Conservatives don't like Sullivan's call to Jesus

So, the Andrew Sullivan essay (linked in the post below this one) has attracted some pushback.  Here's Bill Donohue, arch-conservative Roman Catholic, standing up for the hierarchy and pay, pray, and obey:

The Jesus that Sullivan has created—“calm, loving, accepting,” and, of course, “homeless”—is what happens when “Occupy Wall Street” becomes mistaken for Catholicism. Worse, Sullivan’s “Etch A Sketch” Jesus accounts for his remarkable conclusion that “the cross was not the point” of Jesus’ life. 

Sullivan’s article reads like a public confession. It is not the Catholic Church that is obsessing about people’s sex lives, as he alleges. No, it is people like him. He wants a Catholic Church without Catholicism. And I want cotton candy without cavities.

Sullivan responds,

As for his argument that I dismiss the cross as central to Christianity, here's what I actually wrote: 

[Jefferson] believed that stripped of the doctrines of the Incarnation, Resurrection, and the various miracles, the message of Jesus was the deepest miracle. And that it was radically simple. It was explained in stories, parables, and metaphors—not theological doctrines of immense complexity. It was proven by his willingness to submit himself to an unjustified execution. The cross itself was not the point; nor was the intense physical suffering he endured. The point was how he conducted himself through it all—calm, loving, accepting, radically surrendering even the basic control of his own body and telling us that this was what it means to truly transcend our world and be with God.

Discuss!