Rebel Priest Sentenced to Year of Silence

Matthew Fox, a Dominican priest who has mixed liberal New Age philosophy with Roman Catholic doctrine, has been sentenced to a year of silence by the Vatican, according to a report in a Catholic newspaper.

Fox, who has previously said he was not afraid to be labeled a heretic, will be prohibited from speaking publicly or publishing his writings, effective Dec. 15, said a report in the National Catholic Reporter, a liberal weekly published in Kansas City.

Founder of the Institute in Culture and Creation Spirituality at Holy Names College in Oakland, Fox has come under fire for hiring faculty members who include a certified masseuse, a Zen Buddhist and a self-described witch named Starhawk, who teaches classes on ritual-making and sexuality, and spirituality in “native religions.”

Fox, 47, has scheduled a news conference in San Francisco on Thursday to discuss the Vatican’s action.

The Vatican, according to the National Catholic Reporter, has also ordered Holy Names College to sever its ties with Fox’s institute. School officials said Tuesday they will issue a statement after Fox’s news conference.

Fox’s teachings have been under review since 1985 by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, whose Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith ordered Father Charles Curran dismissed in 1986 from the faculty of Catholic University in Washington for holding views on sexual ethics that deviate from orthodox church teaching.

Action against Fox could revive tensions between the Vatican and the U.S. church that surfaced during the Curran controversy and after Rome disciplined liberal Seattle Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen for apparent laxity in pastoral administration.

The National Catholic Reporter said Fox will partially defy the Vatican order by taking a one-semester sabbatical.

“This work is just too pressing to be postponed until a neurotic papal regime dies out,” Fox was quoted as saying. He reportedly referred to the Vatican action as “a compliment. It shows our influence is growing so much that they feel threatened.”

The curriculum at Fox’s institute emphasizes Christian mysticism, feminism and environmentalism.

“Diversity is one of the riches of Catholicism, but one wonders if it is being sacrificed for the sake of conformity and control,” Fox said in an interview with The Times in late 1986.

‘Recreate the Inquisition’

“I think it’s a scandal that grown men in the 1980s are using their God-given imaginations to recreate the Inquisition when there is so much pain and suffering in the world, so much abuse of Mother Earth and children and artists,” the priest said then.

Fox declined to elaborate Tuesday on Vatican objections to his teachings or to describe the reaction of his superiors in the Dominican order. Earlier, he had said the charges included accusations that he does not believe in “original sin,” that his “creation spirituality” does not clearly deny a belief in pantheism--the view that everything is God and God is everything--and that he “feminizes the concept of God” and does not condemn homosexual practice.

Fox has said he favors optional celibacy for Catholic priests and the ordination of women--both contrary to positions of the Roman Catholic Church.

When news of the Vatican investigation was reported three years ago, Fox said he was “not upset if people call me a heretic.”

“Joan of Arc was condemned, burned at the stake and then declared a saint,” the Dominican said then.

Popular Lecturer

A popular lecturer at interfaith gatherings, the soft-spoken Fox holds master’s degrees in philosophy and theology from the Aquinas Institute, a Dominican college and seminary now located in St. Louis, and a doctorate in spirituality from the Institute Catholique de Paris. He founded the Institute in Culture and Creation Spirituality in Chicago in 1977 and moved it to Oakland in 1983.