Another split in Matthew Fox's cosmos: bitter break leads to two new competing spirituality programs

National Catholic Reporter, Nov 1, 1996 by Diane Weddington

OAKLAND, Calif. - In a converted piano warehouse in this urban setting, the University of Creation Spirituality is emerging. Rebel theologian Matthew Fox has a new vision. He speaks of a postmodern university, a place where technology and faith unite, where working people come to talk about spiritual quests.

Across town in the green hills swaddling the campus of Holy Names College, the Sophia Center has emerged from the ashes of Fox's old program, the Institute of Culture and Creation Spirituality. Its director, Jim Conlon, also has a vision: He speaks of a spirituality for the new millennium."

But there will be no collaboration between the two programs, no faculty teaching at both places, no students studying at both places, no shared mailing lists. This was, according to most accounts, much like a bitter divorce, and the feelings months later are still raw. The two programs are now competitors for students who once would have found only one place to study creation spirituality - the old ICCS program at Holy Names college.

Fox's converted warehouse is still unfinished though the program got last minute accreditation at the master's degree level through the New College of San Francisco. Earlier in the summer, Fox said he hoped for at least 50 students paying $7,500 each to study with him and a faculty including former Gov. Jerry Brown, the Body Shop's founder, Anita Roddick, and eco-theologian Brian Swimme, among others. Body Shop is a national chain of cosmetics stores. The school attracted a total of 33 students, 25 full-time, including four scholarship students from developing, countries and two homeless students.

The Sophia Center, enjoying the benefits of its bucolic location, access to the library and other resources of an established, accredited college, was vague about its numbers. Conlon would say only that enrollment was "somewhere in the 30s." Students pay $375 per unit. They will study with Rosemary Radford Ruether, Joanna Macy and Br. David Steindl-Rast, among others.

Conlon could provide no other information on minority enrollment or finances, other than to say about 70 percent of all Holy Names students are receiving some manner of financial assistance. He said no one at the school would have any more specific information.

The faculty who have left Holy Names College to teach at the fledgling university - 13 in all - did not want it to be that way. They still do not understand what happened to them at Holy Names College in the months after Fox announced plans to open the new school. They are excited about the new program, but drained and hurt by their final experiences at the college.

Different stories

What happened? The answers, gleaned during recent interviews with Fox, current administration at Holy Names an faculty at both institutions, differ sharply.

According to Judie Gaffin Wexler, Holy Names vice president for administrative affairs, college administrator followed routine procedures.

The Western Association of Schools and Colleges performed a regularly scheduled review of Holy Names in the spring of 1995, and in the wake of that review, Wexler and college president Mary Alice Muellerleile undertook a campus-wide review of programs.

Neither administrator had been at Holy Names when Fox founded the ICCS. Fox has always had an annual contract authorizing him to make decisions about faculty and curriculum, subject to the approval of college administrators. For years, Fox said, his decisions had been rubber-stamped, but with the WASC review, that ended.

The WASC visit, administrators said, prompted them to take a closer look at a number of programs, including Fox's. They decided it needed more stringent standards for tenure, curriculum and financing.

In the fall of 1995, Fox told Conlon he wanted to appoint a female faculty member to codirect the program with Conlon. Wexler said the administration had to turn down the suggestion. "The budget was set. There was no money. [He] said he could raise the money, but you just don't do things in the middle of the year. We were in the process of looking at the whole program then" she said.

Relationships between Fox and Conlon chilled after that, although Conlon will not speak ill of Fox. Fox said he was shut out of all future discussions about ICCS and that Conlon attended secret meetings, but Wexler said there were no secret meetings.

Controversy has followed Fox for years. During the 1980s, he was formally investigated by the Vatican for his popular writings on ecology, ritual, feminism and earth-based spiritualities. He was silenced by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the Vaticans orthodoxy watch-dog, for a year in 1988.

In 1993, after a protracted and bitter dispute with brother Dominicans in Chicago over Fox's refusal to return to his home province in the Midwest, he was dismissed from his order.

And in 1994, he said he chose to make "a lateral move" to the Episcopal church and was eventually accepted as a priest in that denomination.

In his new book, Confessions, Fox said Wexier told him, "It is time to institutionalize ICCS." Wexler insists that the ICCS was not singled out for reform. New plans for ICCS were part of a campus-wide effort to strengthen academic standards, she said.