet another anti-Catholic pamphlet attached to doorknobs in his apartment building; he said he can't remember which northern Lancaster County church distributed it or whether it originated with Chick.
"Pray the way you want to pray," Maricondo would tell attackers of his religion, but "leave us alone. I got to worry about my own soul."
Jon Rutter is a staff writer for the Sunday News. His e-mail address is jrutter@lnpnews.com
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