Baptist church ceases to distribute anti-Catholic tracts

By Dan McWilliams

A Baptist church in Pigeon Forge stopped its distribution of an anti-Catholic tract March 5, the same day Bishop Richard F. Stika condemned the action.

The story made its way nationwide via online news sites, blogs, and local- and cable-TV newscasts in just a few days, and both the bishop and Pigeon Forge priest Father Jay Flaherty received praise for their handling of the situation.

A student at Pigeon Forge High School showed a Chick Publications tract titled “The Death Cookie” to a fellow student who is a parishioner of Holy Cross Church in Pigeon Forge. Copies of the tract were being distributed by members of Conner Heights Baptist Church, whose pastor, the Rev. Jonathan Hatcher, at first defended them in early media reports. The 1988 tract, which uses cartoons to claim that the Church was founded by the devil and that Catholics worship a “wafer god,” upset the Catholic student. The student told Father Flaherty about the tract March 3, and the priest contacted Deacon Sean Smith, the diocesan chancellor, that evening.

Deacon Smith in turn told Bishop Stika about the matter. Meanwhile, The Mountain Press in Sevierville on March 3 and WBIR-TV in Knoxville on March 4 had interviewed Father Flaherty. The bishop issued a press release the next morning, and the Rev. Hatcher announced that afternoon that his church would stop distributing the tract.

“As bishop of the Diocese of Knoxville, I wish first to state my deep respect and love for my Protestant brothers and sisters, with whom we acknowledge and worship but one Lord and savior, Jesus Christ—and for all the members of other faiths, with whom we also share certain foundational beliefs,” Bishop Stika said in the release, acknowledging that the diocese works in solidarity with Baptists and those of other faith traditions.

“At this moment, however, I am greatly saddened by the reprehensible acts of prejudice and hatred of a few souls who, out of ignorance of Catholic teachings, have promoted the distribution of anti-Catholic tracts,” the bishop continued. “These tracts contain outright lies and blatant exaggerations.”

The Rev. Hatcher told WBIR that he is “obviously not schooled in the Catholic religion” and studies and preaches from the King James Version of the Bible.

“The rationale one Baptist pastor gave in support of distributing these reprehensible, discriminatory and bigoted tracts was that he was trying to point out the primary difference his church has with Catholics: the belief that a person does not and cannot work his or her way to salvation,” Bishop Stika said in the release. “Unfortunately, this pastor does not have a correct understanding of what the Catholic faith teaches in this regard—and he even admitted as much.”

The bishop went on to explain how the Church defines justification and the doctrine of the Real Presence.

Deacon Smith said, “the thing that was most important to me in our press release was that we had the opportunity to catechize about what the Catholic faith really does teach. I was pleased we could demonstrate our commitment to ecumenism and sharing our faith.”

Bishop Stika said that “this unfortunate act of hatred and prejudice yielded an opportunity to teach the Catholic faith to those who do not have an understanding of our faith.”

In describing his decision to stop distributing the tract, the Rev. Hatcher told The Knoxville News Sentinel that the issue “brought attention I didn’t want. It brought more than I wanted.”

Father Flaherty said his first reaction to the tract was disbelief “that it still goes on.” He said it brought back bad memories of his childhood in Gallatin, a Middle Tennessee town that he said was anti-Catholic during his youth.

“That always makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up straight because I suffered a lot growing up and in high school with anti-Catholic stuff too, so it really got my attention,” he said.

Father Flaherty said the tracts have turned up before at Holy Cross.

“Usually they just put this on our windshields a lot, but they never put a name on them, but this guy did,” he said.

The Holy Cross pastor said he has heard from people from “as far away as Hawaii to Brooklyn, N.Y. I had no idea that this would grow the way it has. People have e-mailed and called from all over the country. My sister called me to say that she had seen it on television in Nashville.

“I’ve gotten a lot of support from the people here, from a local judge, students, several ministers. A Lutheran minister from Gatlinburg came by.”

Deacon Smith said a “tremendous response” has poured into his inbox.

“I have received e-mails from as far away as Canada and from eight different states so far, from Louisiana to Michigan and Massachusetts to California,” he said. “What’s amazing is they’ve all heard about this from various conduits of media, from blog sites and the national news. We’ve had this outpouring of response from people who are absolutely praising the bishop for standing up to this and talking about it.”

Father Flaherty said that “of course, I’ve had the hate mail too,” citing an envelope he received March 8.

“I got six publications in a letter saying that all of us are going to hell—all 1 billion of us are going to hell with Bibles in our hands,” he said.

High school students from Holy Cross “have been harassed since long before this started,” said Father Flaherty, “enough to make them rather tired of it. It’s little sly remarks like, ‘You’re not saved,’ or ‘Why don’t you get saved?’ Or, it’s ‘Catholics believe this’ and ‘Catholics believe that,’ and of course none of it is anywhere near what we believe.”

Father Flaherty said he hopes the response to the tracts leads to one end.

“My biggest thing is I’d like to see Chick Publications put out of business,” he said. “Stop this hate stuff going around all the time.”

Tags: Chick Publications Inc., Chick tract, Jay Flaherty, Pigeon Forge, Richard F. Stika, Sevierville, The Mountain Press