National Catholic Register journalist Tim Drake has published an interview with Catholic novelist Piers Paul Read, author of Death of a Pope (which is on my to-read-next pile). The article is online at the Register site, but you need to be a subscriber to read it. Here’s my favorite quote:
Are there ways that you have suffered professionally as a result of your faith?
It is all too easy for an author to blame disappointing sales on prejudice, but there is undoubtedly a mind-set in the media and among booksellers that finds Catholicism obnoxious and Catholics only acceptable if they dissent from the Church’s teaching on controversial subjects such as homosexuality, abortion or birth control. The British journalist Bryan Appleyard wrote that “Catholicism is not a problem for the contemporary liberal; it is the problem … To the modern imagination, Catholicism is the biggest enemy of all. As a result, ‘I hate Catholics’ is quite commonly heard in otherwise civilized circles.”
Read goes on to add, “A loyal Catholic is by definition ‘homophobic,’ ” a phrase which I find troubling, or at the very least an injudicious use of a hot-button word, and one calculated to inspire, perhaps, more anti-Catholicism than the Faith should elicit from even the most rabid secularist; but it certainly makes me want to read the rest of the interview, to be published next week in the Register.
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