WomanChurch, Witchcraft, and the Goddess

WOMAN CHURCH, WITCHCRAFT, AND THE GODDESS

Fr. Matthew Fox

(Chapter 6 of the book UNICORN IN THE SANCTUARY by Randy England, published by Tan Books and Publishers, P. O. Box 424, Rockford, IL 61105, 800-437-5876.)

One of the most enigmatic spectacles in modern Catholic America is the popularity of Dominican priest Father Matthew Fox. His books "Whee! We, wee" and "On Becoming a Musical, Mystical Bear" and "Original Blessing" (and others) can be found on the shelves of most Catholic as well as occultic bookstores. As any Catholic knows and as the Church teaches, sin is inherited from Adam and is only removed through Christ's redemption.[1] The Scripture too, is in exact agreement: "For just as by the disobedience of the one man the many were constituted sinners, so also by the obedience of the one the many will be constituted just" (Romans 5:19). In "Original Blessing," Fox denies the traditional doctrine of original sin. He says we do not enter existence as sinful creatures:

"We burst into the world as 'Original Blessings.’" The only sin Fox F recognizes is the sin of dualism; i.e., of seeing people and things as being separate from one another. The only sin is the refusal to see all as one.[2]

His brand of religion is aptly called "Creation-Centered Spirituality." Creation-Centered Spirituality is focused not on God the Creator, but on god the creation. Father Fox is calling for Catholics to be in the leadership of the new spiritual age.

In her book "A Planned Deception," Constance Cumbey wrote a chapter entitled "The Incredible Heresies of Father Matthew Fox." She related her experience of hearing Matthew Fox address parish leaders in a talk sponsored by the Liturgy Committee of the Archdiocese of Detroit:

He shamelessly committed public blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, by telling an impressionable audience well under the spell of his hypnotic powers that the Holy Spirit was demanding they adopt wicca (witchcraft), shamanism, and goddess worship. Hundreds of well dressed parish leaders and nuns listened to him in trance-like rapture. They appeared to adore Matthew Fox! One distinguished looking CCD teacher proudly told me that he had taught St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine for 30 years. "That was" he said "a waste of time. I wish I had been teaching Father Matthew Fox!"[3]

As with all orthodox New Agers, Fox insists that sin consists in the failure to embrace the New Age, the age of Aquarius. He warns in "Whee! We, wee All the Way Home.. A Guide to a Sensual, Prophetic Spirituality":

One tradition that offers us a glimpse into our own futures ... is the astrological tradition.

In particular, Jung subscribes to the way of seeing human history in 2000 year stages corresponding to the Age of the Bull (4000 2000 B.C.), a symbol of primitive instinctual civilizations and represented by Cretan religion; the Age of the Ram (2000 B.C.-1 A D), characterized by the religions of the Jews and the emergence of conscience and awareness of evil wherein religion sacrificed rams; the Age of Pisces, the fishes, (1 A D.-1997 A D.), dominated religiously by the figure of Christ....

There is an extremely important Caveat and danger sign that looms on our journey. That is the warning not to look back.... If you recall, when Moses came down from his experience with God on the mountain top, he was so infuriated by what he saw the Israelites doing that he broke the commandment tablets. What were they doing? They were whoring after the past gods! They were worshipping the religion of the previous age, the Age of the Bull. They refused to face the new spiritual consciousness that Moses ushered in, that of the Age of the Ram.

So we, too, on the verge of breaking into a new spiritual age, need to beware of the Gods of the past.... We have a clear lesson from the Israelites: to look back piningly is to commit idolatry.[4]

What delusion is it that allows Catholics to believe teaching which insists that to remain within traditional, biblical Christianity is idolatry; that it is "whoring after past gods?" It seems impossible that anyone could be so deceived, but in his second letter to the Thessalonians, St. Paul wrote of how those who were headed for destruction would not turn aside from their chosen course:

For they have not the love of truth that they might be saved. Therefore God sends them a misleading influence that they may believe falsehood, that all may be judged who have not believed the truth, but have preferred wickedness. (2 Thessalonians 2:10-12)

Whereas Pierre Teilhard de Chardin bridges the gap between East and West, Matthew Fox champions the paganism of the West. Like Teilhard, he worships matter as his God, but Fox repudiates Teilhard for his belief in self-denial and renunciation of pleasure seeking.[5] He believes that "enough evils and crosses exist in our lives without making up new ones."[6] Fox is perhaps the American Church's most enthusiastic cheerleader for hedonism or what he calls "ecstasy."

In the New Age movement drugs can be more than just a way to have fun and pass the time until "the Christ" comes. Drugs can play an important role in altering consciousness. Whether it is the LSD popularized in the 60's or the peyote of the Indian sorcerer in the Carlos Castenada books, the use of drugs serves as a shortcut to mystical experience. The same occult meditative states that normally require extended practice to achieve are effortlessly attained through drug use. The same experiences and even the spirits encountered are common to either method. In fairness, most genuine gurus will snub the drug user's "training wheels" as an expedient which does not ultimately lead to the very highest (or lowest?) states.

In Fox's book, "On Becoming a Musical, Mystical Bear," he has written that while "excess" drug use is not wise, "intelligent use of drugs" is unquestionably an aid to prayer. Its value, says Fox, is in opening up one's awareness and also as a temporary escape from the worries of the everyday world. He maintains that "drugs can democratize spirituality, which has for so long been imagined to be in the hands and hearts of the wealthy, leisurely classes."[7]

Before looking further into Fox's paganism, it is worth examining his view of Jesus. In "Original Blessing," Father Fox rates numerous historical figures on their creation-centeredness. On a scale of one to five Jesus gets a "five," but (as in the theology of Teilhard) Jesus really has no place at all except as an example of a wise man among other wise men and women.[8] He says Jesus "was always looking for wisdom in order to grow in wisdom " and refers to Jesus as "weak and imperfect."[9] One has to ask: Where is Father Fox getting this picture of Christ? In his latest book, "The Coming of the Cosmic Christ," Fox laments Jesus' "cruel and premature death."[10] He says, "no one can ever bring back the time that Jesus lost and will never live out. His was truly an untimely death if ever there was one."[11]

Father Fox seems not to have heard that Jesus is alive after having spent just three days in the grave; seems not to understand the very reason Jesus was born. Rejecting the truth that Jesus came to die for man's sins he paints a picture not of Jesus resigning Himself to His Father's will but as trying to escape His sacrifice. Speaking of Jesus facing the crucifixion he says, "How thoroughly he rejects it, flies from it, desires it prevented. 'Let this cup pass from me.' Yet he fails and the crucifiers have their way."[12] It is difficult to see how such an uninspiring Jesus could be the same person who created the universe. But He is, as St. Paul tells us, "the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature. For in Him were created all things in the heavens and on the earth, things visible and things invisible, whether Thrones, or Dominations, or Principalities, or Powers. All things have been created through and unto Him. and He is before all creatures, and in Him all things hold together." (Colossians 1:15-17).

Matthew Fox also sees the miracles of the Bible through the perspective of his creation spirituality. Our traditional fall/redemption theology accepts miracles as an intervention by the supernatural into the natural order of things. Fox sees a naturalistic explanation in Christ's miracle of the loaves and the fishes: [T]he real miracle that Jesus wrought was not a quantitative magic trick of turning five loaves and two fishes into thousands. The true miracle was that Jesus got people to let go, to share with one another."[13]

In "A Spirituality Named Compassion," Fox insists that Jesus was not good because he was God, but instead was divine because he was good. This denies the objective divinity of Jesus. Specifically, he writes: "Jesus is not so much compassionate because he is divine as he is divine because he is compassionate. And did he. . .not teach others that they too were...divine because they are compassionate?[14]

At best he considers Jesus not as the God who created the universe, but as a sort of drum major out in front of the parade we should all be in. His lip service to Jesus as the most "creation- centered" human ever to live is mere pandering. One wonders why he wastes good ink on Him. If Matthew Fox has any historical reference point it is in the person of the 14th century German mystic, Meister Eckhart.

Eckhart was born around 1260 A.D. entering the Dominican order while a youth. A popular speaker, his pantheistic ideas strongly identified God with his creation. Eckhart has been hailed as a forerunner to Theosophists, Nazis and Pantheists. Hindus regard him as a "kindred spirit."[15] He felt that a God "out there" was unfathomable. Evelyn Underhill, in her book "The Mystics of the Church," wrote that Eckhart had "a tendency to exile God from His creation; and led him to set up a sharp distinction between the Absolute and unconditioned Godhead, "unknown and never to be known," and the God of religious experience. This separation is fundamental to Eckhart's thought....

[T]his leaning to transcendental speculation, land[ed] him at last in a monism which...can hardly be reconciled with Christianity."[16]

Eckhart saw a unity between God and man and he tended to see Jesus as the first human to realize that unity. Many of his ideas can be taken in more than one sense. The result is that one meaning may be insightful while the second meaning is solidly heretical. In one of his sermons he said, "If God's being is my being, then God's existence must be my existence and His essence my essence...." In another he said, "...the Holy Spirit receives his being...from me as from God."[17]

It was his radical ideas combined with his popularity that eventually brought him into conflict with the local authorities. Near the end of his life in 1326, he was cited for heresy by a hostile tribunal in his native Germany. Eckhart appealed to the pope for an unbiased hearing. He agreed to repudiate any teachings which were found to be heretical, but died before his case was decided.

In 1329, the year after his death, 17 of his propositions were condemned as heretical in the bull ("In Agro Dominico") of Pope John XII. It was declared that he had been deceived "by the father of lies who often appears as an angel of light" into "sowing thorns and thistles amongst the faithful and even the simple folk."[18] Another eleven statements were considered rash and dangerous but capable of being interpreted in an orthodox manner. His willingness to submit to the Church's authority was reflected in the edict, which stated that Eckhart,

"at the end of his life, professed the Catholic faith, revoked and even condemned the...26 articles, which he admitted having preached [as well as] all other matters written or taught by him, either in the schools or in sermons, that might create in the minds of the faithful an heretical or erroneous impression and one hostile to the true faith."[19]

While the German mystic himself was willing to repudiate his teachings, Meister Eckhart's admirers have not. His unorthodox ideas and speculations have grown in popularity in recent years and have found their most ardent proponent in Matthew Fox. He gives Eckhart the second-highest score on his one-to-five scale of creation-centeredness. More important, Fox has taken Eckhart's condemned teachings and given them his own concrete meanings. Fox quotes Eckhart declaring, "You may call God love; you may call God goodness; but the best name for God is Compassion."[20] Such a statement may not be heretical, depending on the meaning one gives to it. In Father Fox's dictionary, it has the most corrupt meaning possible: witchcraft.

The Craft

What is this twisted meaning Fox gives to the word "compassion?" This "compassion" is (supposedly) the source of every virtue. It is the quality that makes us (and Jesus) divine. He calls visualization "extrovert meditation" explaining it as listening to the inner self and uttering "the new images from within outwards. This giving birth to new images is the work of all creative persons."[21]

Compassion is explained in the following excerpt from "A Spirituality Named Compassion." The word "craft" is a common euphemism for witchcraft. Another is the term "wicca" or "wikke":

"Extrovert meditation, then, gives birth to this new kind of power...a power with, [which] is properly called compassion. It is a power to imagine with others and to be changed by this imagining. Crafts initiate one into a new kind of power. The German word for power is Kraft. There is no cover-up in this kind of power. "We can't fake craft. It lies in the act.... We do not have the craft or craftmanship, if we do not speak to the light that lives within the earthly materials; this means ALL earthly materials, including men themselves."

[C]ompassion is (the realization of the interconnectedness of all things)."[22]

The discussion of the "craft" or witchcraft need not be limited to the traditional image of the medieval wart-nosed hag stirring a bubbling cauldron. Rather, it encompasses most of what would commonly be called paganism. Matthew Fox expands the definition in "Original Blessing:"

"Native American spirituality is a creation-centered tradition, as are the other prepatriarchal religions of the world such as African religions, Celtic religion, and the matrifocal and Wikke traditions that scholars and practitioners like Starhawk are recovering. The contemporary mystical movement known as "New Age" can also dialogue and create with the creation spiritual tradition."[23]

Miriam Simos (Starhawk) is a practicing witch on the staff of Matthew Fox's Institute for Culture and Creation Spirituality (ICCS). Her specialty is the teaching of ritual. Constance Cumbey calls her, "one of the world's most politically active and important witches. She is a high priestess in a major coven and has been [active] politically in both the witches/Neopagan movements as well as the feminist movement. She is a frequent speaker at New Age convocations and conferences."[24] Starhawk writes: "In the Craft, we do not believe in the Goddess—we connect with her; through the moon, the stars, the ocean, the earth, through trees, animals, through other human beings, through ourselves. She is here. She is within us all."[25]

Witchcraft, which is often called "the old religion," is the worship of (or connection with) "the goddess" or the divine which it finds in nature. Typical of paganism and the Craft are beliefs in female deities, the sacredness of nature, power of the individual will, and the nonexistence of original sin or any division between good or evil. It is the foundation of feminism.

Christianity And Feminism

Feminist spirituality has nothing to do with the issues of fair play and equal pay. Those are rights that Christians can support. True feminism is anti-Catholic, anti-Church and anti-Christ.

What the feminists want covers a wide spectrum. Some want absolute identity between the roles of men and women in the church. They support abortion on demand, lesbian rights and in general can be found in the liberal wing politically. These are the moderates. The mainspring groups though, are not looking for a role in the Church—as we know it—at all. They are devoted to the "goddess" who is found in nature and themselves: creation-centered spirituality. Their Wikkan rituals tap the "goddess" power. They would drag God from His heaven and install the mother goddess. While they insist on the goddess, the sexual aspect is secondary to the real appeal—the appeal of having a goddess which they can control. She empowers them but makes no demands. She takes no offense at sin, nor calls for any redemption in the traditional sense.

The feminists' dominant mode of operation is to create discontent. They foster frustration, resentment and delusions of persecution by the "unjust patriarchal structures" in the Church, while simultaneously extending the promise of the goddess within. To some the appeal to power and pride is irresistible. The old beliefs lose their grip, and hell signs up another tenant. The point at which one crosses over to the other side comes sooner than most imagine. On the other hand the Church has not been hasty in drawing that line. Consequently, the neo-pagans have a forum for their views. Some of the most public displays occur when feminism's Catholic adherents gather. Such events are invariably blasphemous.

March 9-16, 1985 at Mundelein College in Chicago was the time to celebrate "The Goddess and the Wild Woman." The brochure cover sported a woman, with one breast exposed, dancing and with flowers springing up beneath her feet. Ancient goddesses, Artemis, Athena, Demeter and others stand by. Inside, the brochure speaks of drawing "aside the curtain woven by patriarchal consciousness to reveal within each of us the Goddess and the Wild Woman."[26]

Another gathering of more than 2000 Catholic feminists (as usual, mostly nuns) took place in Washington D.C. on October 10-12, 1986. The conference was entitled "Woman in the Church." Just a sample of the fare:

Speaker, Sister Madonna Kolbenschlag, ripped through "the papacy, the Church, Western civilization, the Judeo-Christian tradition, the Trinity, ("a good ole boy, associating with two other divine males") and monotheism. She asked the participants, in the name of "our elder brother, Jesus," to "be a scandal to the patriarchy." Further, "Someone once asked me, "What can we salvage from the traditional god-myth that is not destructive?" I don't think that salvaging is any concern of ours. Faith is the process of continually replacing the metaphors for god.... Women today must reclaim their reality from the fantasies, especially through the power of a holistic sexuality, and the right to a free and personally responsible expression of it...."[27]

Among the other festivities was a rally in support of Seattle archbishop Raymond Hunthausen as well as the inevitable exhibits by pro-abortion and lesbian groups. There was even a group sponsoring a "feminist liturgy" with a consecration by the women attending. Participants sang and recited poetry and chanted "My name is (X) and I claim my power as church." The priestesses proclaimed, "We are empowered by a loving goddess. We proclaim the power of our foremothers." They spoke of "our exodus from the patriarchal church...." Then at the consecration: "We bless this bread of the eucharist of Woman Church."[28]

A reporter asked keynote speaker Sister Joan Chittister if the American Church as an institution was ready to stand in opposition to Rome. "Do you want an answer or a prayer?" she replied. "Oh, God, I hope so!"[29]

A feminist philosopher has written of the irreconcilable differences between Christianity and feminism:

"I imagined women functioning as rabbis, priests and ministers...wearing clerical garb and performing clerical duties and suddenly I saw a problem. How could women represent a male god?

God is going to change.... We women are going to bring an end to God...we will be the end of Him. We will change the world so much that He won't fit in any more.

Jesus Christ cannot symbolize the liberation of women.... [F]eminists have to leave Christ and Bible behind them."[30]

This feminist spirituality is probably the most blatant form of heresy in the church today. One wonders how far the leaders of the movement can go without waking up those who, as yet, follow unwittingly. It is not as if the feminists are going around on tiptoe. "Catholic" feminist theologian, Rosemary Ruether writes about her own experience:

"I knew that Ba'al was a real god, the revelation of the mystery of life, the expressions of the depths of being which had broken through into the lives of the people and gave them a key to the mystery of death and rebirth.... As for the defects of Ba'al, were they more spectacular than the defects of the biblical God or Messiah, or perhaps less so?

I could hardly tell her [a nun] that my devotion to Mary was somewhat less than my devotion to some far more powerful females that I knew: Isis, Athena, and Artemis![31]

James Hitchcock has pointed out that she held these opinions as an undergraduate, "and thus held them throughout the period when she had a public identity as an orthodox Catholic theologian."[32]

In an April, 1985 interview, Ruether was asked why she even bothered to stay within the Church when so many others with her beliefs had left. Her answer might have come from any one of thousands of modernist Catholics in the Church today: "As a feminist, I can come up with only one reason to stay in the Catholic Church: to try to change it."[33]

The Infection Spreads

American Catholics are not the only ones being exposed to this "tradition." Our brethren to the North are not free of the "Woman Church" phenomenon. The Canadian Bishops have allowed the use of a "Study Kit" on women's issues. The bibliography of this material recommends the reading of radical feminist theologians. One of twelve sessions "contains a liturgy drawn from Wiccan (witchcraft) sources." One report on the kit maintained that women claimed that the experience had given them a "greater sense of dignity."[34] (Apparently the discovery of your goddess- hood does that for you!)

How far can the return to paganism go? In many places it has gone far. A "National Catholic Reporter" headline reads, "Archbishop summoned for 'witchcraft'."[35] In Germany, there is an officially registered school for witchcraft. A pharmaceutical company produces tincture of cannabis and other drugs used to enhance pagan rituals.[36] We should take warning from the situation in Brazil, where voodoo cults thrive. On most nights, thousands of followers of the old African religion offer animal sacrifices and while in trances worship spirits which have been merged with the worshippers' favorite Catholic saints. Each cultist is assigned particular spirits, who symbolize Christ, the Virgin Mary and other saints, but are actually demons carried over from the old religion.

The Brazilian church is the largest in the world. Ninety percent of Brazil's 131 million people are Catholic and it is estimated that this mixture of African ritualism and Catholicism is practiced by nearly half of all Brazilian Catholics. The clergy shrug at the problem, admitting that if Rome ordered the pagan practices stopped, no one would listen. One priest said that official church policy opposes the cults "but if we had a hard inflexible attitude we would lose them all."

As American Catholics, we too have slipped far; especially when it is realized that witchcraft or pre-Christian paganism is merely another facet of the New Age movement. Even Father Matthew Fox admits that his Western-oriented creation spirituality is part of the same picture. His Institute for Culture and Creation Spirituality (ICCS) has "become a focus for dialogue with native and Eastern spiritual traditions, the human potential movement, the new physics and the Green Movement."

He says, "Christians and others should not be afraid of terms like 'New Age.' The 'new' can in fact prove to be quite old. For example, a 'new' theology of original blessing is in fact far more ancient than the familiar theology of original sin."

Finally, as if to make certain that no one misses all the connections, the last page of Fox's five point Creation-Centered honor roll reads like a "Who's Who in the New Age movement":

Teilhard de Chardin

Carl Jung psychologist, occultist

Buckminster Fuller, author, "Spaceship Earth"

Fritjof Capra, author, "The Tao of Physics"

Starhawk, author, "Dreaming the Dark"

Marilyn Ferguson, author, "The Aquarian Conspiracy"

David Spangler, author, "Revelation: Birth of a New Age"

Of course, each author returns the favor and often recommends the others for New Age reading. David Spangler's Lorien Press distributes exclusively New Age titles, some of which were actually dictated by demons. Lorien offers Fox's "Original Blessing," calling it "a seminal work which Lorien Press is proud to offer."

It is difficult to say how much more popular the New Age movement will become in future years. What is certain is that Christianity is the prime force holding it back. Catholics are the big prize. Unfortunately, the Church, which should be the "salt of the Earth," finds itself in need of salt. If individual Catholics do not act as that salt and stand clearly across the path of this giant, then Matthew Fox's hope may yet come true:

Beginning with artists in the nineteenth century and extending today to scientists, feminists, New Age mystics, and social prophets, a veritable explosion of creation-centered spiritual energy is and has been occurring. If entire religious bodies such as Christianity could enter into this expanding spiritual energy field, there is no predicting what powers of passion and compassion might become unleashed.

Father Fox is an insightful man. He sees a need within the Church and moves to fill the vacuum. He points out that we have lost some of the mystery and darkness of the liturgy. The Latin, the smell of many candles and incense, and the somber tones of the Gregorian chant are gone; and gone with these some sense of holiness and awe.

Having noted the need for "darkness" and ritual, Father Fox has a program. He guides us to Native American sweat lodges; to ceremonial dances with drums and fire; and to the witch's Moon Ritual.[37]

While Father Matthew Fox's work continues to grow in popularity in America his teachings have not gone unnoticed in Rome. After a four-year long investigation of his works, Fox's Dominican Order silenced him. Fox announced that the Order had acted "under pressure from the Vatican Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, formerly known as the Holy Office of the Inquisition." In Fox's statement to the press on October 20, 1988, he said that it was "an honor to be silenced by the present regime in the Vatican.... [T]he Vatican has grown deaf—deaf to the cries of Mother Earth, deaf to the cries of women, of native peoples and persons of color, of artists...." He spoke of the "need for a spirituality which can heal Mother Earth and usher in an era of a Global Renaissance.... I am proud to be a part of that movement." Fox's organization, the Friends of Creation Spirituality (FCS), announced that Fox would begin a sabbatical on December 15, 1988 and that he anticipated returning to the Institute for Creation Centered Spirituality in the fall of 1989. FCS also initiated a letter writing campaign to support Fox and the spread of Creation Spirituality. Like his proud modernist forbears, it appears that Father Matthew Fox will carry on the tradition of minimal outward submission coupled with contemptuous defiance.

Endnotes

1. Ludwig Ott, "Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma" (Tan Books Rockford, IL 1974) pg 108.

2. Matthew Fox, "Original Blessing A Primer In Creation Spirituality," (Bear & Company, Inc., Santa Fe, NM, 1983) Pg 47, 49.

3. Constance Cumbey, "A Planned Deception: The Staging Of A New Age Messiah," (Pointe Publishers, Inc., East Detroit, MI 1985) Pg 133.

4. Matthew Fox, O.P., "Whee! We, wee All the Way Home.... A Guide to a Sensual, Prophetic Spirituality" (Bear & Company, Inc., Santa Fe, NM, 1981) pp 30, 242.

5. Ibid., pp 217-18.

6. Matthew Fox, "Self denial can make you selfish," "U.S. Catholic," February 1978, pg 37.

7. Matthew Fox, "On Becoming a Musical, Mystical Bear: Spirituality American Style" (Paulist Press, New York, N.Y. 1976) pp 125-27.

8. Matthew Fox, "Original Blessing," pg 307.

9. Ibid., at 122.

10. Matthew Fox, "The Coming of the Cosmic Christ" (Harper & Row, San Francisco, 1988) pg 71.

11. Ibid at 140.

12. Matthew Fox, O.P., "Whee! We, wee...," pg 93.

13. Matthew Fox, "Original Blessing," pg 170.

14. Matthew Fox, "A Spirituality Named Compassion" and the "Healing of the Global village," "Humpty Dumpty and Us" (Winston Press, Inc., Minneapolis, MN 1979) pg 34.

15. James M. Clark, "Meister Eckhart" (Thomas Nelson and Sons, London, 1957) pg vi.

16. Evelyn Underhill, "The Mystics of the Church" (Schocken Books New York, NY 1971) pg 134.

17. James M. Clark, "Meister Eckhart," pp 187, 141.

18. Raymond B. Blakney, "Meister Eckhart: A Modern Translation (Harper, 1941) pp xx-xxiv.

19. James M. Clark, "Meister Eckhart, pg 258.

20. Matthew Fox, "A Spirituality Named Compassion," pg 34.

21. Ibid., at 134.

22. Ibid., at 136, 139.

23. Matthew Fox, "Original Blessing," pg 16.

24. Constance Cumbey, "A Planned Deception," pg 139.

25. Starhawk, "The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess" (New York, 1979), pg 77f.

26. Frank Morris, "The Wanderer" (April 25,1985) pg 4.

27. Donna Steichen, "Fidelity" (December, 1986) pg 42.

28. Joseph Sobran, "The Wanderer" (October 23, 1986) pg 1.

29. Steichen, "Fidelity" pg 36.

30. Naomi R. Goldenberg, "Changing Of The Gods: Feminism and the End of Traditional Religions," Beacon Pres, Boston, 1979, pp 3, 22.

31. Gregory Baum, ed., "Journeys: The Impact of Personal Experience on Religious Thought," pp. 43 45.

32. James Hitchcock, "Catholicism and Modernity: Confrontation or Capitulation?" (Seabury Press, New York, 1979) pg 186.

33. "U.S. Catholic," "The editors interview Rosemary Radford Ruether", (April 1985) pg 19.

34. "The Wanderer," Canadian Bishops' "Study Kit" (October 23, 1986).

35. "National Catholic Reporter," September 10, 1982, pg 26.

36. "America," November 17, 1984, pg 315.

37. Matthew Fox, "Cosmic Christ," pp 220-21.