Thank you for the "Tweet"; it will drive many readers to my site and I am sure that it will result in a lot of hate mail.
As I wrote to TH2, I've long resisted commenting on this because of our friendship and fraternity. However, my conscience can no longer allow it. It is one thing to have a private opinion and dissent on the truth, it is quite another to make it public and at the same time continue to attest to be Catholic. Your latest column directly contradicts the Catechism of the Catholic Church. You have determined that you have a right to publicly dissent and I have a right, as do others in your parish, to call you out with fraternal correction.
Taking advantage of goodwill
It boggles my mind how you could write the books which you have and take the funds of charities to speak at our meetings ( as you have with the one in which I am President ) and then turn around and create a public scandal and distort the teachings of the Church. You have made money on Catholics and now that your public writing and broadcasting has caused the cancellation of appearances, you lash out. What did you expect?Saul Alinsky tactics
You can opine that because one wishes to follow the true teachings of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church and its Catechism they must be hateful but that is a lie and you, my erudite friend, know this. I hate no individual and criticism of your public scandal does not equate with the "haters coming out" as you so arrogantly state the Arena and in social media. You are using Alinsky's tactics and you should know better.You've chastised people in your own parish because they've actually had the temerity to disagree with you, whilst agreeing with the Church. You silence those who disagree with you and insult them publicly in response on social media.
The difference is you are a Catholic and profit from it!
If you were a protestant, atheist or secularist and undertook what you've done in the last few months, I would disagree with you but I would ignore you and what you've written, but this is not the case. You are a Catholic and have made that well known. You have created a public scandal in its truest definition and it deserves a public response. You have earned money off of Catholics and their charities and you have taken a public position opposed to Catholic beliefs.The link with the murder of Emanuel Jacques is, in fact, very relevant in the larger picture; just as the abuse of boys by priests that were ebophiles and pederasts is relevant. It is all part of the whole realm of a loss of the sense of sin and the reality of evil. The "acceptance" of so-called, same-sex marriage, the public displays of nudity, the endorsement of that which is against the Church is a grave matter for a Catholic. You have chosen a wrong road.
You simply cannot expect Catholics to sit by and say nothing, whilst you distort teaching and make money on us.
Michael, your friends care about you and regret that you have taken such a public position over the last few months that is distorting the Church's teaching. People are keeping you and your family in prayer.
Be well my friend,
Vox
Michael Coren
This is the sort of thing I face. Someone using the murder of a child to attack my views on gay people:
http://voxcantor.blogspot.ca/2014/06/the-scandalising-of-little-ones.html … #pride2014
- @michaelcoren Apparently they forgot that Jesus also taught forgiveness, mercy, love, above laws. There are no levels to sin.
- @michaelcoren one event to stereotype an entire segment of society?! Why do they care how others live. I guess they are perfect
- @michaelcoren No worries, Michael. Religious fanaticism and hateful intolerance plague all faiths. Reasoning with them is pointless.
Darren 
Mark Ferro 
Dave Dawkins 
4 comments:
Outstanding post, Vox.
As obnoxiously wrong-headed as he is on this matter, I do have some sympathy for Mr. Coren's plight. The modern mass-media pundit is a brand: a purveyor of reliable opinions delivered with a reliable attitude. Show bookers ask Mr. Coren to appear because they calculate that his brand--"fearless, contrarian, tell-it-like-it-is conservative"--will deliver an audience for their advertisers. In that sense, the mass-media pundit is like Starbucks or McDonalds: you know precisely what you're going to get each time.
This situation imposes certain incentives on Mr. Coren and colleagues: In order to remain attractive to bookers, they have to maintain their "brand" personae, and they can't stray too far from mass-market acceptability. (The Catholic media alone is far too small a pond for a big fish like Mr. Coren: his career depends on access to big newspapers and network TV programs.)
For a liberal or middle-of-the-road pundit (i.e. most of them), it's dead easy to stay inside the window of acceptability--just take your cues from the Globe, the Star, or the CBC. But the contrarian pundit lives out close to the edge of acceptability, and must constantly re-evaluate his positions in order to stay relevant and keep his career motoring along.
Given the hyper-acceleration of the TLBG agenda in recent times, and the mob justice exacted against dissenters both low and high, Coren faced a stark choice: honestly and charitably present the true Catholic position on same-sex behaviour ... and risk being exiled to the little pond of the Catholic media ghetto. Or "evolve" his way to approval of the Great Moral Crusade of Our Day, while loudly pretending to be the beleaguered voice of Catholic orthodoxy against the h8ers.
The one place that orthodox Catholics have any leverage is with conservative Catholic media outlets which occasionally invite Coren on: EWTN, Catholic Answers, both Registers, etc. Send them links to his column and FB posts, and politely ask them if they wish to be associated with a Catholic commentator who displays such puppylike eagerness to disavow Church teaching. These outfits are wobbly in many respects, but they're nowhere near as far gone as Coren. Not yet, anyway.
Coren: to paraphrase Tony Hancock: dishonoured, but not ruined. Good luck to him.
This guy will not get that it really isn't about gays but rather about Coren himself. If he hadn't publicly trashed Teresa Pierre and PAFE we would not have posted about him at all. Using a TV show to dump on your friends is really tacky. A well known Catholic commentator who casts doubt about part of the catechism is a serious thing.
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