Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: hwt@bwdlh490.bnr.ca (Henry Troup) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Matthew Fox Message-ID: Date: 12 Aug 90 06:07:13 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: Bell-Northern Research, Ltd. Lines: 41 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu In article stabosz@sun.udel.edu (Rae Stabosz) writes: >I don't see anything objectionable & have found his writings & the whole >movement (as I understand it) to be often very liberating. Is the >spectre (and fear of?) Pelagianism at the core of his problems? I saw Matthew Fox speak in Ottawa, this past winter. I almost left after forty-five minutes, but was glad I stayed to the end. He spent too much time at the beginning talking about what creation spirituality would do for me, and didn't talk about what it was until later. I have a low opinion of sales pitches, and that was what I thought I was getting. Later, he got down to details. I don't think he's exactly a Pelagian, although he does go rather far in stating that original sin is not the most important thing to worry about. He takes ecumenicism perhaps a little further than I'm comfortable with - almost to the point where I'd begin to grumble that if you include everything as Christianity, then it means nothing. He seems to me to want to reconcile the Church and the New Age movements, but perhaps is willing to give too much for that. He began his lecture with a Native American shaman who did a sweetgrass ceremony to centre us all and drive out distractions, for example. I don't mean that that was necessarily going too far, either. He disagrees with Rome, and has been stripped of his status as a Roman theologian - like Hans Kung, Martin Luther, and a good few others. I think that the Anglican Church would regard him as merely liberal, however. He speaks for the priesting of women, for example. He handled some really pointed questions very delicately - when pressed on abortion, he first said that the Roman Church has to stop aborting the spiritual lives of over half of it's members, and then went on to express a moderate opinion that abortion is always wrong but is not always the most wrong thing to do. -- Henry Troup - BNR owns but does not share my opinions | 21 years in Canada... uunet!bnrgate!hwt%bwdlh490 HWT@BNR.CA 613-765-2337 |