Sixteen questions for new pope

Well-known theologian Matthew Fox had the "plug pulled" on him just before appearing on CNBC's program Hardball. Dr. Fox was about to ask the new pope:

1. If you denounced Hitler, why do you support today the Spanish priest Escriva who admired him publicly and why did you rush Escriva, founder of the Opus Dei movement, into canonization, thus leaving the impression that fascism is a path to holiness?

2. If you denounced Hitler, why do you carry on in his ways such as 1) bookburning and denouncing of thinkers and theologians? 2) whipping up hostility toward homosexuals as he did? 3) excluding women from all decision-making and leadership? 4) creating scapegoats, including people of religions other than Catholic along with women and gay people?

3. In the second of two documents you wrote and the past pope signed denouncing homosexuals, you did not cite even one scientific study of homosexuality, but cited your catechism five times. Is this anti-intellectual attitude not another Galileo case in the making?

4. Do you know the difference between ideology and theology? Why have you destroyed the latter by condemning theologians while you created ideological churchmen by your loyalty oaths?

5. How much was the CIA involved in the rushed election of John Paul II? A CIA agent told me he had been "their man in Poland" for many years.

6. You once said you wanted a "smaller church." Might you tell us why? Does it have anything to do with absolute control?

7. How do you sleep at night knowing that your theology of forbidding condoms in a time of AIDS has contributed to the death of millions in the African continent and beyond?

8. Did Jesus ever say anything at all about condoms or birth control or homosexuality or the ordination of women? In fact, today's scholarship shows how many women were in position of leadership in the early church. Then why are you so sure of your absolutist position?

9. You complain about "the dictatorship of relativism." Isn't there also--and more easily--a dictatorship of absolutism?

10. Why do issues of social and economic injustice play so small a role in your definition of morality, which seems to be 98 per cent about sex? (Hint: Saint Augustine)

11. Are you aware that your destruction (with the help of the CIA) of liberation theology and base communities in Latin America has stripped Catholicism so bare that Pentecostals are taking over the continent?

12. Why did you canonize the Escriva who favored Franco and fascism and not canonize the holy martyr Oscar Romero who favored the poor against the military in El Salvador?

13. Jesus was on the side of the anawim, those without a voice. When have you or your dictates ever been on the side of the anawim?

14. Are you the first Grand Inquisitor to be elected pope? What does that tell us about the state of the Roman Catholic Church at this time in history? How does that feel to be treading such fresh ground?

15. Why do you denounce Buddhists as "atheists" and "autoerotocists?" Why do you condemn Hindus? Protestant churches? Pagans? Goddess worshippers? Native American believers? Feminists? The practice of Yoga? You write that it gets you "too much in touch with your body." Is your church--mother of Inquisitions and Crusades and anti-Semitism-without sin and the holder of all spiritual wisdom? Why did your church never excommunicate Hitler?

16. Why do you forbid Catholics to talk about God as Mother? God as Child? Original Blessing instead of Original Sin (which is not in the Bible)? Or God as female as well as male?

Now the good news. All people--and Catholics in particular--are called to find their consciences, and take a stand against the punitive Father God of fundamentalism, and for the divine Wisdom of justice and compassion; to stand against idolatry, including religious idolatry and papalatry, and against the television cult of personality.

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