Rob Kall:
Papalolatry. Interesting
term. So, OK. You've got this vision. "Humans have to wake up, and a healthy church
would be leading the way in that." What
would that look like as it emerges? And
there are what, 1.3 billion Catholics?
How would it grow? How would it
become habit and identity and recognition?
How would the Vatican respond to it, or has it responded to it? I guess it's already responded to it in terms
of Liberation Theology, but if, as you're saying, "It's time now for something
new to emerge," how will it look? Tell
me a bit about that.
Matthew Fox:
One thing is, it would be ecumenical, what I call "Deep ecumenism
(oecumenism?)" With that I mean, let's make out the essence, the distillation
of the teachings of Jesus and Buddha and Mohammed and Isaiah and Lao Tzu and
Black Elk and other great spiritual teachers of the world. I think that clearly no one religion has all
the answers, we're all struggling today as a species, and so we can draw common
wisdom. I've written a book on this
called One River, Many Wells, where I take eighteen [18] themes that I
think are common to all of humans today.
It's about survival, the sacredness of creation, for example. The whole environmental issue. Meditation, calming that reptilian brain that
we have. All religions teach how to do
these things.
Compassion: the
Dalai Lama says "we can do away with all religions, but we can't do away with
compassion. Compassion is my religion." Well, cool!
That's what Jesus said too: " Be you
compassionate as your Creator in heaven is compassionate." So, there is a consensus out there that's at
the heart of our religion. If you stay
at the superficial level, then you don't get down to this stuff and you're just
talking about people in white robes, or my bible is better than your bible, and
all the rest. We can't afford that
anymore as a species.
So, that's one
dimension, the ecumenical. But of
course, for that to work, you have to get into your own tradition, and say
"What was the essence of what Jesus what about?
What did he really teach, and what Spirit did he unleash in the
world?" And that's where it gets
interesting and exciting, and very, very beautiful, because Jesus was a revolutionary
teacher about love and justice, and he took down the empire of his day, the
Roman Empire, and he knew he was doing it.
After all, his mentor John the Baptist was beheaded when Jesus was a
young man because he took on the empire.
So, that kind of
courage, that kind of spirit of generosity is what the great Christians through
the years, whether it's Martin Luther King Jr., or Hildegaard of Bingen, the
great saint, and so forth, and what they accomplished. So it's doable, and it's brilliant, and it's
beautiful. The West doesn't have to
apologize for the beauty that's in the Jewish tradition of the prophetic
standing up to power. We have to do
more of it. Much more of it. Of course when we don't, then of course we
have things like the Holocaust and the horrible goings on that occur whenever
humans put power ahead of love.
Rob Kall:
So, what I'm asking though, is what does it look like? You're doing something with Andrew Harvey
that is moving in this direction. Are there
already some churches, some organizations some groups that are doing what
you're talking about? How can people
find this as an alternative to what they've been getting from Ratzinger and his
Right wing Cardinals?
Matthew Fox:
Good question. Yes. I've been teaching Creation Spirituality for
forty [40] years, which is this tradition of justice and creativity, peace and
wisdom, and incorporating the Divine Feminine along with the Sacred
Masculine. There's a website, there's an
organization called Creation Spirituality communities, CSC. They have many groups all over the country,
all over the world, really, practicing these things, and we've had schools and
so forth, and many people are teaching this.
Harvey has a group called "Sacred Activism," so that's another organization. ]
There are many
organizations like this, and I think now is the time for more and more
networking, because there is a lot of exploration going on out there. Do you know how many Jewish people have
become Buddhist in the last thirty years, or at least have incorporated
Buddhism? That's a powerful thing
too. The protest energy of Judaism, the
prophetic tradition and the intellectual tradition of Judaism, along with the
more serene, if you will, more contemplative tradition of Buddhism, that is a
very powerful combination. A lot of
people, of course from my generation, I'm in my young seventies [70s] now, went
East for their spirituality, but a lot of them feel called, too, to incorporate
that into their Western ancestry, and so forth.
That's a lot that's going on.
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