Catholic Funnies
Continuing with the religious kick I appear to be on...
Before I was a psychedelic Christian, I was Catholic, and if there was one thing the church knew how to do, it was how to produce cool comic-book propaganda that attempted to explain the ostensible purpose behind all of the weird rituals us kids had to endure in order to prevent us from being sent to Purgatory, or Limbo, or the Phantom Unitarian Zone should we die suddenly without having performed them. Our Sunday-school teacher used to hand out copies of Treasure Chest of Fun and Fact and we'd read them cover-to-cover because anything was more interesting than having to practice reciting the Apostle's Creed or learning the Stations of the Cross.
Another fine link from BtROL
Comments
Man! I never got any comic books when I was raised Catholic. Those are actually quite entertaining. I guess they didn't have them out here in the California Catholic churches. But we had groovy folk masses and got to sing Kumbaya to the accompaniment of an acoustic guitar.
Posted by: Kimberly | July 9, 2005 12:46 PM
The groovy folk mass! Yeah, that takes me back. The older priests hated it. I have an uncle who's a priest and an aunt who's a nun; they were both pretty swingin' papist cats back in the '60s.
You know what's really weird? The only time that I ever attended Catholic mass on a regular basis was when I lived with my parents in Iran and Kuwait, surrounded by muslims. When we moved back to the US around '67, we stopped going.
Posted by: MrBaliHai | July 9, 2005 2:22 PM
And by the way, I keep reading the title of that comic as "God's Gift Is Lint", which makes me think of priests checking their navels for a present from the Almighty.
Posted by: MrBaliHai | July 9, 2005 5:13 PM
"Young Johnny rummaged through his pockets constantly, looking for a gift from God."
Posted by: rone | July 10, 2005 12:56 AM
Attribution, dammit!
Posted by: MrBaliHai | July 10, 2005 10:18 AM
When do you have to give God his gift back?
This is fun. It's the kind of thing Jack Chick would have cranked out if he'd been born Catholic. (my Church-of-the-Nazarene-raised Uncle Bill married a Catholic girl and wound up as an editor at Our Sunday Visitor, but unfortunately, to all external appearances, he was fairly devoid of a sense of humor.)
It's not as wacky, though, as the Padre Pio tracts my brother's mother-in-law inserts in her Christmas cards.
Posted by: xfrosch | July 10, 2005 1:34 PM
My aunt is a Mel Gibson-style Catholic (latin mass only, Vatican II is heresy, etc.) and still sends me holy cards which I think are pretty cool, just from a secular artistic standpoint. As for Padre Pio, I was on a reliquary kick a few years ago, so I sent away for a free, 3rd-class relic and received a little piece of cloth that'd been touched to his coffin.
You know, I wonder if these comic books had ads in them? Instead of sending away for X-ray Specs and Sea Monkeys, Catholic kids could order "$1.98 Papal Miter with Built-in Holy Water Squirt Gun" and ads featuring Super Vatican Man pitching "Hostess Communion Snack Wafers".
Posted by: MrBaliHai | July 10, 2005 2:55 PM