Matthew Fox is an amazing spiritual and compassionate person. He was a catholic priest until he was kicked out in the early 90's for teaching Creation Spirituality.
He is now an Episcopal priest and lives in Oakland,Ca. He also founded the University of Creation Spirituality http://www.matthewfox.org/...
Amazingly, it is the current pope who censured him as Cardinal Ratzinger.
Here is a letter that Fox sent to Cardinal Ratzinger:
http://www.matthewfox.org/...
A dysfunctional organization communicates only indirectly (p.139). A system of triangulation exists wherein there are no direct communications with the victims, but only indirect ones. There is talk about the victim but never with the victim. This approach has been used by your Congregation regarding me for over four years. Secretiveness is a part of the dysfunctional system. And there is "little or no straight talk" (pp.141-42).
There is something really troubling about the current pope.
Here is an interview with him from 2006:
http://www.themonthly.com/...
PK: Are you and the current Pope ever going to bury the hatchet?
MF: Well I do know him rather well ’cause I was in a prolonged battle for 12 years. His tactics were extremely disrespectful. Remember, he didn’t shut me up, he shut up 107 other theologians. What does that mean for the Catholic Church? It means a deliberate dumbing down. It’s really dumb to pass a pedophile priest from parish to parish. When that scandal broke I was teaching a doctoral of ministry course here in Oakland and there was a woman executive in the class and she said when this happens in business the CEO’s gone in 24 hours, no questions asked. Now that’s a good policy but none of it happened in Boston. The Cardinal there didn’t quit for two and a half years and when he quit they gave him a plum assignment in Rome running the fourth-century Basilica. The guy wasn’t punished at all. He ought to be in jail for what he did. So you just have to stand back and say what kind of an organization is this?
So basically, the church is not really interested in teaching religion or spirituality. It is just like a corporation; it's all about power and money.
Here is a prescient statement from the same interview:
PK: Looking in your crystal ball, do you see some of these reforms happening in the next 50 to 100 years?
MF: First of all it’s kind of like packing the Supreme Court—what the previous Pope did in appointing the kind of Cardinals he did. Unfortunately they’re all chips off the old block. There are not many creative, intelligent men of conscience who have that role at this time in history. I wouldn’t hold my breath. The late D. Griffith before he died, he was a great monk in southern India, he said to me don’t worry about the Vatican. Don’t put any energy there. It’s all going to come tumbling down one day just like the Berlin Wall overnight. I think there’s such a lack of credibility there that I think it is crumbling. I’m thinking about the future of the faith and of people finding as authentic an expression of what Jesus stood for and what the great saints of the Church stood for over the years.
That is what seems to be happening today. If you ever get a chance to attend one of his lectures you should; it is a very inspiring experience.
He is big on creation stories and says all cultures have them, and that we need these stories to inspire us.
It really is horrifying how the church is hunkering down and completely in denial about everything that is happening.