Matthew Fox (priest)

Timothy James "Matthew" Fox (born December 21, 1940) is an American priest and theologian. Formerly a member of the Dominican Order within the Catholic Church, he became a priest in the Episcopal Church following his expulsion from the order in 1993.

Fox has written 35 books that have been translated into 68 languages and have sold millions of copies and by the mid-1990s had attracted a "huge and diverse following".

Timothy James Fox was born in Madison, Wisconsin. In 1959, when he entered the Catholic Dominican Order (the Order of Preachers), he was given the religious name "Matthew". He received masters degrees in both philosophy and theology from the Aquinas Institute of Philosophy and Theology and later earned a Doctorate of Spiritual Theology, summa cum laude, from the Institut Catholique de Paris, studying with Marie-Dominique Chenu who named the Creation Spirituality tradition for him. It was Thomas Merton, the Catholic monk, who steered Fox to study at the Institut Catholique de Paris. After receiving his doctorate, Fox began teaching at a series of Catholic universities, including Loyola University in Chicago and Barat College of the Sacred Heart in Lake Forest, Illinois.

In 1976, Fox moved to Chicago's Mundelein College (now part of Loyola University) to start the Institute of Culture and Creation Spirituality (ICCS), a master's program in Creation Spirituality with a unique pedagogy that integrated both left and right brain centers and would eventually lead to conflict with Church authorities. His holistic pedagogy included among its faculty Jungian psychologist John Giannini, physicist/cosmologist Brian Swimme, feminist theologian Rosemary Radford Ruether, along with many artists teaching "art as meditation." In 1983, Fox moved ICCS to Oakland, California, and began teaching at Holy Names University, where he was a professor for 12 years.

In 1984 Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger — the future Pope Benedict XVI, then head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith — asked the Dominican Order to investigate Fox's writings. When three Dominican theologians examined his works and did not find his books heretical, Ratzinger ordered a second review, which was never undertaken.

Due to Fox's questioning of the doctrine of original sin, in 1988 Ratzinger forbade him from teaching or lecturing for a year. Fox wrote a "Pastoral Letter to Cardinal Ratzinger and the Whole Church," calling the Catholic Church a dysfunctional family. After a year "sabbatical," Fox resumed writing, teaching, and lecturing. In 1991, Fox's Dominican superior ordered him to leave the ICCS in California and return to Chicago or face dismissal. Fox refused.

On March 31, 1991, Fox made an extended appearance on the British television discussion program After Dark, alongside Piltdown Man debunker Teddy Hall; secular humanist activist Barbara Smoker; theologian N. T. Wright; playwright Hyam Maccoby (who theorized that Jesus was an apocalyptic Jew and Messianic claimant); author Ian Wilson (known chiefly for speculative writing on the Shroud of Turin); and others. In 1993, Fox's conflicts with Catholic authorities climaxed with his expulsion from the Dominican Order for "disobedience", effectively ending his professional relationship with the Church and his teaching at its universities.

Among the issues Ratzinger objected to were his feminist theology; calling God "Mother"; preferring the concept of Original Blessing over Original Sin; not condemning homosexual behavior; and teaching the four paths of creation spirituality – the Via Positiva, Via Negativa, Via Creativa, and Via Transformativa — instead of the church's classical three paths of purgation, illumination and union.