The Conversation: Why Coren is Right

By Michael Coren

May 1, 2012

Michael Coren's high-powered media career includes writing best-sellers and fighting for Christianity.

MC: I think that for the Western world, race was irrelevant quite a long time ago, and in the United States it still has a certain dynamic because of the heritage of slavery How hard was it convincing the powers that be at Sun News that this kind of show was needed and the time was right for it? It was a long time ago now, but I remember at one point during that interview, I said, 'Should we turn the tape recorder off ?' And he said, 'No, no, no, that's fine C: Coming back to Why Catholics Are Right, there's an interesting polarity to that book because the title, which you and I have had a conversation about I don't want to sound too precious here, but my God, just today I got an e-mail from a teacher, a Catholic teacher in Ontario—you know what they're going through—and he said, 'I'm a religion teacher and pretty much every day I read bits of your book to my class and they love it Convivium: You've got so much going on, Michael—your TV program, your columns and now your second book in a year, right? How has Why Catholics Are Right done since 2011? MC: If people don't actually look at your work, then what's the point of it? I've just been commissioned to do another book, the third in this series I think it would be very, very unlikely that would ever happen I mean the idea that bad things happen to good people, when you think about it, is such a basic misunderstanding of God Your family was Jewish, and then you became a Catholic, and then you lost faith in institutional Rome, if not in the broader Christian Church, and after a period away have now come back to Rome Christians have never said that bad things won't happen to good people I'm not going to blame anyone for that, because people have gone through far worse and remained faithful Catholics, but there were issues that just pushed me away from the Church And even worse, good things happen to bad people, which is a real pain in the ass, isn't it? And there's a full chapter on The Da Vinci Code, showing how absurd it is I was given a story that a priest went to visit the Archbishop and came out crying, actually burst into tears because he had been treated so harshly [by Ambrozic], which I thought was extraordinary There may be the occasional new observation and interpretation for people who really know this stuff, but for the most part, it's just meant to give backing to those Catholics who do believe, but just need a bit of intellectual firebrand substance to make the odd argument and reassure themselves I kept coming across teachers and educational leaders and priests as well who were obviously homosexual, and this was quite shocking to me, and others would say, 'No, no, surely not' and I would say, 'Well, I think it's pretty obvious,' and there were issues, there were problems—remember, this was the midto late-'80s—and a combination of factors just pushed me away for a while

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