"Crunched in the Head"

Thanks go to J-Carp for pointing this one out. Steve Kellmeyer has a succinct style which comes to the point quickly:

Many Catholics today are getting upset about Rod Dreher's insistence that he can't return to the Catholic Church because it is too touchy-feely. He'll stick with the Orthodox church because it "teaches the hard lessons."

Yes, it is hard to read the sentence above without snorting.
Now I hate the sugary sweet sermons and spinelessness of American Catholics as much as the next guy, but let's get serious.

The Orthodox Church accepts divorce and contraception.

If Rod Dreher was REALLY looking for doctrinal rigor, he wouldn't be Eastern Orthodox.

Now, I'm quite certain he is being honest when he says he can't bring himself to return to the Catholic Church. But I'm also sure that the problem isn't the treacle that American Catholic priests commonly mistake for preaching. God bless his little heart, as they say in Texas, but Rod didn't get where he is today by disagreeing with the mainstream media. His incoherent essay just proves that point again.

Yes, we know this by Dreher's own words.

What if a priest gives a lecture to young engaged couples on the constant teaching of the popes on the topic of contraception and the indissolubility of marriage? He starts with Castii Connubii by Pius XI and goes right up through Humanae Vitae by Paul VI and into John Paul II's Theology of the Body. Oh wait, I heard a priest do this once at a Couple to Couple league gathering. They are not a secret society; I'm sure Dreher would have been allowed to attend the lecture.

Would this be too touchy-feely a talk? Would this lecture lack "doctrinal rigor"? Would this be simply too sugary-sweet, and betray a lack of spine? Hardly. And yet Rod Dreher has gone on record stating that he "never really understood the church's teaching on contraception", but that he doesn't have to accept it because he stopped believing in papal infallibility. Again: Dreher's own words:

Because if any doctrine taught authoritatively by the Roman church is untrue, then it's all up to be questioned. I never really understood the teaching on contraception, but I lived by it because I did believe in the authority of the Roman church to teach these things. If you tell yourself, "Well, the Magisterium got that one wrong," the whole thing logically unravels.

This is not the voice of a man bemoaning wimpiness and lack of character in an institution. This is the voice of someone refusing to accept Christ's hard sayings, a sad reality which existed from the time of Christ Himself.

After this many of his disciples went back; and walked no more with him. Then Jesus said to the twelve: Will you also go away? And Simon Peter answered him: Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life. And we have believed and have known, that thou art the Christ, the Son of God. (Jn 6:67ff)