As the lengthy subtitle of his new book indicates, Fox does indeed see the Roman Catholic Church as being imperiled by the papacies of the Polish pope and the German pope. However, when Fox turns his attention to suggesting how the church can be saved, he does not seem to me to be discussing how to save the institution known as the Roman Catholic Church. Even though the Roman Catholic Church is the apparent focal point, Fox seems to me to be spelling out suggestions about how Christianity as a whole might be saved, if it is to be saved.
I should point out that Fox does not go to the trouble of constructing the arguments that the devil's advocate might advance against saving Christianity, instead of abolishing it and moving self-described Christians back into the fold of Judaism. Because Fox has served as an Episcopal priest since 1994, I suppose that it is understandable that he might not want to suggest that his livelihood as a Christian priest should be taken away from him, as newly enlightened self-described Christians return to the fold of Judaism and settle for regarding the historical Jesus as a Jewish prophet, instead of regarding him not only as being messiah but also as being somehow God.
To advance his suggestions for saving the church, Fox considers the words from the Nicene Creed that Catholics recite at Sunday Mass: "one, holy, catholic, apostolic church" (pages 203-24).
As the name of this creed indicates, this creed was formulated in Greek at the Council of Nicea in 325. The participants spoke Greek, which is why this creed was formulated in Greek. My favorite author Walter J. Ong, S.J. (1912-2003) never tired of explaining the Greek etymology of the word "catholic" (Greek, "kata" + "holos" meaning through-the-whole). Like Ong, Fox also knows the Greek etymology of the word "catholic" (page 204).
Over the entire course of Ong's adult life, he also never tired of criticizing the church for not having an up-to-date cosmology, which is to say a cosmology that takes evolutionary theory into account. For his part, Fox builds on the Greek etymological meaning of "catholic" to urge the practice of cosmology and ecology (pages 211-212).
But that's not all. In his 1952 review essay titled "The Mechanical Bride: Christen the Folklore of Industrial Man" in the journal SOCIAL ORDER (Saint Louis University), volume 2, number 2 (February 1952): pages 79-85, Ong urges his fellow American Catholics to figure out ways to christen various aspects of the secular world around them. In the culminating essay in his first book, FRONTIERS IN AMERICAN CATHOLICISM: ESSAYS ON IDEOLOGY AND CULTURE (1957, pages 104-125), Ong urges his fellow American Catholics to develop what he refers to repeatedly as a mystique of technology and science. In short, he urges his fellow American Catholics to use their religious values in positive ways to see the secular world around them in positive ways. Remember the etymological meaning of "catholic" is through-the-whole.
For his part, Fox devotes a subsection to "Find and Create Postmodern Forms of Worship" (pages 212-213). So I see certain parallels between Fox's thought in his new book and Ong's thought in his publications of the 1950s.
But I now want to return to the words quoted above from the Nicene Creed. Years ago, I published an article about the Nicene Creed and the controversies known as the Arian heresy: "Early Christian Creeds and Controversies in the Light of the Orality-Literacy Hypothesis" in the journal ORAL TRADITION, volume 2 (1987): pages 132-149. All of the articles in this journal can be accessed at the journal's website. I mention my article to establish that I have been thinking about the Nicene Creed for a good number of years now.
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