Interview:
Matthew
Interview by
Nelson
Samantha Frenkel-Popell
Why did you come to Menlo?
MN: Back in the spring of last year, a conservative Catholic blog did a hit piece against me
and against other theology teachers and chairs
across the Bay Area. This caused quite a stir at
the respective schools, so anywhere from Stuart
Hall [San Francisco] to Sacred Heart Preparatory, to the Woodside Priory School where I was
from. And this revealed to me a suspicion that I had about the changing face of the Catholic Church because of Archbishop Cordileone, who’s known as an Archconservative. He
was appointed the new archbishop of San Francisco about two years back. A member of
our community (a monastic) Brother Edward was instrumental in protecting our community from any sort of conservative expectation
that we should indoctrinate students into Catholic
ideology or that we should try to be a certain way
in our curriculum or in our
identity as the Woodside Priory School. So
throughout this tumult, I came to the realization
that this would no longer be a hospitable place to
teach theology. I might be able to teach history, I
______________
___________
“Yeah, cool! I’m the queer
bohemian who once chaired
a theology dept. at the
Woodside Priory School!”
___________
______________
might be able to teach literature, but as long as I wanted to pursue my love of teaching the
academic non-sectarian cultural studies approach to religion, I’m probably going to have
to do that elsewhere because this is no longer a place that it can be done. [...] The more I
learned about Menlo, the more I learned that this could be a wonderful place
for me to continue my career.