“I was a guest on Phil Donahue’s show for many years and I thoroughly enjoyed mixing it up with him,” Donohue recalled. “He told his producers on several occasions that he loved having me on even though we usually clashed. That made him unusual — he was not afraid of confronting a conservative. He was a real man. And I always appreciated his kindness. May he rest in peace.”

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Phil Donahue, talk show pioneer and ‘lapsed Catholic’ who courted controversy, dies at 88

CNA Staff, Aug 19, 2024 / 17:20 pm
Phil Donahue, a self-described “lapsed Catholic” who reinvented the daytime television talk-show format beginning in the 1960s, died Sunday at his home in New York at age 88.
Born in Cleveland in 1935 and raised in a Catholic family, Donahue attended an all-boys Catholic high school and the University of Notre Dame. He later dismissed the Church as “‘sexist,’ ‘racist,’ and ‘unnecessarily destructive,’ feelings that imbued many of his shows,” his New York Times obituary notes.
When “The Phil Donahue Show” debuted in 1967 on a Dayton, Ohio, TV station, Donahue encouraged audience participation in his interviews and discussions, an unusual practice at the time that was later copied by numerous other shows.
In nearly 30 years on the air and 6,000 episodes, Donahue frequently courted controversy, both in his choice of guests and in the topics he covered.
He was often critical of the Catholic Church into which he was baptized, especially amid the sexual …