Gregory Fox, FCLC 2026

Major: History

Bio: Gregory Fox grew up in Richmond, Virginia and is now a student at Fordham University (Lincoln Center) majoring in History and minoring in Theology. They are currently in their senior year and their primary academic focus is the history of left-wing Catholicism in twentieth century Europe.

Title of Research: Incarnation and History: Fr. Tomás Malagón (1917–1984), the Hermandad Obrera de Acción Católica, and Catholic Opposition to Fascism in Spain

Mentor: Brenna Moore, Theology

Abstract: My research examined the theology of Tomás Malagón (1917–1984), a Spanish Catholic priest who developed an incarnational, working-class theology of resistance under Francisco Franco's dictatorship (1939–1975). Drawing on a textual analysis of Malagón's writings in Boletín HOAC (1954–1972), my research situates his texts within the historical, ecclesial, and political contexts of post-Civil War Spain, by drawing on scholarship by Basilisa López García, Rafael Díaz-Salazar, Gerd-Rainer Horn, and Feliciano Montero García.

Several findings emerged from this resesarch. First, Malagón elaborated a theology of "double fidelity" — fidelity to Christ and to the working class — grounding working-class militancy not in secular ideology but in the inner logic of Christ's incarnation. Just as Christ assumed human history, the Church must assume the struggles of the working class as genuine solidarity rather than paternalistic charity. Secondly, through the Hermandad Obrera de Acción Católica (HOAC), Malagón helped construct a "worker-Christian" subjectivity capacious enough to include anarchists, socialists, and communists in a shared space of resistance to nacionalcatolicismo. Lastly, Malagón's theology argues that nature, history, and social transformation are not opposed to grace but transfigured by it, engaging Marxist materialism while subordinating it to a Christological framework.

Malagón's thought constitutes a compelling, underexplored resource against the contemporary resurgence of far-right identitarian Catholicism and nationalism. While such movements instrumentalize religious symbolism for nationalist ends, Malagón's non-triumphalist, solidarity-centered Christianity offers an alternative form of political Catholicism with significant implications for the present.