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March 13, 2004 My Conversation With Jack Chick . . . . . . is now online. See here. March 12, 2004 A couple of updates on Jack Chick: 1) I hadn't realized, but the Catholic Answers Special Report that I wrote on Chick Tracts is online. (This isn't the same as the article on my meeting with Chick. I'll get that online soon.) 2) I finally found a copy of Jack Chick's high school yearbook photo. This is a photo that I knew existed (one of two) but that I couldn't find a copy of. Here is the original courtesy of the Jack T. Chick Museum of Fine Art:
Now here's a comparison of how Chick looked back about 1942 with how he looks today:
I was pretty pleased at how the drawing I did came out. It shows the same wide mouth, prominent cheek bones, and broad forehead that struck me when I met Chick. There are signs of aging (of course!), and his eyes look larger when he is wearing his glasses (which he doesn't all the time; he had them both on and off during our meeting), but it came out pretty nicely.
I wanted to thank everybody who prayed for my BBC interview. I know it
helped.
The interview went very well. I think that the people were a little
opposed to the movie when I showed up, but after talking through their
concerns I thought I sensed them warming up on the subject. We were also
able to establish a rapport as a group, and I cracked them up a number of
times (off camera).
I was surprised how long the interview took. They only had one camera but wanted to create the illusion of having more than one, so we basically did the whole interview three different times with different camera angles (that's besides the pre-interview the reporter did with me before we started taping), plus some additional coverage footage of me or the host talking. The whole thing took over two hours. What they actually broadcast will be distilled down from that. All of this for what is supposed to be a 5-7 minute segment on the BBC's Heaven and Earth Show. I wonder how long it would have taken if they wanted a full hour! Close Encounters of the Weird Kind A reader writes:
Thanks. Meeting Jack Chick was a truly surreal experience. I hope folks will check out the article on it in This Rock (it will also be put on the Web . . . eventually). Chick's film, The Light of the World, is a standard presentation of the gospel as Chick understands it (with a few dashes of anti-Catholicism thrown in). I have a standing invite to review it for DecentFilms.Com,and I'll post a link here when it gets done. Incidentally, since Chick is such a recluse that he doesn't let his picture be taken, I realized that I am now one of the few people who knows what he looks like. As a result, I decided to draw a picture of him--comic book style, of course! Here 'tis:
March 10, 2004 A reader writes:
I would say that "inveighs" is too strong a term, especially when one is speaking of "any attempt to practice penance on the Lord's Day" (see below on Sundays as days of penance). I also would say that "demands" is too strong a term for what the reading from Nehemiah is doing regarding our dispositions. The disposition described in Nehemiah is applicable to a particular historical situation, and the Liturgy of the Hours holds it up to us as something to be emulated to the extent our situation mirrors the one in which it was demanded--a mirroring which is only partial. I would say, however, that the nature of Sunday as the day of commemorating the Resurrection of Our Lord makes it reasonable and even suitable to modify penitential practices on that day. It is certainly more reasonable to lessen penitential practices on Sunday than it would be, for example, on Monday. So if you are going to lighten up on yourself on a weekday of Lent, that would be the day to do it. However, Sundays remain days of penance, and if someone chooses to continue their Lenten penitential practice on Sundays while still celebrating it the way that the Church envisions it according to law, I cannot fault the person. I'm not going to tell someone who has decided to give up ice cream and television for Lent that they must plop themselves down in front of the tube with a bowl of Haagen-Dazs. A reader writes:
I appreciate the effort and ingenuity involved in this solution, but it does not appear to correspond to the Church's law. It is true that "if you're skipping Sundays (dealt with in another post), you could say that there are 40 penitential days between Ash Wednesday and Easter," but one would be making up one's own rules to get this total. The Church's law is different on this point. According to the Code of Canon Law:
The limits of the season of Lent are defined as follows:
This means, as we saw below, that Lent includes forty four days of penance. If you want to have the number of "penitential days between Ash Wednesday and Easter," then the total will be forty five because Good Friday is also a day of penance under Canon 1250. (Holy Saturday, while it is a day on which fasting is recommended, is not technically a days of penance in the law.) A reader writes:
It is true, poetically speaking, that "Lent is a time of following the Lord's 40 days and 40 nights in the desert; a time of self-denial and penance, leading to new life at Easter." However, the Church's law does not appear to support the claim that "The point of this time period is to spend 40 days in spiritual discipline . . . before Easter." As noted above, there are more than forty penitential days in this period, and penitential days are days of spiritual discipline. I don't think that the Church would regard any particular number of days as "the point," but it has established more than forty in this period. It is true that "If you count from Ash Wednesday to Holy Saturday (inclusive), but excluding Sundays, you arrive at 40," but this does not correspond to the Church's law. One can say that "Counting in this fashion is yet another support to the notion that Sundays, though certainly within the season of Lent, are not observed as days of penance, but rather days of celebrating the Lord's Day," but this posits a false opposition between Sunday being a day of celebration and Sunday being a day of penance. It can be, and during Lent is, both. The Church's law is clear that Sundays in Lent both involve the celebration of the Resurrection and the practice of penitence. The penitential practice of the Church is even reflected in the liturgy on Sundays of Lent, as illustrated by the fact that the Gloria and the Alleluia are omitted, purple vestments are worn, and special readings (e.g., this coming Sunday is the "unless you repent you also will perish" passage). It's also worth noting that, as the General Instruction provides, "Rose may be used, where it is the practice, on Gaudete Sunday (Third Sunday of Advent) and on Laetare Sunday (Fourth Sunday of Lent)" (GIRM 346f). The standard interpretation of the use of rose vestments on Laetare Sunday is that it is a lessening of the penance that is already in place. The decisive fact, though, is simply that the law (quoted above) provides that "The penitential days and times in the universal Church are every Friday of the whole year and the season of Lent." It doesn't say "except Sundays." Hope this helps! Gotta drive up to Santa Monica to talk to the BBC about The Passion. Say a prayer for me if you think of it! I'll let you know how it goes. March 9, 2004 A correspondent writes:
Since giving up something for Lent (or doing extra penitential practices
beyond abstinence on Fridays and fast and abstinence on Ash Wednesday and
Good Friday) is voluntary, you can decide for yourself whether you want to
do something on Sundays. Many people do not do any penances on Sunday as a
way of celebrating Our Lord's Resurrection. Are Sundays part of Lent? This question often arises because of the custom (mentioned in Part I) of many people giving themselves a break from penance on Sundays in Lent. The answer is yes, Sundays are part of Lent. Here is the definition of Lent from the General Norms for the Liturgical Year and the Calendar:
There's nothing in that about Sundays not counting, so Sundays are indeed part of Lent. How many days are there in Lent? Let's count! Every year this question comes up. People hear about Lent being forty days long, but when they look at a calendar this clearly isn't the case. Since we've just quoted the official definition of the start and stop of Lent, let's look at a calendar and count up the days. Here is the whole of Lent for 2004:
In this calendar, the days of Lent are counted in red. As you can see, there are forty four of them, counting Holy Thursday as one of the days (technically, only the part of Holy Thursday before the beginning of the Mass of the Lord's Supper is Lent; once the Mass of the Lord's Supper begins the season becomes Triduum). Now a couple of notes:
So there you have it. Lent under current law is more than forty days long. The number forty is thus to be taken as approximate, not literal. If you want to read more about how Lent and its "forty days" evolved, see here. (One last note: Some have noted that there are forty days up to and including Palm Sunday. Whether that is the reason Lent is said to have forty days is ambiguous; the article linked gives a much more complicated history. In any event, since the days after Palm Sunday are now part of Lent, the season now has more than forty days regardless of how the number originated). March 8, 2004 A correspondent writes:
Thank you for writing and for your kind words.
It sounds as if you may be suffering from
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
(OCD), which is a very common anxiety disorder, estimated to affect
perhaps one in forty people.
Because it is so common, and because the thoughts it generates can be so
troubling to people, I am often contacted by people who have this
condition, and I've read up on it. In persons of faith, OCD tends to cause
scrupulosity, being constantly afraid that one is in a state of mortal sin
because of the thoughts. However, be assured that the thoughts OCD
generates are not sins. We do not have much control over the
thoughts that occur to us, and people who have OCD have a quirk in their
brain chemistry that makes them more susceptible to such thoughts than
others. As you point out, these are not things that you would actually do.
They are therefore what psychologists term
ego dystonic
thoughts, contrary to one's beliefs and values. As a result, there is not
the kind of cooperation of the will needed to make them sinful. In fact,
you should not confess these thoughts in the confessional, as focusing on
them will tend to reinforce them and exacerbate the condition. You should
simply do your best to ignore them. The more you can relax and ignore
them, the better you will get.
I don't know if you have yet engaged in a course of treatment for the
condition, but I should mention that OCD is very treatable. It appears
related to a deficiency of the neurotransmitter serotonin in the brain,
and there is a class of drugs known as
selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) that effectively
increase the amount of serotonin in the brain and bring a great deal of
relief to people with this condition. Also, certain nutritional
supplements that can increase serotonin levels (e.g.,
5-HTP) may help, though these should not be used if one is already on
SSRIs without a doctor's supervision. If you would like to read more about
nutritional supplements that might help, I recommend the book
Dr. Atkins Vita-Nutrient Solution, by Dr. Robert Atkins in addition to
the 5-HTP book already linked.
Hope this helps, and God bless you!
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