Customer Reviews

Confessions: The Making of a Postdenominational Priest

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Much of what Matt Fox has to offer is contained in the first and last chapters. His thought and theology and philosophy are peppered throughtout the entire book and it is not hard to read. But the seemingly endless accounts of adulation get quite heavy. I find the title perhaps a bit off the mark. He has a great deal to offer in his personal story, the soaring heights and the times of disappointment and even despair. It would be more enlightening to read what HE felt and thought, and less of what his admirers said and wrote about him.

By Steven B. Herrmann 4/4/10
Author of "William Everson: The Shaman's Call."

I was asked by Anglican Episcopal Priest, Matthew Fox, to write a review of his book which I am happy to do. Fox speaks of his "story about the coming of age spirituality in the latter half of the twentieth century" (2) in the form of a "cultural autobiography" (3). In reading this book, one gets a sense that Fox is contextualizing his life-story in the "larger story of our coming of age" (3). In a Journal entry from Fox's approach to his fifty-third year, he writes about his decision to become an Anglican priest in vocational terms; by narrowing the vocation-question down to how he might serve the younger generation, and young one's to come, given his remaining "powers" (6), Fox says his becoming an Episcopalian was his answer to a call to assist young people to "reinvent forms of religion/spirituality" and "help creation spirituality come alive again" (12). By creation spirituality he means amongst other things, the fourfold path he discovered in his reading of our biblical tradition and the Christian mystics: 1) Via Positiva, delight, awe, wonder, revelry, 2) Via Negativa, darkness, silence, suffering, letting go, 3) Via Creativa, birthing, creativity, and 4) Via Transformativia, compassion, justice, healing, celebration (283). The early chapters of the book tell his story of coming of age. But the story heats up after the writing of his book Original Blessing. He says had a dream of a dancing, musical, mystical bear, and he later learned that worship of the bear is one of the oldest forms of worship in North America; the bear is said by indigenous peoples to have redemptive and healing powers. In reflecting on this dream, Fox thought: "What a perfect Christ-image for North American spirituality!" (93). The source of the controversy that eventually led to his bear-fight with the Vatican began with a talk he gave to "Dignity," an organization of gay and lesbian lay Catholics in Seattle. Little did Fox know, in giving this talk, what the reverberations would be in Rome and how the rumblings from our current Pope would send shock waves to Chicago to California and eventually be felt in his life. Fox's calling to penetrate the roots of the creation-spirituality tradition in America led him into a direct confrontation with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) spearheaded by then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. Complaints reached the inquisitional Cardinal in Rome from Seattle following Fox's keynote address for the gay and lesbian Catholic group Dignity and it was not long after he set up shop at Holy Names in Oakland that Ratzinger began his condemnation of the central thesis of Original Blessing, and Fox's treatment of homosexuality in that text aroused all of the Cardinal's anxiety, as he complained to the Father General, it "is neither inspired by Scriptures, nor by the Doctrine of the Church" (168). Part of Fox's vocation as an Episcopal priest, has been to restore into creation spirituality the erotic mysticism that the Church has been lacking, including a warm embrace of feminism and homosexuality. For surely, a central part of the evolution of Western spirituality, Fox asserts, has been not only to make it more ecumenical, but to make final "peace" with our sexuality (237). This battle is part and parcel of America's fight for spiritual democracy, as instanced by the poetry and prose of Whitman. Perhaps, because Ratzinger's complaints to the Magesterium were not completely unfounded, as there is no evidence in Scripture for the divinity of homosexuality, Fox found himself in the middle of a quarrel within the Catholic Church itself that had no apparent solution in sight, short of a possible end of the tyranny of the Roman Catholic era, in preparation for a rebirth of something entirely new. Such an end does not appear to be in sight, and being a visionary by nature, Fox was far ahead of his times. There is something, I believe, in his Bear-fight with the Vatican that is sure to please, or outrage readers, and it is this very involvement with issues that are in question today that can lift our spirits and deepen us down into a more feminine earth-based wisdom: Gaia as our Mother-wisdom. By moving us to listen to the ancient wisdom and voices of the Goddess (Godhead) and Native peoples of the earth (shamans and medicine people), we will hopefully open our ears to God's cosmic music of the spheres, and learn how to dance together, before it is too late. Fox's vision of the Bear and the Cosmic Christ instills hope in the future direction of religion. Only through the transformation of religion as we have known it, will a new birth in spirituality come about. Confessions gives me hope that spiritual democracy may indeed prove to be the way of the future.

A great book on the effect big government in the church has on people that speak their mind. As far as the reviewer that said - that this work was "too self involved"..... It's a memoir! Read the book.. It's worth it.

Of course anyone claiming to be a "devout Catholic" will not like Matthew Fox and his view of the Vatican! Fox is an amazing theologian who thoughtfully and decisively rips Christianity free of patriarchy. Of course he would be ex-communicated, he was too threatening to the mysogonistic powers that be in the Roman church. People who understand and appreciate Fox's liberating theology will enjoy this insight into his life as a priest. Status quo Roman Catholics shouldn't bother.

The following is more a suggestion to the author and to the publisher, should they consider a new edition, than a review of the first one (1996). Yet I trust that its content may motivate some undecided Catholics to dare to read this amazing book.
After living such a committed and dedicated life as a Dominican priest for 34 years, the author Matthew Fox could not but come through it more tempered, more mature, and more clear minded than he has proved himself to be in this revealing autobiography. I salute his rare courage and his generosity and honesty in allowing us, his readers, to share in not only his joyous moments but also in his most trying ones. Given the value to me of the genuine gift I have received from reading this book, I am moved to dare suggest that should the publisher ever consider reprinting it, the author should consider relocating to its chronological position the material of the first chapter having to do with his becoming an Episcopal priest. In my view, there are many undecided readers who in the end would be most thankful to the author for presenting the events leading to his heart-wrenching decision but that upon learning so early in the book that a former Catholic priest has in their view turned his back to the Church to join another Christian denomination, they would not be willing to proceed any further in order to discover why he came to do so. I can appreciate the genuine scruple the author might have had at the idea of `leading' readers that otherwise `would have never wanted to know' to the discovery that indeed "the Emperor has no cloths!". In this respect, the author should accept the fact that any Catholic reader picking up a book with that specific title will be expecting the author to deliver on his implied promise `to unravel the truth before God'. In short, that becomes where the author's sole responsibility lies, instead of in the use of "at your own risks" preliminaries to shoo away hesitant readers, and Matthew Fox has risen to that challenge most honestly. In my view, by choosing to start his book the way he did, Matthew Fox has unwittingly voiced a "sorry but it's my fault"-type of response too often heard from victims of `psychological abuse', the latter being too valid a literal statement with regards to the behavior of his former ecclesiastical family. (May 2004)

Perhaps the best line in the book is the quote by a lawyer advising Fox, who tells him not to worry because "One day the Vatican will come tumbling down like the Berlin Wall."For that line alone the book is worth the price of admission, but there's much much more.

Although Fox seems to be a well-read and rather intelligent man in his own right, there is too much hateful attacking in this book to make it worthwhile. He goes beyond mere theological argument, making below-the-waist comments, such as referring to Cardinal Ratzinger as a facist Nazi (a racist comparison), saying he and other theologians comprise a "German mafia" within the Vatican, and digging up anti-Semetic comments made by a pope in the 1500's to demonstrate how today's Church is anti-Jewish.
One will find in reading his autobiography that, as a young Dominican in France involved in the controversial student revolution, his superior told him to cease his involvement in the movement or return home. He replied with an open letter attacking the superior for being out of touch with the spirit of the students. A second time, when the council nullified his election to subprior, he got all the Dominican students upset, causing discord within the order. A third time, as the Vatican gave him a year of silence, he sent out an open letter, accusing the Vatican of being sex-obsessed, and a dysfunctional family.
It doesn't take too long before one notices a pattern in Fox's life of playing the role of victim and causing an uproar. This book is just one more instance of that.

rather than a thoughtful autobiography. When Fox has time, a more nuanced, better organized spiritual autobiography would be most welcome.

If ever a 'guru' was utterly taken in by his own self-righteousness then Matthew Fox is the man. A strange gobbledygook mixture of gaia gnosticism and pseudo-platonism couched in terms hijacked from christian theology, Fox hardly misses a page to vent against the Vatican (which excommunicated him after he was expelled by the Dominican order) whilst prattling on about his stunning insights into the Mystery Of It All. More humility and less vitriol would have kept this book from being so tedious -- and probably kept Fox faithful to the Truth.

I don't know whether this exercise is motivated by ego-tripping or salesmanship. I read these things because as a teacher of sociology I have to. Why anyone else should waste ten seconds on it is beyond me. The idiotic comparison of the Vatican and the Berlin Wall is sufficient proof of the crassness and intellectual bankruptcy of the book.