Heresy

By Michael Coren

Catholic-ometer: 4 of 5

Enjoyability: 4 of 5

I very much enjoyed Coren's last book; Why Catholics Are Right, and I highly recommend that book, as it delivered precisely what it claimed to; giving a strong defense of the Catholic Church, both in teachings and in history.

However, although I enjoyed this book too, it's very different from "Why Catholics Are Right" in two essential ways.

First, unlike "Why Catholics Are Right," the book's title doesn't describe what's actually in the book.  I don't just mean that the book doesn't contain heresy, of course.  I mean that it doesn't discuss heresy, and doesn't talk about what heresy is, nor does it provide any historical information about past heresies and how they're all resurfacing today, despite having been proved false long ago.

The second part of the title is more relevant to the contents of the actual book; "Ten lies they spread about Christianity."  However, even this is not quite right.  There are ten chapters, each with a broad topic, but the individual lies addressed here number far more than ten, all told.

The second thing that makes this book noticably different from "Why Catholics Are Right," is the shift of focus off the Catholic Church, and onto "all people who believed that Jesus is God."

I mind this somewhat more than I would from a non-Catholic author like C.S. Lewis.  As obligated as we are to reach out to those who've become separated from the church, I've always had a problem with this tendency to lump all Christians together, as if we were all one group.  It doesn't make Coren's statements any less true, but there's something bittersweet about this style of writing.

Again, I can't find any claim in this book that I really disagree with, nor anything which a normal Joe with an internet connection can't verify for himself with maybe fifteen seconds worth of work, but then, I'm sure that won't stop certain people from decrying it as trash, because they're emotionally-invested in God not existing.

The main subjects of the book are the historical evidence for Jesus being a real person, the traditional atheist arguments, like the argument from evil and so on, the historical blunders of the Da Vinci Code (rather an old chestnut by now, but appreciated nonetheless,) the notion that Christians are in some way less intelligent than Atheists, the proposition that Hitler was Christian, the bunk about Christianity supporting slavery, opposing science or progress, the real Christian stance on the life issues, and a few others issues put together in the last chapter.  This is the collection of lies that Michael Coren has decided to refute, and done pretty well at, although my favorite chapters are the last two, just as reference material.

Coren does make one remark at the start of the book about how we can't really prove our faith for certain, which I very much disagree with, and another few remarks about the place of Christians in society later on, which, while technically correct, are worded somewhat weakly.  Still, it's a decent book, and if you're under any illusions about Christianity not being an essential component for civilized society, you might want to give it a look.

St Bernadette of Lourdes

Unrated

Catholic-ometer: 5 of 5

Enjoyability: 4 of 5

I generally consider it unwise to do a movie with a cast of -only- children.  Occasionally, there's a child actor who knows what they're doing, but most of the time, people just don't have any faith in all-child casts, and so, a film like this one would wind up with very poor sets or costume-design, or with several lousy shots, which could have been done over, to make them look better, and while I will admit that many of the children in this movie are clearly reading from cue-cards, I was surprised by just how many of the key players in the piece were convincing.

Bernadette, to start with, and the skeptic, the priest, and although he played a somewhat cliche part, I though the police commissioner did a fine job acting it out.  Some actors were truly bad, and others just average, but there were just enough good ones, and in the right places, that the movie is enjoyable nonetheless.

As for the rest, I was genuinely shocked by how good the costumes and sets were.  For the most part, they actually looked convincing, which is hard to do when you're dressing kids up as military guards or saracens.  I was particularly impressed with the scene, near the very beginning, of dozens of kids, all dressed up as saracen invaders and Charlemagne's troops, charging each other from either side of a field, and battling it out as best they could.  Clearly, some significant manpower, and expense for costuming was needed to put just that one scene together, and it wasn't lost on me.

There is a narrator, but only briefly at the beginning and end of the film, so I didn't mind him so much.  What surprised me, though, was that while there is humor in the movie from time to time, it doesn't generally play up the humor of having an all-child cast, preferring to play the story almost completely straight, regardless, and here's the weird part; it actually does a pretty good job of that.

The sight of kids in nun outfits, or wearing soldier's uniforms did throw me off just a bit, but not as much as I might have expected it to.  I'd like to give it a slightly-less-than-perfect grade, but to be honest, it's amazing they were able to do so much with the cast they had.  I was very impressed, overall.