Raymond J. de Souza

@fatherdesouza

Father Raymond J. de Souza is a Cardus Senior Fellow, the founding Editor of Convivium, chaplain at Newman House (the Roman Catholic centre at Queen's University), and a parish priest, in addition to writing for the National Post and The Catholic Register.

Bio last updated January 12th, 2022.

Articles by Raymond J. de Souza

Sea to Sea: Michael Coren's Conversions

By Raymond J. de Souza

June 1, 2015

Father Raymond J. de Souza's continuing survey of religion, culture and public life. In this edition, why the author of Why Catholics Are Right turns his cheek on Catholicism.

In relation to Catholic teaching about contraception, the epicentre of the sexual revolution, Coren wrote four years ago in Why Catholics Are Right that the conflict went to the heart of the place of faith in our common life Peter wrote a generous review, acknowledging that Coren's book did not argue for Catholicism from the behaviour of Catholics, even quoting Coren on the same point: "The Church is composed of people, and people do terrible things and commit sin — it's what the Church has been telling us for two thousand years and continues to tell us, which is why the Church is here Is it not rather more obsessed with sexual matters to make the issue of homosexual acts the moral teaching upon which one's adherence to a church stands or falls? What would Coren say to an Anglican who became Catholic because the latter upheld the long tradition of Christian teaching on homosexual acts? It is not hard to imagine Yet in making homosexuality the grounds for his conversion, Coren implicitly agrees with our secular culture that the most important public thing about religion is its opposition to the principal social phenomenon of our time, namely the sexual revolution Indeed, there would likely not be a post-Reformation Catholic intellectual tradition in the English language without converts Coren did not get into the question of homosexuality in Anglicanism, but his conversion raises the question of whether he has joined the Anglican Communion throughout the world or just the Anglican Church of Canada Whenever I hear news of a conversion, whether it be to Christianity from a non-Christian religion or from non-belief, or whether it is from one Christian communion to another, I keep in mind the ancient wisdom — first spoken by I do not know whom — that the Lord has some the Church does not have and the Church has some the Lord does not have ‘A major climatic change would force economic and social adjustments on a worldwide scale,' warns a recent report by the National Academy of Sciences, ‘because the global patterns of food production and population that have evolved are implicitly dependent on the climate of the present century For months now Coren has been blasting pro-life and pro-family Catholics for being too obsessed with sexual morality rather than focusing on preaching the love and mercy of Jesus Christ or devoting attention to the care of the poor The Catholic Church no longer has Michael Coren That vindication consists of a unanimous decision (7-0) that a Catholic school has the religious liberty right to teach Catholicism from a Catholic point of view Coren was formally received into the Anglican Communion on April 23, four years and four days after the publication of Why Catholics Are Right