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Week of 7/7-12/2025:
Evil, Genocide, & Goodness
July 7, 2025: The Banality of Evil 2.0 (MF)
Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt started a philosophical free-for-all with her reportage on the trial of Adolf Eichmann 61 years ago, proposing that he was not so much an evil person as a humdrum bureaucrat who went along with an evil system. But that did not in any way excuse his actions.
Matthew believes evil can be both/and—both born from radical hatred and sadism, or banal. Today we reflect on whether those who passed the horrific budget bill are radically evil or banally so. And does it really matter if the consequences are the same? It seems very little has been learned from the banality of evil 1.0. But our job is to resist, tell the truth, and offer alternatives to the banality of 2.0.
An excerpt from Hakeem Jeffries’ filibuster speech on July 3, 2025. Video by Fox 4 Dallas-Fort Worth.
July 8, 2025: Catholic Bishops & Other Faith Leaders Condemn MAGA Budget Bill (MF)
Before the passing of the MAGA budget bill, 20 Roman Catholic bishops signed an interfaith letter stating that its “passage would be a moral failure for American society as a whole.”
The letter was also signed by various other faith leaders. They wrote: There is nothing less Christ-like than cutting healthcare and food stamps for the poor…. The ICE detention budget alone is ballooning from $3.4 billion to $45 billion. [It] will create a self-perpetrating deportation industrial machine similar to our private prison system and military complex.…
(Also, as a result of cutting $1 trillion from Medicaid) nursing homes and hospitals will shut down.… From our various faith perspectives, the moral test of a nation is how it treats those most in need of support.
July 9, 2025: Satan, Divided (GG)
Hearing about Elon Musk launching his own political party made me think at once that a division in the U.S, electorate oriented toward the right can only bring victory to progressive candidates everywhere in the country.
Consider the Gospel adage “If Satan opposes himself and is divided, he cannot stand; his end has come.” (Mark 3:26) Satan brings chaos whereas God, the Creator, brings order out of chaos. The intensity and magnitude of the forces which are targeting the most vulnerable make one think of one single wicked mind.
This is probably how the idea of the devil as a “prince” dominating the entire world came to exist. Many of us are convinced that only by an alliance among different religious traditions might we hope to get out of the horrible mess into which we have fallen.
“Satan Fell like Lightning.” “The seventy-two came back rejoicing. ‘Lord,’ they said ‘even the devils submit to us when we use your name.’ He said to them, ‘I watched Satan fall like lightning from heaven.” Detail from a lacquer screen in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC. Posted by Fr Lawrence Lew, OP on Flickr
.July 10, 2025: One Year Ago in Orvieto (GG)
One year ago, Matthew and GG were in Orvieto looking at a painting of the Antichrist when Matthew exclaimed, “It feels like Donald Trump!”
In the book Matthew immediately started to write, the emphasis was on both Trump and the MAGA movement. This is relevant because the point is not attacking your enemies, but recognizing how evil plays so subtly within society.
In the Afterword of the book, Andrew Harvey wrote: The authentic Christian mystical tradition of which Matthew Fox is our living elder statesman has the starkest and most realistic awareness of evil, a realism that the other traditions would be wise to integrate immediately.
July 11, 2025: The Core of Goodness (GG)
Two great 20th-century thinkers have surpassed all others in the depth of their reflections on evil: Hannah Arendt and Paul Ricoeur.
Arendt is especially remembered for her phrase “the banality of evil” while Ricoeur is known for his investigation of “radical evil.” I
In spite of the fact that Ricouer studied evil for a good portion of his life, he said: “…However radical evil may be, it is not as deep as goodness.”
Over the course of about 50 years, Ricouer was a constant visitor to the Ecumenical Monastic Community of Taizé in France. Two aspects of the community impressed him: 1) the way people interacted with each other, and 2) the kind of meditative prayer that was offered. About the first, he said: At times I have the impression that…everyone obeys without anybody giving orders. This creates an impression of joyful service, …which is the complete opposite of submission…. It surely would have looked like a miracle for somebody steeped in the study of evil.
Laudate Dominum (Taizé Chant)
The Taizé chant “Laudate Dominum (Bless the Lord). OneWingedSeraphim
July 12, 2025: Mark Day, Thomas Merton, California Missions & Genocide (MF)
Matthew tells us about the book, Reimagining the California Missions: A Former Franciscan Friar’s Search for the Truth, by award-winning journalist and ex-Franciscan Mark Day.
Day draws on a mountain of evidence from serious sociologists, historians, fact finders and leaders of California tribes to tell the authentic and tragic story of the Missions on the indigenous people of California.
Thomas Merton criticized the “reservation existence” which Native people were subject to as being “as close to non-existence as we can get him without annihilating him altogether.”
Colonialism teaches that native peoples are “squatters on land which God had assigned to us.” Not just Californians, but all Americans, need to understand the impact colonization has had on the First Peoples of the continent.
Recommended Reading
One River, Many Wells: Wisdom Springing from Global Faiths
Matthew Fox calls on all the world traditions for their wisdom and their inspiration in a work that is far more than a list of theological position papers but a new way to pray—to meditate in a global spiritual context on the wisdom all our traditions share. Fox chooses 18 themes that are foundational to any spirituality and demonstrates how all the world spiritual traditions offer wisdom about each.“Reading One River, Many Wells is like entering the rich silence of a masterfully directed retreat. As you read this text, you reflect, you pray, you embrace Divinity. Truly no words can fully express my respect and awe for this magnificent contribution to contemporary spirituality.” –Caroline Myss, author of Anatomy of the Spirit
Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ: A Handbook for the 2024 Election
Matthew Fox tells us that he had always shied away from using the term “Anti-Christ” because it was so often used to spread control and fear. However, given today’s rise of authoritarianism and forces of democracide, ecocide, and christofascism, he turns the tables in this book employing the archetype for the cause of justice, democracy, and a renewed Earth and humanity.
From the Foreword: If there was ever a time, a moment, for examining the archetype of the Antichrist, it is now…Read this book with an open mind. Good and evil are real forces in our world. ~~ Caroline Myss, author of Anatomy of the Spirit and Conversations with the Divine.
For immediate access to Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ: A Handbook for the 2024 Election, order the e-book with 10 full-color prints from Amazon HERE.
To get a print-on-demand paperback copy with black & white images, order from Amazon HERE or IUniverse HERE.
To receive a limited-edition, full-color paperback copy, order from MatthewFox.org HERE.
Order the audiobook HERE for immediate download.
A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice
In A Spirituality Named Compassion, Matthew Fox delivers a profound exploration of the meaning and practice of compassion. Establishing a spirituality for the future that promises personal, social, and global healing, Fox marries mysticism with social justice, leading the way toward a gentler and more ecological spirituality and an acceptance of our interdependence which is the substratum of all compassionate activity.
“Well worth our deepest consideration…Puts compassion into its proper focus after centuries of neglect.” –The Catholic Register
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