"Matthew Fox Talks Obedience and Courage, Young Adults and the Church" Interview with Jamie l. Manson in National Catholic Reporter

http://ncronline.org/blogs/grace-margins/matthew-fox-talks-obedience-and-courage-young-adults-and-church


...Bishops who do not agree with the Vatican on some issues and who see how some of the Vatican's positions do harm to people, but they obey and cooperate with the Vatican anyway. Do you see parallels to fascism there?
So often it comes down to preferring one's job security or career advancement to the truth or to Jesus. Susan Sontag defines fascism as institutionalized violence: violence in the name of institution and the act of hiding behind an institution. A good example of this, of course, is the pedophilia crisis. I use the word fascism in the book because all fundamentalisms, not just the Catholic kind, are about freezing power.
John Paul II and Cardinal [Joseph] Ratzinger thoroughly opposed liberation theology and instead snuggled up to those who believed in absolute obedience. Fr. Marcial Maciel, the founder of the Legionaries of Christ, was very close to the Chilean dictator [Augusto] Pinochet. Cardinal Angelo Sodano, papal nuncio to John Paul II and now dean of the College of Cardinals, appeared on TV to support Pinochet, even as he was torturing and abducting people. Members of Opus Dei served as ministers in Franco's fascist government. The movements that were so attractive to John Paul and Ratzinger were authoritarian, rigid, patriarchal and fundamentalist. It's a pity because Vatican II was an attempt to learn from the sins of fascism and to override the history of extreme obedience.
What do you think is driving this fundamentalist strand in our church and our political discourse?
Part of it is fear. When people are fearful, they want some kind of support, some kind of clarity if at all possible. They are afraid of chaos, so law and order take precedence. But I think an even deeper strand to this fascism is misogyny. There is an anti-feminine bias to all of this. There is a dreaded fear of the feminine. I think it goes back thousands of years when the goddess was revered and integrated into the culture. When patriarchy took over around 500 BC, our myths changed. In the Babylonian myth, the feminine goddess, Tiamat, was also the goddess of chaos. And the god Marduk killed her. The feminine was evil and chaos was evil. And the goal became to enslave or even kill the feminine and chaos. I think this has been played out for a long time, often in the name of religion or science. ..."

Bridget Mary's Reflection:
I think that Jamie Manson's interview with Matthew Fox is insightful. The deep hostility by the hierarchy to the Roman Catholic Women Priests Movement speaks volumes about their fear of the feminine which is rooted in misogyny. They have tried every punishment possible, including excommunication, to intimidate our supporters and have come up empty. The Spirit of God blows where She wills. Let us rejoice that the Spirit of God is working in the women priests' movement to renew the church.