Free Republic

Michael Coren didn't have to be Catholic. Actually, he's had several opportunities to walk away from the enterprise altogether. Born to a Jewish cab driver in Essex, England, in January 1959, he became a Roman Catholic in his 20s while still living in the U.K. After moving to Canada in the late '80s, he abandoned the Catholic Church for evangelical Christianity. A journalist and author known for his bruising honesty, sharp wit, and often provocative style, Coren continued to have a strained relationship with Rome, even though he was married to a cradle Catholic and was raising his children...

Spare us from the God-haters By MICHAEL COREN Toronto Sun July 22, 2006 In West Virginia local activists are trying to remove a picture of Jesus that has hung on the wall of a local school for many years. Various so-called civil liberties groups claim that such a portrait is an infringement of basic human rights. Elsewhere in the United States assorted opponents of organized religion have been fighting for decades to ban prayer in schools, to force teachers to take down copies of The Ten Commandments from classrooms and to eliminate all mentions of God from public halls...

Ben Affleck changed the world this week. No, of course I don't mean that a tedious movie star actually changed international events. I mean that he personifies why George Bush and the Republicans won the election. They won because Middle America bit back. Simple as that. Middle America bit back. The abused, the marginalized and the mocked decided that they had had enough. Those taken for granted, those patronized, those treated with disdain voted to no longer play the silent victim. For months a daft coalition of the extremely willing played their guitars, sang their songs and read their Hollywood...

It is somewhat ironic to see Dan Brown, author of The Da Vinci Code, sitting in a British court and defending himself against charges of plagiarism by the writers of a previous book about the Holy Grail. Ironic because both books are utter nonsense. Brown's defence against plagiarism is that his work is original. His defence against writing rubbish is that his book is fiction and he doesn't claim to be a historian. Problem is, that's not entirely true. Brown includes a "fact" section and slips in references to various non-fiction works throughout his book. As flawed as these...

Anyone who believes that opponents of Muslim extremism are necessarily defenders of tolerance should see my e-mails from last week. I strongly condemned the violent reaction of many in the Islamic world to the now-notorious cartoons of Mohammed printed in a Danish newspaper, but also stressed that the cartoons were wrong, that Muslims had a case and that as a Christian I have little in common with western secularism. There was much support, but to hundreds of others I was either an idiot or a liar. How ironic that alleged defenders of free speech should abuse a journalist for, well,...

Last week I wrote that the riots in France were more about the culture of 50 Cent than bin Laden and that to blame the violence solely on Islam was a gross misreading of the situation. The neo-con web world had a fit, reminding me that when it comes to abuse and stupidity the right and the left are similarly gifted. In fact, neo-conservatives increasingly resemble the left in their simplistic and formulaic analyses and responses to complex situations. The world abounds with nuances, yet nuances are something with which absolutist ideologies simply cannot deal. The equation is absurdly facile...

  This rabble is a waste of time - Michael Coren Sat, June 4, 2005   You'd probably never heard of the website rabble.ca before last week -- and most people still have no idea what it is Fear not, there's little to know. The usual safe and smug columns and opinions from the lugubrious left. The site is enjoying a brief infamy because it featured a cartoon of Pope Benedict giving a Nazi salute to a statue of the Virgin Mary while chanting "Heil Mary." Just not funny. No, I don't mean that it's not funny because it's offensive....