Matthew Fox: Speaking the Truth in Love, by Kerry Weber, Publishers Weekly, June 29, 2011

Matthew Fox: Speaking the Truth in Love

By Kerry Weber
Publishers Weekly
June 29, 2011

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/book-news/religion/article/47787-matthew-fox-speaking-the-truth-in-love.html

Matthew Fox was saddened when he was silenced for one year by the Vatican in 1988 and then dismissed from the Dominican order five years later. But those turbulent parts of his past, he says, have allowed the former Catholic priest to write from a unique viewpoint.

“I can speak truthfully about the [Catholic] Church because I know the tradition well, and I love it,” says Fox, who became an Episcopal priest in 1994. “But I also have the perspective from without. I’m one of the few theologians from that tradition who doesn’t have to look over my shoulder now.” Fox’s newest book, The Pope’s War: Why Ratzinger’s Secret Crusade Has Imperiled the Church and How It Can Be Saved (Sterling Ethos, May), offers insight into that perspective.

In the book, Fox charges that, as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI stifled the voices of many theologians whose views differed from his own. This practice, Fox alleges, led to a Vatican filled with yes-men who value obedience over conscience, and a hierarchy willing to be complicit in covering up sexual abuse by clergy. The book also includes several profiles of Catholic intellectuals whose views have clashed with the pope’s. Many have been a source of comfort or inspiration for Fox.

Fox, whose 28 previous books have sold more than 1.5 million copies, says the purpose of The Pope’s War was not to rehash widely reported stories of sexual abuse, but to try to put the crisis and the Vatican culture as he perceives it into context. “My job is to ask if the (Holy) Spirit is involved in any of this, to try to get the overall picture of what has happened in Catholicism since the Second Vatican Council, and to try to surmise some meaning from all this,” he says.

Fox’s conclusion? “I see the Spirit at work deconstructing, ending Roman Catholicism as we’ve known it for centuries,” he says. “We really have a schism between the Vatican and the curia, and this opens the door for new forms (of Catholicism) to emerge, and many young people are looking for new forms.”

Now a visiting scholar at the Academy for the Love of Learning in Santa Fe, N.M., Fox says writing the book was exhausting and depressing, but he’s glad he completed it. “The last fourth of the book is positive and hopeful, because it is about where we can go now,” he says. “We have an open field ahead of us.”