Why Two Famous Catholic Writers, Michael Coren and Rod Dreher, Left the Church

Aleteia ^ | March 11, 2015 | TOM HOOPES

[NYer]

Two conservative ex-Catholics have recently been in the news sharing their reasons for leaving.

One was Michael Coren. Apparently, the Canadian broadcaster and author of Why Catholics Are Right stopped attending Mass a year ago —but only publicly mentioned his switch to Anglicanism for the first time last month.

He told the National Post on May 2 that he left over the Church’s prohibition of gay sex.

“I couldn’t look people in the eye and make the argument that is still so central to the Catholic Church, that same-sex attraction is acceptable but to act on it is sinful. I felt that the circle of love had to be broadened, not reduced,” Coren said.

His editor at Catholic World Report was a bit blindsided by his columnist’s public renunciation of his Catholic faith. “How far, then, should the circle of love be broadened?” Carl Olson asked in an editorial. “Where does he want to draw the line? And why?”

Those are good questions. There are many Catholics for whom romantic feelings can never lead to sex: single people, those divorced and remarried but not annulled who wish to receive communion — and those married to a spouse who has a sexual impediment. Not to mention priests and religious.

It seems odd that Coren thinks that one subset of this group, the same-sex attracted, should get a “look-the-other-way” sex pass from the Church.

But “There’s more than that,” Coren added to the National Post (in the video, not the transcript), and cited “the teaching on contraception, on life” as another reason for him leaving. His rejection of Church teaching is apparently more broad than first reported.

He should read Rod Dreher.

Dreher has been writing about Dante’s Divine Comedy journey through hell, purgatory and heaven —  including a powerful piece at CNN.com about how Dante has helped him understand his own loss of faith in the Church.

As a journalist in 2002 covering the sex abuse scandal, “I didn’t lose my faith suddenly; it was torn from me bit by bit, like a torturer ripping out his victim's fingernails,” Dreher writes.

Now, years later, he has found in Dante another harsh critic of Church leaders — but one who stayed Catholic.

“I had made a mistake that the devout Dante did not,” Dreher wrote. “I expected more from them than they could deliver, and came undone by the shock of their failures.”

In another column about Dante, this one in The American Conservative, Dreher shared a different lesson from Dante, one that Michael Coren needs to hear.

It’s about the Circle of the Sodomites.

“In the Divine Comedy, when Dante and Virgil visit the circle of hell reserved for the Sodomites (Dante’s term), sex and sexuality never come up,” Dreher writes. “[I]t affords the reader the opportunity to consider the sin of sodomy in a broader philosophical perspective.”

He cites the truly remarkable William Cook and Ronald Herzman Great Courses lectures on the Divine Comedy, which describe sodomy in the poem “as a metaphor for sterility, and the misguided use of creativity and generativity.”

Dante finds his former teacher Brunetto Latini among the sodomites. Latini gives Dante bad counsel, telling him to seek fame in writing — just as Latini has done in his own academic and political career.

Dante’s message, says Dreher, is that “to put one’s creative gift to the service of one’s own fame and fortune, as opposed to serving a higher cause (e.g., Art, the Truth) is to be guilty of violence against the God who gave one those gifts, and expects one to use them in a fruitful way.”

There are two lessons for Coren here, and the rest of us too.

First: Sex is for fruitfulness. Sex that is open to life may be motivated by all kinds of conflicting desires, but what it is in its reality is a life-affirming imitation of God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, whose love generates more life, and therefore more love.

Sex that is not open to life may also have good motives or bad — but what it is in its reality is an act that is closed in on itself; an act from which no new life can emerge; an act that imitates not the exuberance of the Trinity but the men chasing one another across burning sands, in Dante’s apt metaphor.

Coren need not fear. The Church’s sexual morality does not denigrate human love, it protects its nobility. But in addition to what Dante can teach about sex is what he can teach about writing.

Coren, I can only guess, is tempted by the sin that every political or religious writer is tempted by — the sin of writing to increase something in my life (money, fame, social media shares, pride)  instead of writing to increase something in my reader’s life (understanding, love, conviction, joy).

The sin is both more universal and more banal in the blogosphere than it was in 14th-century Florence.

Ironically, Coren and Dreher both started out as spirited defenders of the truths of the Catholic Church — and ended up inadvertently championing relativism. 

In Dominus Iesus (No. 4), Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger sees disunity in the Church as the source-root of the culture of relativism. After all, if Christians’ beliefs about God can be widely divergent yet equally true, then why can’t I have my truth” and you have “your truth”?

Pray that their readers won’t follow Michael Coren and Rod Dreher out of the Church. And pray that they will come back home.

[xsmommy]

I am reading Dreher’s book and I agree with you, I respect his reasons for leaving, and think he may regret having left. Coren, holding the beliefs he does, was NEVER in communion with the Church, so all for the best that he left it.

[outinyellowdogcountry]

Deuteronomy 12:32, Proverbs 30:6, Revelation 22:18, Deuteronomy 4:2

Of course, renewing of the MIND is an outcome of growing in grace and knowledge of the Lord. Resources should always be subject to the truth of the Word of God. If it is extra-special understanding and contradicts the Bible it is not good for renewing. However, that information can help understand thoughts that influence people like these two men. But it isn’t Truth if it doesn’t agree with scripture. A problem with UN-regenerate intellectuals is they elevate their thoughts and lower God’s Word.

[don-o]

I suppose it does not violate the RF ban on “mind reading another poster” to mind read an author. Dreher has written more than enough to find some basis for this “regret” speculation.

[xsmommy]

and I have read it all ; ) I think it’s permissible to make an inference based on someone’s writings. though maybe not on the RF where I rarely post!

[Mrs. Don-o]

Thanks, sweetheart: I jut read Rod's splendid article on the Divine Comedy that you linked.

This is tremendous stuff. I am so glad for Rod.

[don-o]

How about finding something that Dreher has written that you find disagreeable in relation to Holy Scripture?

[NorthMountain]

same-sex attraction is acceptable but to act on it is sinful

I seem to recall hearing that the Roman Catholic Church considers homosexual attraction to be "fundamentally disordered" or some similar term. That's not at all the same thing as "acceptable".

[outinyellowdogcountry]

Not here to agree or disagree with Dreher. Good for him if he is faithful!

[vladimir998]

I was thinking about doing the same (especially since Pope Francis recommended it for the Year of Mercy):

Dante: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) by Peter Hainsworth

Understanding Dante (The William and Katherine Devers Series in Dante Studies) by John A. Scott

Lectura Dantis: Inferno: A Canto-by-Canto Commentary by Allen Mandelbaum

Dante’s Testaments: Essays in Scriptural Imagination (Figurae: Reading Medieval Culture) by Peter Hawkins

Dante For the New Millennium (Fordham Series in Medieval Studies) by Teodolinda Barolini

Dante: The Poetics of Conversion by John Freccero

Dante’s Commedia: Theology as Poetry (ND Devers Series Dante & Med. Ital. Lit.) by Vittorio Montemaggi

Reading Dante: From Here to Eternity by Prue Shaw

How Dante Can Save Your Life: The Life-Changing Wisdom of History’s Greatest Poem by Rod Dreher

The Complete Danteworlds: A Reader’s Guide to the Divine Comedy by Guy P. Raffa

I’m not claiming any of these are particularly Catholic in viewpoint. Dreher’s might be the best value in terms of accessible Christian scholarship. Another good one I read in 2007 is by the “Reformed” scholar Peter Leithart: Ascent to Love: A Guide to Dante’s Divine Comedy. Leithart is a good thinker and a great writer. And any Calvinist put on trial by his Presbyterian church for sounding too Catholic can’t be all bad! Here’s the conversion story of his prosecutor! http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2012/09/i-fought-the-church-and-the-church-won/

[vladimir998]

“I think some of the commenters were under the impression Dreher left out of support for sodomy...”

Really? Like who? I just scanned the comments and didn’t see any that seemed to show any such impression. Did I miss it?

[Mrs. Don-o]

Here's what the Catholic Catechism has to say about homosexuality, in its entirety. (Numbers are paragraph numbers as clickable links.)

As you can see, a homosexual "tendency" is objectively disordered. It is not a sin in itself, but a tendency and temptation to that particular sin.

2357 Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that "homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered." They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.

2358 The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God's will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord's Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.

2359 Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection.

[Alex Murphy]

Dreher has been writing about Dante’s Divine Comedy journey through hell, purgatory and heaven — including a powerful piece at CNN.com about how Dante has helped him understand his own loss of faith in the Church. As a journalist in 2002 covering the sex abuse scandal, “I didn’t lose my faith suddenly; it was torn from me bit by bit, like a torturer ripping out his victim's fingernails,” Dreher writes. Now, years later, he has found in Dante another harsh critic of Church leaders — but one who stayed Catholic. “I had made a mistake that the devout Dante did not,” Dreher wrote. “I expected more from them than they could deliver, and came undone by the shock of their failures.”

More Rod Dreher quotes, showing the fingernails being pulled out:

"The Catholic bishop of Tyler has announced that a church investigation found that Catholic hospitals in his diocese had been performing sterilizations, in contravention of church law -- even though they'd indicated that they hadn't been."
-- from the thread Tyler Catholic hospital sterilizations

"This is a distressing new Gallup poll. It shows that churchgoing Catholics are far more likely to approve of moral behavior (sex between unmarried people, homosexuality, etc.) that their church deems immoral than are churchgoing Protestants....Why is it that Catholics have a Pope and a Magisterium -- a clear teaching authority -- as well as a complex, coherent and profoundly intellectual moral theology ... and yet these things, which ought to give it a tremendous advantage in maintaining the obedience of its flock, avail the Catholic Church little?"
-- from the thread Gallup poll: Catholics more unorthodox than Protestants

"...as the data show, Catholics are every bit as mainstream American as anybody in their habits and opinions. I agree with Jody that it's offensive that a Catholic university should award an honorary law degree to a lawmaker, even the US president, who favors abortion. But come on, most Catholics voted for Obama. The president of Notre Dame, and other Catholic schools, ought to fear God and anguish over whether or not they're departing from authoritative Catholic teaching, and by so doing leading the faithful away from the truth. But they shouldn't fear that they are out of step with American Catholic culture as it actually exists. They very well know what they're doing....

"....Typically, the most engaged orthodox Catholics I knew when I was one of them picked and chose parishes based on whether or not the teaching there was solid....I knew I was headed into choppy waters when my firstborn became old enough to understand what the priest was saying during mass, and I would have to explain to him that what Father said is not what the Church teaches; it bothered me that I was having to teach him suspicion of Church authority before he'd even learned to trust it....My point here is simply that the decay in the fidelity to magisterial Catholicism on the part of the institutional Catholic Church in America has contributed to the breakup of Catholic culture by putting orthodox Catholics, who no doubt would prefer to go to their geographical parish, as is the norm, in the position of having to parish-shop...."
-- from the thread What Catholic culture?

"If Catholicism in America had been healthy, maybe we could have held on through the sex abuse trials....we looked to the church to provide clear moral leadership, and to help us live out the faith with integrity and joy. Here’s the problem: there is very little orthodoxy in the U.S. Catholic Church, and at the parish level, almost no recognition that there is a such thing as “right belief”....I discerned no direction, and no real conviction that parish communities exist for any reason other than to affirm ourselves in our okayness....I had been so hollowed out by despair over all this as a Catholic that when the strong winds of the abuse scandal began to blow, the structure of my Catholic belief did not stand."
-- from his opinion piece in the Washington Post, What's so appealing about Orthodoxy?

"Was I frustrated because the priests wouldn’t preach God’s judgment instead of God’s mercy? By no means. I was frustrated because they wouldn’t preach God’s judgment at all, which is to say, they preached Christ without the Cross. I knew the depths of the sins from which I was being delivered, and it felt wrong to treat His amazing grace like it was a common courtesy....American Catholicism was not pushing back against the hostile age at all. Rather, it had become a pushover. God is love was not a proclamation that liberated us captives from our sin and despair, but rather a bromide and a platitude that allowed us to believe that, and to behave as if, our lust, greed, malice and so forth – sins that I struggled with every day — weren’t to be despised and cast out, but rather shellacked by a river of treacle. I finally broke...."
-- from the thread I’m Still Not Going Back to the Catholic Church: Pope Francis only confirms my decision to leave

[livius]

Many disaffected Catholics became Orthodox in the really bad times after VII, but a number have returned. The Orthodox deal with the whole problem by never discussing morality at all, and you can just coast along with their beautiful liturgy without being troubled by anything else. I attended an Orthofox church for a while, and about half the congregation was gay. They also had a huge gay scandal a few years ago that involved not only a couple of bishops, but a Metroploitan. It was a scandal only because there had been some financial hanky pinky as well, btw.

I guess converts feel that the Orthodox are at least not hypocrites, since they never talk about morality - particularly sexual morality - in the first place!

[NorthMountain]

"homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered."

Yes.

That's the phrase I was vaguely misremembering.

If somebody told me that I was doing (or desired to do) something "intrinsically disordered" ... I would not take that as approval.

[NYer]

For clarification, I think some of the commenters were under the impression Dreher left out of support for sodomy, he did not. He initially left because the RCC diocese where in he resided had become spiritually poisonous and the pedophile scandal which he had covered as a reporter had left him deeply scarred.

Mrs. Don-o has provided a broader view of the larger picture in her post above. In fact, Dreher did not leave because of a specific parish. He had also been covering a scandal in the Albany Diocese that involved the sudden death of a devout priest. It was an accrual of many factors that prompted his decision.

While working for the NY Post, Dreher and his wife resided in Brooklyn where they attended Our Lady of Lebanon Cathedral. Following 9-11, Dreher wrote:

"Monsignor Ignace Sadek, the elderly pastor of the Maronite cathedral near the Brooklyn waterfront, went to the promenade park overlooking lower Manhattan and prayed for absolution for the dying as the towers burned. When the first building crumbled, and the terrible cloud of smoke, debris, and incinerated human remains began its grim march across the harbor, Monsignor Sadek remained at his post praying. The falling ash turned him into a ghost. Still, he stayed as long as he could. This is a man who came through the civil war in Lebanon, and he doesn’t run.

"People could see I was a priest," he told me later (he is my pastor). "They ran to me and knelt at my feet, and begged for absolution." Think of that: The people of this proud, defiantly secular city, driven to their knees in prayer, begging for mercy in a hot, gray fog. That is what purgatory must be like."

Rod's attendance at the Maronite Divine Liturgies opened a window on the beauty of the East. Msgr. Sadek just passed away last month..

[JoeDetweiler]

Thanks everyone for the recommendations! I’ll hit Amazon later and see what I can come up with.

[Mrs. Don-o]

I didn’t know that, NYer. Impressive.

[af_vet_1981]

While working for the NY Post, Dreher and his wife resided in Brooklyn where they attended Our Lady of Lebanon Cathedral. Following 9-11, Dreher wrote:

"Monsignor Ignace Sadek, the elderly pastor of the Maronite cathedral near the Brooklyn waterfront, went to the promenade park overlooking lower Manhattan and prayed for absolution for the dying as the towers burned. When the first building crumbled, and the terrible cloud of smoke, debris, and incinerated human remains began its grim march across the harbor, Monsignor Sadek remained at his post praying. The falling ash turned him into a ghost. Still, he stayed as long as he could. This is a man who came through the civil war in Lebanon, and he doesn’t run.

"People could see I was a priest," he told me later (he is my pastor). "They ran to me and knelt at my feet, and begged for absolution." Think of that: The people of this proud, defiantly secular city, driven to their knees in prayer, begging for mercy in a hot, gray fog. That is what purgatory must be like."

Thank you for sharing this beautifully inspiring story.

[NRx]

Your comment is either rank idiocy or slander. I am not sure which so I will assume the former out of charity. I have been in a lot of Orthodox parishes, and some put more emphasis on certain subjects than others. But I have NEVER been in one that dodged moral issues. Perhaps you are confusing us with the Episcopalians.

[Kolokotronis]

“Many disaffected Catholics became Orthodox in the really bad times after VII, but a number have returned.”

I expect you are correct. Many Roman Catholics seem to regret their choice to come into Orthodoxy. Like Dreher notes in his Washington Post article:

“Don’t be mislead. Orthodoxy, at its core, is not about rules and practices. The more I progress in my Orthodoxy, the clearer it is to me that Orthodoxy is, above all, a way. It is not an institution, a set of doctrines or a collection of rituals, though it contains all three. It is rather a way of seeing the world, and one’s place in it, and a path to holiness which is paradoxically both ancient and astonishingly fresh, at least to Western sensibilities. It is a way of liberation.”

Orthodoxy is not even remotely Roman Catholicism. In fact my wife, many years ago, was asked by the abbess of the monastery outside my maternal village in Greece “What is the difference between The Church in the West and The Church in the East?” She replied, “Oh, Mother, that’s easy! In the West The Church says “Do this or you will go to hell!” In the East The Church says “Do this and you will become like God!”

Many Latins come to Orthodoxy expecting to find the pre-Vatican II Church, on steroids and with a Greek accent. They are very often disappointed.

And livius, we strive to die to the self precisely because we fully appreciate our fallen and sinful nature and know that we can only fulfill our created purpose to be “like God” if we die to our sinful selves. That’s not easy but it is what we believe we must do as a community.