The Hidden Spirituality of Men

It is no secret that men are in trouble today. From war to ecological collapse, most of the world's critical problems stem from a distorted masculinity out of control. Yet our culture rewards the very dysfunctions responsible for those problems. To Matthew Fox, our crucial task is to open our minds to a deeper understanding of the healthy masculine than we receive from our media, culture, and religions. Popular religion forces the punitive imagery of fundamentalism on us, pushing most men away from their natural yearning for spirituality and toward intolerance and domination. Meanwhile, many men, particularly young men, are looking for images of healthy masculinity to emulate and finding nothing. To awaken what Fox calls "the sacred masculine," he unearths ten metaphors, or archetypes, ranging from the Green Man, an ancient pagan symbol of our fundamental relationship with nature, to the Grandfatherly Heart to the Spiritual Warrior. He explores archetypes of sacred marriage, showing how partnership becomes the ultimate expression of healthy masculinity. By stirring our natural yearning for healthy spirituality, Fox argues, these timeless archetypes can inspire men to pursue their higher calling to reinvent the world.

Autorentext

Matthew Fox was a member of the Dominican Order for 34 years. He holds a doctorate (received summa cum laude) in the History and Theology of Spirituality from the Institut Catholique de Paris. Seeking to establish a pedagogy that was friendly to learning spirituality, he established an Institute in Culture and Creation Spirituality that operated for seven years at Mundelein College in Chicago and twelve years at Holy Names College in Oakland. For ten of those years at Holy Names College, Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict), as the Catholic Church's chief inquisitor and head of the Congregation of Doctrine and Faith, tried to shut the program down. Ratzinger silenced Fox for one year in 1988 and forced him to step down as director. Three years later he expelled Fox from the order and then had the program terminated. Rather than disband his amazing ecumenical faculty, Fox started the University of Creation Spirituality. Fox was president of UCS for nine years. He is currently a scholar in residence with the Academy for the Love of Learning. He lectures, teaches, and writes and serves as president of the nonprofit he created in 1984, Friends of Creation Spirituality. He is the author of 28 books and lives in Oakland, California.