Benedict XVI Blessing-1.
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Duluth, Minnesota (OpEdNews) January 4, 2023: In commemoration of the recent death of the retired Pope Benedict XVI (1927-2022; reigned 2005-2013), I want to recycle my OEN article "Matthew Fox's Critique of the Roman Catholic Church" (dated June 25, 2011). It is a meditation on Fox's 2011 book The Pope's War: Why Ratzinger's Secret Crusade Has Imperiled the Church and How It Can Be Saved (New York: Sterling Ethos). Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was elected Pope Benedict XVI in 2005. Figuratively speaking, Fox's 2011 book is about Ratzinger/Benedict's greatest hits. He resigned as pope in 2013. May he rest in peace.
Duluth, Minnesota (OpEdNews) June 24, 2011: In THE POPE'S
WAR: WHY RATZINGER'S SECRET CRUSADE HAS IMPERILED THE CHURCH AND HOW IT CAN BE
SAVED (2011), Matthew Fox has written a thorough and mostly temperate critique
of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI. Even though some of the cases
highlighted by Fox do not involve Americans, other cases do, including of
course Fox's own case. In any event, liberal Americans who are concerned about
the Christian right in the
Fox (born 1940) was silenced for one year in 1988 by then-Cardinal Ratzinger (born 1927). Three years later, Ratzinger expelled Fox from the Dominican religious order. But Fox was welcomed into the Anglican communion and has served as an Episcopal priest since 1994.
Fox is the prolific author of twenty-eight books. His books have been translated into forty-two languages and have sold in total more than 1.5 million copies. He was the first person to translate into English the work of the twelfth-century Benedictine abbess and mystic Hildegard von Bingen. Fox also translated into English a generous selection of the writings of Meister Eckhart, the fourteenth-century Dominican priest, preacher, and mystic, which has been reissued recently as PASSION FOR CREATION: THE EARTH-HONORING SPIRITUALITY OF MEISTER ECKHART (2000; originally published in 1980 as BREAKTHROUGH). In his 550-page book titled SHEER JOY: CONVERSATIONS WITH THOMAS AQUINAS ON CREATION SPIRITUALITY (1992), Fox has imaginatively constructed conversations between the famous thirteenth-century Dominican theologian Thomas Aquinas and himself, featuring of course selections from Aquinas's writings organized into back-and-forth conversations with Fox. By doing this, Fox brings out how one of the heavyweights of Catholic theology thought thoughts that are similar to the thoughts that Fox himself has been setting forth as creation spirituality.
For Ratzinger/Benedict's long-time critics, Fox's new book about Ratzinger/Benedict will probably not offer them much new information about Ratzinger/Benedict. Nevertheless, Fox has done a good job of enumerating and explaining clearly Ratzinger/Benedict's many misguided mistakes. Unfortunately, conservative American Catholics actually admire Ratzinger/Benedict. As a result, they will probably not be interested in Fox's critique of Ratzinger/Benedict.
One of the greatest strengths of Fox's lucid book about
Ratzinger/Benedict is his discussion of grief in the last chapter. Fox lists
more than a dozen items that have led many Catholics in the
As a result of their feelings of betrayal, I would suggest that they are feeling abandonment feelings such as the abandonment feelings that Susan Anderson insightfully discusses in her fine book THE JOURNEY FROM ABANDONMENT TO HEALING (2000).
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