Some thoughts on Occupy and Creation Spirituality from Matthew Fox

I have visited Occupy Boston, Oakland, New York, Ashville, San Francisco.  There is much to like about the people I have met there ranging from 20-somethings to sixty-somethings.  A 58 year old in Boston told me he was camping out because he had been unemployed for over two years; a 30 something in New York told me he was there “because of Jesus who teaches him that the poor get to heaven, not the rich.”  On Wall Street this past weekend I watched two lines of exuberant young adults playing “Rover, red rover” literally in the middle of Wall Street while police cordoned off the entrance to the street.  Nice to see some fun enacted in the name of social change.  I very much appreciated two very large canvases on a side of a building at Occupy Boston: One was entitled, “What is Good about America” and the second was entitled: “What is bad about America.”  Everyone was invited to write on the pages. I read all the entries and they were moving and thoughtful.  I liked the balance that was invited forth to everyone to express their opinions.  In Oakland one day of protests brought out about 7000 people of all ages and ethnicities, mothers with babies in strollers, a flash mob dance of about 80 people well appreciated by hundreds of observers, a band playing as we marched through the city center streets.  My favorite sign?  “I will believe corporations are people when the state of Texas executes one.”

Results have already been significant.  The language of the economic debate in America has shifted from “the deficit is everything” to the matter of justice and injustice—rare words to enter American political discourse the past two decades (though Obama shies away from the words and prefers “fairness”).  A New York Occupy person told me “already Governor Cuomo has learned something and is seeking $2 billion in new taxes from the richest among us.”

More important than immediate “results” and even a change of language and perception is the bearing of witness that is going on.  The bearing of witness against Wall Street’s greed and arrogance, its willingness to borrow trillions of dollars from Main Street but offer nothing in return but more foreclosures, more bankruptcies, more excess, more CEO privileges and more greed.  I have written about greed quite extensively in my book on evil, Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Lessons for Transforming Soul and Society. Returning to that book recently, I have to say I was pleased with the teachings that are there.  Greed corresponds to the fifth or throat chakra (“gluttony” comes from the Latin word for “throat”).  Greed interferes with self-expression, stuffing excess things down the throat instead of eliciting wisdom from the inside with the throat as the birth canal.  The fact that 70% of the American economy runs on consumerism is proof positive that consuming is the newest form of gluttony and such gluttony feeds greed and vice versa.  As Aquinas warned, “avarice tends to infinity”—there is no end to a consciousness of greed or its ally, consumerism.  Henry Ford was once asked: “When do you have enough money?”  His response: “When you always have a little bit more.”  So with consumerism.  It never ends.  It is infinite.  Ask Donald Trump.

If Occupy accomplished this alone it would be revolutionary: To educate Americans and others that an economy that runs 70% on consumption and on greed has to reinvent itself.  It is not spiritually or materially sustainable.  We can do better than consumer capitalism.

In the matter of reinventing economics, I never tire of recommending David Korten who I feel is the most profound and most relevant teacher of an “economics that works for everyone”—not just for 1% of the people but for all the earth’s people including the more than two legged ones.  Korten has done his homework about ecology and cosmology as well as about economics and ethics.  He knows of what he speaks when he shows the way to our reinventing economics so that it serves the earth and all her creatures and therefore future generations as well.  Go to Yes magazine web site to see his many articles on the current economic crisis as well as to his books.

Another aspect of the Occupy movement that moves me is its bearing witness to moral bankruptcy.  The banks are very willing to condemn plenty of us to financial bankruptcy at this time of high unemployment and intransigence in refinancing home loans and business loans, for example.  But they are the carriers of a Moral Bankruptcy that needs calling out.  Speaking truth to power (the economic power elites who brought the economy crashing down on us all) is what prophets do.  Occupy is prophetic.  They are daring to interfere with the economic status quo.

There is courage involved in Occupy as there is in all those movements in the Middle East that we attribute to the Arab Spring.  It takes courage and endurance to sleep in the parks and even on the concrete as so many Occupiers have done (including the 68 year old woman I met in Boston!) and to face police harassment.  Courage is, in my opinion, the number one sign of Spirit.  Without courage there is no Spirit.  There is Spirit afoot in Occupy.

There is hope also because of Occupy.  David Orr says, “hope is a verb with the sleeves rolled up” and those in Occupy are doing something.  How important is that?  Doing something, bearing witness, instead of just getting depressed or angry and sitting on it while addicting oneself to more TV or eating or whatever.  Putting one’s moral outrage to action, tapping into anger as an energy source.  All good.  Tea partiers great success has derived from the anger they tapped into.  While I find their solutions short sighted, their energy has made a difference and Occupy’s can do the same—with much sounder solutions.

Part of Occupy’s success has been its appeal to television.  In this post-modern time television is the primary medium for reaching peoples’ heart and minds and the very act of sleeping outdoors has attracted the cameras that have in turned allowed fresh stories to be passed around.  Stories about values.  Social media is part of this post-modern political movement obviously also.  And the effort to reinvent community through democratic means of listening to all and not just the powerful and ego-driven ones.

Now of course Occupiers are not allowed to encamp or sleep out in most cities but that only means that the means of expression are morphing.  More and more Occupy is focusing on foreclosed houses and trying to raise consciousness about that.  In New York I was told that $400,000 still remains in the kitty they have raised and that all of that is going toward housing for the poor and bringing attention to the plight of the unemployed.  The movement is evolving and morphing as anything living does. In Oakland evicted persons are occupying boarded up and foreclosed homes putting them to use.

Occupy is raising consciousness about the big banks, the “too big to fail” profiteers.  Many are the people moving their money to credit unions (I am one of them and I am happy I did that).

When I preached recently in a Unity church in New York City a woman came up afterwards and started to cry.  She said: “I have been supporting Occupy in every way I can bringing food and warm clothes and more but so few of my friends get the point.  They are just living their lives as if this doesn’t matter.  And where are the clergy?  I hardly see them at all.  But to me this movement is about everything Jesus taught us about loving our neighbor.  There are so many people suffering today.  Your talk inspired me to keep going.”

Recently I wrote a book on The Pope’s War which lays bare much of the sickness within the Roman Catholic Church at this time in history, a sickness that panders to sexual abusers as well as to dictators like Pinochet who tortured and murdered thousands and to fascist movements like Opus Dei, Legion of Christ and Communion and Liberation, a sickness that has silenced or expelled over 100 theologians while supporting the movements just mentioned that between them produce armies of canon lawyers and not a single theologian.  The emasculation of Liberation Theology and base communities was a program enacted by the present and previous popes.

Of course not all priests who work in the Roman Catholic church are child molesters nor are all hierarchy busy hiding and protecting them.  So too not all bankers and all financiers who work with Wall Street are crooks.  But both systems are practicing moral nothingness and condoning it so staying in the system and not critiquing carries with it the risk of being an accomplice, however distant, to the system.  Leaving it makes more obvious moral sense but if one chooses to stay you must stay as a critic and with one’s conscience in tact and operating to change the system.  One stays not as a cheerleader to the system and not to profit from it while taking no moral position.  There is no room in a moral crisis whether of economics or of sexual predation for putting one’s conscience on a shelf and hiding either in the pew or in the boardroom.  It is time to stand up and be counted and support those who are so doing.  It is a time for moral courage.  Thank God for Occupy!

News from the Creation Spirituality Front in Oakland

Dear Friends of CS,

Holiday Greetings to you all!  Many thanks to all those who are carrying on the work and vision of the movement/tradition from Mary Plaster in Duluth to Susan Coppage Evans in Boulder to Diane Wolverton in Wyoming and many, many more.  (Can’t mention you all.)

A few words from my Oakland base.  Here are some things going on.

My two books that came out this Spring are stirring things up a bit.  Christian Mystics just received an award as “one of the best spiritual books of 2011” from Library Journal. The Pope’s War is coming out in paperback in the Spring and is already out in German.  The translator wrote me that she “cried often” while translating it because her generation (she is in her forties) was promised “never again, no more fascism” and that the book proves fascism is back in the church and especially through the German wing of the church.  This book is a “bomb” she says and Germans need to read it.  Reviews coming in from Germany, all of them positive.  Others have told me the “book is a page-turner—I stayed up two nights in a row to finish it” they say.  A number of positive and thoughtful reviews in the US too.

Susan Coppage Evans and I launched a series of CS retreats this Fall in Boulder, Co., based on the Four Paths.  September event was Via Positiva with Mary Oliver as our guide.  I loved working more deeply on Oliver’s wonderful poetry and had the privilege of seeing her in person deliver a reading and q and a in San Francisco ten days before our retreat.  In January we are doing the Via Negativa with Eckhart as our guide.  Later we will do Via Creativa with Hildegard as our guide and then the Via Transformativa with Howard Thurman as our guide.  Spread the word!  www.wholeheartedretreat.com Lots of good practice stuff going on with Susan leading that and I offering in-put on the various subjects and guides.

I am very grateful to Mary Plaster for carrying the torch with a facebook page with my name on it.  Thank you, Mary, and Congratulations too for the wonderful work you are doing with theater pieces and puppets galore!

Mel and I have been working diligently to rescue some of the wonderful articles and interviews from Creation Spirituality Magazine from its very first issue to its very last.  We are putting these on its own web page very soon and access will be free.  I was excited and pleased to see how many great articles were written and interviews offered over its 13 year history—articles that are still very relevant.  (I was also amazed to see how many I had written, just about one per issue).  Authors or Interviewees range from Jerry Brown to Buck Ghosthorse, from Joanna Macy to Bill Everson, from Jeremy Taylor (a regular) to Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry, from Charlene Spretnak to Starhawk and many, many more.  Thanks and kudos to all the editors over the years of the cs magazine.  It is nice to revisit it at this time in my life.

Nicole Porcaro has been working diligently on putting together a Manual for the Cosmic Mass and I have been overseeing the project.  She is drawing on the documents that Debra Martin brought together for her Manual when teaching the course on the TCM at the Ballroom plus history plus more.  We hope to have that Manual on line by February.  (Nicole is getting married in early January!  Send your blessings her way!)

Beginning in January and with the hard work of Diane Wolverton we are launching a teleconference course on “Mystics: Pioneers of Consciousness” taught weekly for 10 weeks (first week free) by yours truly.  We are hoping this will be a first “out of the gate” experience for starting an on-line teaching experience that is global and that is using the latest in technology that insures interaction among students and teacher as well.  You can go to www.CSourcewisdom.com.  Spread the word please!  Maybe we are resurrecting UCS in this teleconference format making it much cheaper and more accessible than ever before.  We shall see how it evolves.

I am working hard with Adam Bucko of NYC who is co-founder of “The Reciprocity Foundation” (see www.reciprocityfoundation.org) who has been working with street youth in NYC for six years.  We are writing a book together in dialog form about young adults and spirituality, have handed out lots of surveys and have also interviewed on film about twenty interesting young adults from Bay Area to Boulder to North Carolina to NYC.  So we are creating a film project as well.  We expect to have the book completed by February and the film later this year.

The work with Yellawe goes very strong in Chicago where Ted Richards is active with three Chicago versions of the project called “The Chicago Wisdom Project.”  (He is also commuting to NYC to work with New Seminary there).  In Oakland we have linked YELLAWE up with Kokomon Clottey’s project, “Art Esteem” and his and Aeesha’s Attitudinal Healing Project this Fall.  This month it morphs from an afterschool program at McClymonds high school to being an accredited afternoon in-school program and we all see that as a plus.

I am still on the road a lot with lectures, workshops and preaching.  And some Cosmic Masses in the works also.  I will be going to England and Scotland in the Spring for a series of lectures.  I remain very grateful to Aaron Stern and the Academy of the Love of Learning for their support and mutual work and vision. www.aloveoflearning.org Their new building in Santa Fe is a stunner and fully Leeds approved and above all full of wonderful activities.

I have been seeing more of Brian Swimme lately and share his joy that his life’s work of putting the “Journey of the Universe” to film is now getting a great hearing by being on so many PBS stations this season.  Surely Tom Berry is blessing the project.

I am currently writing an article on the Occupy Movement, a movement which I have great hopes for.  I have visited Occupy in Boston, NY, Ashville, Boulder, Oakland.  Lots of cs energy and principles there!  I will make the article available on line shortly.

A high point for me this year was going to Rome for the launch of the Italian version of my “Original Blessing” book—they launched it on the anniversary of Giordano Bruno’s burning at the stake in Rome in 1600 (he too was a Dominican and keen on spirituality in science).  A well known Italian philosopher wrote a very rich Introduction to the book (which is now in its fifth printing) and an Italian publisher is committed to publishing “The Pope’s War” and also “Creativity” (which is being translated by a fellow in Florence—seems like the perfect city).  While in Rome I posted an Italian translation of my 95 theses at Cardinal Law’s basilica on a Sunday morning.  Much drama with the Vatican police there in street clothing leading the attacks.  We, not they, remained non violent.

So that kind of brings you up to date from Oakland.  If you have some money to contribute to a still very viable non-profit called FCS, don’t hesitate to do so. www.mcssl.com/store/matthewfoxorg/books/donation If you don’t I fully understand.  You can help other ways by spreading the word and maybe stirring up some lecture invitations or pushing books or courses such as our on-line ones, etc.  And many thanks to Dennis for his continued and dogged work contributions to FCS—and to Dominic Flamiano too for his legal assistance.

Blessings on your Holidays and New Year Days for 2012!

Grateful for all you Be and Do,

Matthew Fox

Matthew Fox’s “The Pope’s War” came out in German in September. Below are three reviews from Germany about the book. An Italian version should be released next year.

Much Truth and Insights into Ratzinger’s Style of Leadership: A Review from Germany

M. Plotzki

This book is a must-read for every Catholic and interested Christian because it points out Ratzinger’s schemings and his way of fraudulently concealing facts in clear and factual language without becoming spiteful or biased.  (My compliments to the translator for the excellent translation.)

The book explains a “theology of obedience” that affects our every day lives.  A theology that conceals crimes against children and teenagers, deliberately keeps them secret and even shields, protects and promotes the bishops and cardinals involved.  Ratzinger argues for compassion where openness and justice should be called for. Is this an “intact theology.” one that can reach people and is open and willing to reform?

This book, that I highly recommend to every interested and questioning person, raises serious concerns in me and stirs me up.  As a former member of the Roman Catholic Church, I too belong to those Christians who lament the deterioration of a society that with this behavior sees itself deprived of another one of its supports.  The great amount of people leaving this institution point the same way.

Here and all over the world we find many examples showing how the Vatican operates–Ratzinger has silenced good theologians who had been teaching inspiring, stimulating messages – for instance in the issue of women’s rights – that could bring change. This has been done by dismissing them from the church against their own will.  This book explains the background and mechanisms involved in these cases. Matthew Fox, for whom I wish many readers for his book, belongs to this group of theologians compromised by the Vatican.

Perhaps this book will lead to an enhanced exchange between its readers, so that together we can focus on these grievances!  That would be desirable! As always change can only be brought about when we ourselves as members of our society become active and express ourselves!

Clarification and Truth About Ratzinger: A Review from Germany

Bernd Wagenbach, director of studies (retired)

Helga Simon-Wagenbach

For a long time I have critically studied the history of the church and vigilantly watched the scandalous ideas and activities from Ratzinger that have nothing to do with the teachings of Jesus. Of all the publications dealing with these problems, the outstanding book “Ratzinger und sein Kreuzzug”(in English, “The Pope’s War”) by Matthew Fox is particularly worth reading.

It contains very interesting information about the current pope including some that is to this point unknown and appalling – for example information concerning Opus Dei and the Legion of Christ.  Such an extraordinary and thrilling book as this, that serves the purpose of clarification and truth, should be warmly recommended like hardly any other!  It most definitely deserves a much larger dissemination.

Pope Benedict XVI– A Man of War and a “Murderer”of Theology? A Review from Germany

Roland R. Ropers

philosopher of religion and publicist

The American theologian and former Dominican Monk Matthew Fox, who is known worldwide, describes with brilliant clarity Ratzinger’s thirty year long dictatorship in the Vatican and his part in the cover-up of pedophile scandals and inquisition-like crusades against a large number of theologians and spiritual teachers who don’t conform to his political views and his course back into the religious Dark Ages.

It is obvious that Joseph Ratzinger has exchanged his soul for power.  Matthew Fox refers to Pope Benedict XVI as a “murderer of theology” and a “man of war.”  The current book of the now 71 year old professor of Creation Spirituality is appalling and illustrates how fraudulent and far from Christ the institution of the Roman-Catholic “faith corporation” has been steered.

At the end of his diagnosis Matthew Fox, among other things, points out 25 tangible steps for the revitalization of Christian communities.  Everyone who still relies on Pope Benedict and the cardinals, bishops and priests enslaved by him should very attentively read this book. It is about the urgently needed revolution of spirituality.

The Other Side of the Catholic Tradition

by Matthew Fox

(A shortened version of this article appeared in The Washington Post 061411:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/guest-voices/post/the-other-side-of-the-catholic-tradition/2011/06/14/AGQuyeUH_blog.html)

People who came of age in the past forty years have known only one version of the Roman Catholic Church—a version of an iron-fisted ideology that first a Polish pope and then a German pope have enforced in the process of condemning liberation theology, creation spirituality, women, gays, the “secular world,” and much more.  Not only all bishop-making has accrued to the Vatican headquarters but also all teaching, calling itself the only “magisterium” or teaching arm of the church to whom all must kneel or get out.  Since “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely”, as Catholic historian Lord Acton observed on hearing of the declaration of Papal Infallibility in the nineteenth century, we have also seen of late immense corruption in the way the hierarchy has and has not responded to pedophile clergy and in the way it has denounced theologians and others who bring ideas to an age-old tradition. Read the rest of this entry »

Memorial Day, 2011

By Matthew Fox

Yesterday I watched a film on PBS called “Most Honorable Son” which told the story of a Japanese American’s life as an airman in the American army in the Second World War.  It was a moving film for its reminding us of the many sacrifices so many made at home and abroad to defeat fascism.  400,000 Americans lost their lives in the wars in Europe, North Africa and the Pacific islands while defeating Germany, Italy and Japan.  Sixteen million Americans served in combat.  Many hundreds of thousands lost limbs or retained physical or mental scars from their combat days.  And the subject of the documentary, airman Ben Kuroki, endured much else as a decorated hero who had to fight racism in his own country and projections of betrayal from his Japanese people who were in concentration camps in the West while he served in air combat over France and Germany. Read the rest of this entry »

Cosmic Wonder, Human Opportunity

by Matthew Fox

This is a review of:  THE NEW UNIVERSE AND THE HUMAN FUTURE: HOW A SHARED COSMOLOGY COULD TRANSFORM THE WORLD by Nancy Ellen Abrams and Joel R. Primack        Yale Press, 2011

This book is in every sense of the word, a prophetic book. Its message ranks right up there with those of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Joel. Like the prophets, it is at times poetic, demanding, grounded, soaring, empowering, and always awe-inspiring.

Rabbi Heschel says the essence of the prophet’s work is to interfere, and Joel Primack and Nancy Abrams are doing nothing if they are not interfering. They are interfering with apathy, couch-potato-itis, anthropocentrism, and despair by inspiring us with the newly found reasons we have for waking up, getting involved, and resisting dumb media, amoral education, and frozen religious ideologies. They inspire us to do what prophets do: give birth to justice from a newly born heart, a newly born consciousness. And to shout the dangerous paths, the ways of folly, we are on. This book does all that and more. Read the rest of this entry »

101 Reasons for not Canonizing Pope John Paul II

by Matthew Fox

Pope Benedict XVI is in a big hurry to canonize his former boss Pope John Paul II, who hired him as Director of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith (formerly known as the Holy Office of the Inquisition) in 1981 and stood by him for 23 years as he brought back the Inquisition contrary to the letter and spirit of Vatican II.

Following are 101 reasons not to rush. Read the rest of this entry »

Some Thoughts on Good Friday, Easter Sunday and Beyond

by Matthew Fox

April 22, 2011

Michael Lerner has asked me to write a few thoughts about the message of Good Friday and Easter.  I appreciate his invitation, a sign of the meaning of deep ecumenism and what we have to learn from each others faith traditions.

To me, the “paschal mystery” of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus the rabbi is an archetypal reminder about how, as science now teaches us, all things in the cosmos live, die and resurrect.  Supernovas, galaxies, solar systems, planets, beings that inhabit our planet—we all have our time of existence and of passing out of existence.  But we leave something behind for further generations and that constitutes resurrection.  Read the rest of this entry »

Just before we started the event I asked my 30 year old woman translator if she was scared.  “No,” she said. “Even though we don’t know what is going to happen, I am looking forward to it.  It is important that we do this and what happens will happen.”  Courage!  Always a sign of the spirit.

The action at Cardinal Law’s basilica was memorable for many reasons: the crowd that gathered (it was announced beforehand in the paper), their questions; their passion in taking on the policemen especially around the right to hang the theses on a gate; the beauty of the morning with sun shining from an all-blue sky; the length of time we stayed there—about 80 minutes (much larger gathering than Wittenberg);  the Vatican plainclothes police with dark sun glasses staring at me the whole time; and above all the strategy and courage of the young people who created the excellent poster which looked like a medieval Manuscript in a large type that yet was practical and easy to read; their flexibility in adapting to the policemen’s tactics, for example they smartly engaged the moment and the Vatican plain clothed police when the crowd had dispersed.  I was away from this engagement but saw dramatic interaction from where I was.  I so look forward to seeing their film.  I especially wonder if Stephano the filmer got the attack by the Vatican thugs of the second film maker on film?

How right Barbara was about 1) Vatican police dictating orders to Roman police and 2) the thugs that are policing the Vatican these days. Just as I learned after my Wittenberg action how much darker the Vatican was than I had anticipated, so with this Italian, Roman, action, I learned how much darker still were the forces and veritable police state ruling not only Vatican City but, in many respects, Rome itself.  Penny Lernoux’ words are chilling: “Ratzinger is only a front man for the German-Polish mafia,” she said.  Or Barbara’s words: “The Vatican is run by a gang of mafia thugs.”

Our protest was non-violent and remained that way in the face of violence on the part of the Vatican police.  Are Italians forbidden to preach or to listen to a preacher in a public square?  Was the Basilica event an historic moment?  One of empowerment for Italians vis a vis the church?  Consider that Italy never underwent the Protestant Reformation (but only the counter-Reformation of the Council of Trent).

Our videographers and photographers were taking pictures of the police videographers and photographers and vice versa.  It was like a scene from old East Germany.  The Stasi.  That was the feeling emanating from the Vatican police.

Before we began, one of our people went into the church to scout things out.  Many policemen were inside.  He went up to one and said, “I heard there was going to be a demonstration here today,” (or something close to that) and the policeman got very agitated and said: “No there won’t be.  We will see to that.”  So that was our first clue that our demonstration would be outdoors and even outside the fence.  But as it happened, even that distance was not enough to satisfy the Vatican police (who apparently have very broad jurisdiction in Rome itself).  During the course of my presentation and the q and a period of about 80 minutes, the sheet containing the theses were taken down (I took them back at one point from the policeman who took them down), put up again, taken down, held up by some of the participants standing by, etc. etc.  Up-down, Up down, Up-down.

A man who asked some very sophisticated questions about my presentation (he had the air of a lawyer about him and was of mature age), ended up in a shouting match with the policeman who was literally receiving phone calls from higher ups on his ear phone telling him what to do.  From the pained look on his face I had the distinct impression that he wished he was elsewhere—like rescuing a cat stranded in a tree or even a spouse form domestic abuse or handing out traffic violations—just anywhere other than in a church courtyard on a Sunday morning being dictated to by plainclothes police with their phones in their ear and hearing a presenter calling for a religious reformation (or revolution?).  The shouting match between the police and this “lawyer” person was about 1) who owned the property we stood on and 2) Who owned the fence demarcating this property from the church steps and on which we hung the theses.  The “lawyer” said in an angry voice to the policeman, “my taxes paid for this sidewalk and fence so keep your hands off the preacher’s theses.”  There was considerable back and forth.

Meanwhile, “radio radicale” was there the entire time with a microphone in my and the translator’s face and with a number of questions posed as soon as I finished my presentation.  My presentation followed my 4 points I laid out in my “New Reformation” book—how our day paralleled Luther’s day in four respects: 1) invention of printing press/invention of electronic media 2) politics as rise of nationalism/politics as globalization and sparks of democracy 3) rise of humanist scholarship of which Luther was a part/rise of scientific and theological scholarship of our time and 4) corruption in the highest places of the church/corruption in the highest places of the church including Cardinal Law overseeing this particular cathedral, he who passed one priest from parish to parish who abused 150 boys and who now sits on a commission in the Vatican appointing bishops around the world!  A woman professor told me she took a 3 hours train ride to be present for the event.  She taught anthropology and religion and invited me to come to her university to lecture—they would pay for my trip to Italy she said.

Before we began, one man came up to me who was about 44 years old and said: “I no longer call myself a Catholic but simply a Christian.”

All the while the young members of our team were alert and smiling and doing their assigned tasks whether taking video, guarding the theses, mixing with the group, translating, photographing the cops, hanging around me for protection.  (They had arranged all that beforehand among themselves with no coaching from me.)  They did it with smiles on their faces. They gathered with the plainclothes Vatican cops when the event had finished and argued vociferously about their demands to see their papers and my documents as well.  “We have done no crime so you have no right to demand our papers,” they declared.  But maybe they had committed a crime.  The crime of inviting people on church soil to think.

Their final act was to keep the thug Vatican cops demanding my papers engaged while one of their group quietly slipped away, came rapidly up to me and said “walk away fast” to the taxi stand at the side of the church.  Drama.  A day of drama.  Working with the young people was marvelous.  They were alert, flexible, prepared, strong, smiling, committed, competent, brave.  Intergenerational wisdom indeed!  Intergenerational courage also.

A number of people requested copies of the theses to read and study.  We told them that they would be posted in the Italian version on the Fazi web page.  Among phrases I heard from thoughtful Italians in conversation during my visit: “The church is dead.”  “We are a culture today with no new ideas. Old people are running things in a very old way.”  “Unemployment among the young is at 24%.  Many are being supported by their grandparents and parents even after college graduation sincere there are no jobs to be had.”  “A growing tension between the young and old.”  “Old money is running everything. “ People are scared with the bad economy.  The women’s movement is very weak.  “We are a conservative country.  Even liberal minded people have trouble imagining women priests.”  You can get a college degree for just $2000 per year but there are no jobs after school.  “The one thing Italy gives the world consistently is…Beauty.  That is our only gift to the world.”

I ask myself: Why are the Italians seemingly so keen on my work at this time?  One reason is the timing.  There is a lot of anger among Catholics and it is clear that first a Polish papacy and then a German papacy have not always sat well with Italians.  Another is that there is no love lost for Ratzinger himself.  In my time there and even near St Peter’s I did not see one poster for sale of Pope Ratzinger.  Another is that Aquinas with his non-dualistic philosophy is SO Italian in spirit in so many ways and the Augustinian mind-sets of the two recent popes is not at all of the Aquinas mind-set.  Furthermore, we need to remind ourselves that the Protestant Reformation did not penetrate Italy; it affected it by way of the counter-reformation but that did not question the powers of the papacy.  My 95 theses do put deeper questions.  Is calling for a Reformation in the church today rousing a sleeping giant in Italy?  The Italian capacity for real spirituality in the creation spiritual tradition is vast.  Is the Roman Catholic church, together with the media, not perfectly set up for non-violent resistance? For church-step sit ins?  For filling the jails?  For exposing the darkness of the Vatican and its ways at this time in history?

All in all, it was a most amazing trip—perhaps the most amazing gig in my life.  The people I met from the publishing house, Vito and our public dialog at the amazing conference of writers, his passion and radical critical mind, the many serious and passionate and intellectually-solid interviews on radio, in magazines and newspapers, and the amazing TV program.  The filming and event at Law’s Basilica.  Much to remember and to build on.

The abuse at the hands of church has been going on for so many centuries—buttressed by an ideology of suffering and penance and sin, that I had no idea what Romans have suffered at in the hands of the Roman Catholic church.  This is one reason a number of commentators called “original blessing” a “Copernican revolution” for a religion based on punitive images of God and a consciousness of sin. A difficult thing to do, to change it. I recall a Native American woman who was also a Catholic returning from a ceremony at the Vatican to beatify Blessed Tekawitha: “There are evil spirits in that place, (i.e. the Vatican)” she recalled.

I think most Catholics today—Italy, Ireland, United States, Latin America and parts in between—are in a complete state of disgust.  This morning’s Boston Globe quotes some Catholics in Ireland.  One says: “When we were growing up, you believed in the church more so than you believed in God….Now the whole thing is transformed.  You believe in God but you don’t believe in the church.”  And a priest, Fr. Tony Cullen, says: “I’d like to see the clerical church die, and the proper church emerge, the church of the people.”  What to do?  How create new structures?  Stay and fight?  Abandon it altogether?  Fight from the outside?  All of the above?  One thing is certain: The clerical church is dying.

The following interview appeared in the Italian Newspaper, Corriere della Sera , on Feb 17, 2011, the day that Matthew Fox’s Original Blessing appeared in Italy in Italian.  It begins with a brief paragraph.  The Italian interview was shortened so here, for English-speaking readers, is the fuller interview (the bracket signs are for parts left out in the Italian version).  Photos included in the newspaper included Fox nailing 95 theses at the door in Wittenburg church.

“I Challenge the Church Like Luther”

Matthew Fox: Stop the obsession with sin: Rediscover St. Thomas Read the rest of this entry »