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Meditations with Matthew Fox
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Evil in the Christmas Story Yesterday
and Today 01/07/2023 |
Previous to the death of Pope Benedict, we were dealing with the deeper meanings of Advent and Christmas. |
The Christmas story does not just range from angels singing about doxa to shepherds finding a baby in a manger and magi journeying from the orient bringing gifts–it is also about evil. Included in the multi-layered and archetypally rich story of Christmas is a story about Herod, the empire’s agent in Palestine in Jesus’ day. Herod’s decree to kill all new-born boys in Palestine in order to eliminate Jesus is a | Even from birth, Jesus was seen as a threat to Rome: ‘Scène du massacre des Innocents.’ Léon Cogniet. Wikimedia Commons [Public domain] |
first-class horror story and a hint of what is to come in Jesus’ life as an adult. Evil too is integral to the Christmas story and its reality rescues us from sentimentalizing
Christmas. The light and hope of the season is not set off from history but integral to it. The same is true today. We dare not deny the shadow side of history and humanity’s capacity for doing evil. Two
years ago, on the Feast of Epiphany, January 6, violent intruders interrupted a simple ritual for passing power peacefully in American democracy. These insurrectionists created mayhem that killed six people, threatened lawmakers, and maimed hundreds of police trying to defend the nation’s capital. |
CBS News correspondent Scott MacFarlane and anchor Anne-Marie Green discuss the trauma many on Capitol Hill still navigate two years after the violent January 6 insurrection. | An investigation has concluded that the president of the United States, who had lost an election two months earlier, was the ringleader of the horror show that was televised live into our living rooms. His Big Lie that the election was stolen continues to poison
American politics. |
Evil is part of any authentic reading of human history, the daily news, or the
signs of our times. The Christmas story about Herod is very relevant still. I highly recommend a substantive new study called The Herods: Murder, Politics and the Art of Succession by renowned New Testament scholar Bruce Chilton. He lays bare the
dynasty of evil that was Herod’s family, the same family that put Jesus to death. In our day too, evil happens through corrupt human institutions whether religious or secular. More than 10,000 persons in South America were
murdered because two popes shut down liberation theology and base communities. Thousands of victims fell prey to priestly pedophilia as church leaders did next to nothing for years, even shutting their eyes to the horrors of Mexican priest Father Maciel’s abuse of seminarians while all the time promoting neo-fascist religious sects. |
Silencing and denouncing 107 theologians, many of whom had nervous breakdowns, died or lost their livelihoods, resulted in what a professor at my alma mater in Paris described to me this way: “JP II and Ratzinger killed theology in Europe.” How important is firing theologians in the church? | Mexican church authorities in 2010 admitted Marcial Maciel’s preying on nearly 200 young seminarians and children, including two of his own, over a 40-year period. The Vatican
denied allegations of a cover-up, and of Cardinal Josef Ratzinger turning a blind eye to abusive priests. Al Jazeera English. |
What if General Motors fired all its engineers? A Yes man to dogma does not a theologian make. Maybe it was not so much “secular culture” but a dumbed down religion that effectively killed the church in Europe and opened the door to authoritarianism. But the Holy Spirit can make good things out of bad, as we will see in Monday’s DM. To be continued |
| To view today's video, please click the image. You will be taken to today's post on the Daily Meditations with Matthew Fox website, where you can see the meditation in a larger version and also view and post your Comments. In the sharing that follows, a kind of community is developing around the DM.
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See Matthew Fox, The Pope’s War: Why Ratzinger’s Secret Crusade Has Imperiled the Church and How It Can Be Saved, pp. 106-173. Banner Image: Flight into Egypt. Pencil drawing by Eugène Girardet (1853–1907). Wikimedia Commons. |
Queries for Contemplation What lessons do you derive from the Herod story embedded in the Christmas stories? |
Responses are welcomed. To add your comment, please click HERE
to go to our website and scroll down to the Comments field. |
The Pope's War: Why Ratzinger's Secret Crusade Has Imperiled
the Church and How It Can Be Saved
The Pope’s War offers a provocative look at three decades of corruption in the Catholic Church, focusing on Josef Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI. The final section in the book focuses on birthing a truly catholic christianity.
"This book should be read by everybody, not only for its ferocious courage, but also for its vision for what needs to be saved
from the destructive forces that threaten authentic Christianity." ~ Andrew Harvey, author of The Hope. “In the gripping The Pope’s War, Matthew Fox takes an unwavering look at the layers of corruption in the Catholic Church, holding moral truth against power.” — Jason Berry, author of Vows of Silence: The Abuse of
Power in the Papacy of John Paul II | |
See Matthew Fox's full calendar HERE |
Join Matthew Fox as the Center for Contemporary Mysticism hosts him in a Conversation on “Creation Spirituality: Birthing a New World.” Sunday, January 8, 2023, 11 am PT
(UTC/GMT-7). Register HERE. Join Matthew Fox at the virtual Our Lady of the Prairie retreat, offering a discussion and Q&A on “Naming the Unnameable: 89 Wonderful and Useful Names for God…Including the Unnameable
God.” Thursday, January 19, 4:00pm-6:00pm PT. Register HERE. Creation Spirituality Conversations |
In a podcast episode with the Earth and Spirit Center, Matthew Fox reflects on how creation-centered spirituality, and the marriage of the divine feminine and sacred masculine, can help us respond with hope
to the troubles of our apocalyptic times. Listen HERE. | |
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