Is Coren Blind to the Ethnic Cleansing of Catholics?

I’ve been reading, and enjoying, Michael Coren’s book Why Catholics Are Right. Thus far it is very approachable, accurate and erudite as is his stated intention. I heartily recommend it.

However, the problem I have with Michael Coren’s portrait of Anti-Catholicism is that he sets Catholicism up as an ideology in his introduction. Many may not see this as an issue, but I think it’s important to know what words actually mean and thus get upset when the wrong ones are used. In fact, it will completely change the view and understanding of the real nature of the bigotry against us Catholics in the latter text, as well as in our day to day lives, as it’s in the introduction; and introductions are intended to guide readers as to how to understand the body of the work.

Sadly Michael Coren falls off the rails in artificially putting a barrier between anti-Semitism and anti-Catholicism,

"Anti-Catholicism is fundamentally different from anti-Semitism. It's not racial or ethnic and, outside of fundamentalist Protestant circles and Islamic extremists, not even especially religious. Very few people dislike Catholicism because of its theology but many oppose it because of the moral and ethical consequences of its teachings.” ( Why Catholics Are Right, p.4)

Now let’s look at the dictionary definition of Catholic,

World English Dictionary

ethnic or ethnical  (ˈɛθnɪk)

— adj
1. relating to or characteristic of a human group having racial, religious, linguistic, and certain other traits in common
2. relating to the classification of mankind into groups, esp on the basis of racial characteristics
3. denoting or deriving from the cultural traditions of a group of people: the ethnic dances of Slovakia
4. characteristic of another culture: the ethnic look ; ethnic food

— n
5. chiefly  ( US ), ( Austral ) a member of an ethnic group, esp a minority (emphasis mine)

Catholics are a common group bound by a common trait of their religious background and cultural traditions (included are those shared morals and their shared ethical consequences) therefore, by definition they are an ethnic group… just like Jews. The fact that many are not especially religious is irrelevant as many Jews are not religious, yet they are still considered Jews. I fail to see the distinction. Especially as the Church is the New Israel that enfolds all nations under it’s tent as it were. Why are we not an ethnicity? Because many of us in North America are Caucasian? Because we don’t look different from the other non-Catholics around us? Again, these same claims can be said of Jews and yet we Catholics are not given the same standard... Even by our own like Michael Coren. But why? Because we are Catholics we have suffered mass murder, persecution and alienation by dominant groups throughout history and the world just like the Jew and yet, we are somehow treated as completely different. Coren acknowledges clear a double standard, but not this most significant one.

Coren himself seems to be quasi aware of the artificial nature of his distinction when he basically outlines members of the Catholic Church as an ethnic group.

“In North America some of the Anglo-Celtic prejudice still exists - the Catholic Church is, in popular and sometimes even cultural circles, regarded as the “denomination of foreigners, immigrants, the poor, and undesirables” - but the bulk of modern contemporary disdain comes more often from the secular liberal who feels intellectually and aesthetically superior but would never dare feel such contempt for a member of a more fashionable minority group.” (p. 6)

This is the problem that I think most Catholics have with the issue of anti-Catholicism. And indeed I sincerely believes it castrates any ability for real resistance and cohesion in the Church to unite and address what is not really bigotry, but as E. Michael Jones points out, the ethnic cleansing of Catholics from North America.

I have to admit, I have not read Dr. Jones book The Slaughter of Cities: Urban Renewal as Ethnic Cleansing, but I have listened to several of his lectures based off his research on CD and DVD and am convinced that there is substantial weight to his argument. Especially compelling is his research on how the Ford Foundation covertly and systematically broke up and displaced Catholic neighbourhoods so as to dilute the Catholic vote and undermine Catholic identity and strength.

It makes sense if as a Catholic I simply change the subject of my experiences from “my  faith” to my ethnicity. As a thought experiment try listing all the negative things you as a Catholic experience, and the Church, then insert Gypsy or Jew instead of Catholic. Indeed, there are Catholics that are Irish, Italian, Mexican, German etc. But the pan cultural and religious bond is their collective ethnic identity as Catholics. That is the bond that is aggressively trying to be broken. This is the bond Pope Benedict XV tried so desperately to point out and renew in his pleas for peace and reconciliation before and after World War I.

I think Michael Coren is a pious and orthodox Catholic striving for holiness. Like I said, I think his book is exceptional. Yet I think he is in denial. I know what it’s like to try and merge ones Catholic Faith and the Secularism around oneself in order to survive and be accepted. I think this is why Coren unconsciously buys into this artificial separation by making the Catholic Faith a discriminated religious persuasion rather than a persecuted ethnic population in the heart of the West.

Can’t we see it happening? The exclusion from public discourse regarding abortion, homosexuality, patriarchal hierarchy, the necessity of the Male clergy; these are all outlined in Coren’s book exceptionally. The only problem is that Coren, and therefore his readers, don’t realize he is describing the manner and ripe environment for the ongoing ethnic cleansing of the Catholic population from the entire Culture.