Thursday, June 30, 2011

Matthew Fox on the Rancid Boys' Club Running (and Destroying) the Catholic Church



Matthew Fox, in an interview with Candace Chellew-Hodge at Religion Dispatches, speaking about his new book The Pope’s War: Why Ratzinger’s Secret Crusade has Imperiled the Church and How it Can be Saved:


I think the Vatican in its present state is beyond redemption. I think it is a very closed boy’s club. I have a section in the book on bullying. Ratzinger is a bully. I know him. He was in a 12-year battle with me before he won, I guess, and expelled me. Part of bullying, according to the studies that I’ve found, is that the bully likes a wolf pack. That wolf pack is the Curia (the central governing body of the Roman Catholic Church). It’s interesting that he appointed 24 cardinals in December and ten of them are in the Curia. They have lots of power and it’s a very tight circle, which is of course why they don’t want women in the club, it’s a boy’s club.

The point I make in the book is that the laypeople have to take over the church, period. It’s not going to be reformed from the inside, or from the top down, at all. It’s rancid, and so, these people have to assert themselves and that’s the next step, for laypeople to realize it’s their church. They should only hire ministers who are willing to serve and not to be served, and that means starting over.

Fox's book includes a list of 92 theologians whom John Paul II and Ratzinger/Benedict have "silenced and expelled and beaten up and bloodied" during their two disastrous papacies.  His own name is on that list.

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