STATEMENT DF105
Catholicism for the New Age: Matthew Fox and Creation-Centered Spirituality by Mitchell Pacwa, S. J. Father Matthew Timothy Fox, O.P. (Order of Preachers, commonly known as the Dominicans), has placed himself at the center of a storm inside the Catholic church. What gave rise to the conflict between Fox and Catholic leadership? Is Fox a danger to the Christian church? These are questions we shall seek to answer in this article. Matthew Fox was born on December 21, 1940, entered the D ominicans in 1960, and was ordained a priest in 1967. In 1970 he received a doctorate, summa cum laude, from the Institut Catholique (Paris) in Medieval theology. His first popular book on prayer, On Becoming a Musical, Mystical Bear (1972), created the impetus which eventually led to his establishing the Institute for Culture and Creation Spirituality (ICCS) in 1977 at Mundelein College, a small Catholic women’s college in Chicago. He moved the ICCS to Holy Names College, another small Catholic college in Oakland, California in 1983, where it has remained to the present day. The ICCS teaching staff includes Starhawk the witch (alias Miriam Simos); Buck Ghost Horse, a shaman (mystic guide healer); Luish Teish, a Yoruba (West African) voodoo priestess; and Robert Frager, representing Sufism (Islamic mysticism). Typical of New Age approaches to spirituality, some psychology is thrown in: John Giannini, a Jungian analyst, and Jean Lanier, a Gestalt therapist. Brian Swimme is the resident cosmologist, and “geol ogian” (i.e., exponent of environmental wisdom) Fr. (Father) Thomas Berry teaches on occasion. Fox established Bear and Company to publish creation spirituality books, such as Earth Ascending, by Jose Arguelles, originator of the 1987 “Harmonic Convergence,” and Medicine Cards: The Discovery of Power through the Ways of Animals, complete with book and “medicine shield” cards. Later he founded Creation, a magazine sponsored by the Friends of Creation Spirituality, Inc., whose president and editor-in-chief is Fox. Creation describes itself as “deeply ecumenical, deeply cosmological, deeply practical and deeply alternative.” A recent issue portrays a nude Jesus Christ, seated in the yoga lotus position, with antlers on His head (July/August, 1991). Another shows the “Qetzalcoatl Christ,” with the Lord’s face in a picture of Qetzalcoatl, the Aztec Plumed Serpent deity (May/June, 1992). Fox’s problems with the Catholic hierarchy began in 1984 when Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the head of the Vatican’s department for protecting orthodoxy, asked the Dominican Order to investigate Fox’s writings. Three Dominican theologians examined his books in 1985 and concluded they were not heretical. One of them, Fr. Benedict Ashley, O.P., reported at a 1991 lecture that Fox’s work did not seem worth condemning because it was too superficial and did not appear to be a danger to the faithful. He was wrong, as he now admits. The Vatican continued to object to Fox’s teachings, such as his diminishing or even denial of original sin, refusal to deny belief in pantheism (the belief that God is all and all is God), endorsing homosexual unions in the church, identifying humans as “mothers of God,” and calling God “our Mother.” The presence of the witch, Starhawk, on the ICCS staff caused another scandal. For these and other reasons, the Vatican in 1986 asked the Dominican Master General to stop Fox. But the Chicago Dominican superior, Fr. Donald Goergen, O.P., wrote a detailed defense on Fox’s behalf and let him go on. In September, 1987 Ratzinger’s Vatican office began its own investigation of Fox and his teachings. Fr. Goergen received charges against Fox in April, 1988, but claimed that Fox’s theological views had not been disproven. At this point the Vatican insisted that the Dominicans prevent Fox from further teaching and writing. Accordingly, the Master General asked Fox to take a one year sabbatical to calm the situation. In a “Pastoral Letter to Cardinal Ratzinger and the Whole Church,” Fox responded by publicly calling the Catholic church a dysfunctional family because “power, not theology, is the real issue.” Still, he began a year long silence on December 15, 1988. CRI, P.O. Box 8500, Charlotte, NC 28271 Phone (704) 887-8200 and Fax (704) 887-8299 1