NCR Publisher Reports Catholic Church in Asia Has Answers for Troubled Church in United States

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Orbis Books

September 2002

NCR Publisher Reports Catholic Church in Asia
Has Answers for Troubled Church in United States

With scandal, uncertainty, and decreased giving troubling the Catholic Church in the United States and other parts of the western world, a new book points to an unusual source for new directions and ideas: Asia.

In Pentecost in Asia: A New Way of Being Church (Orbis Books, October 2002), Thomas C. Fox, publisher of the National Catholic Reporter, asks intriguing questions:

• What if the church's priorities shifted so that living in solidarity with the laity, especially the poorest among them, became its primary goal?
• What if Catholic bishops looked to their theologians as venerable "masters," incorporating them into deliberations on theology and pastoral care?
• How would Catholic authority be transformed if building consensus became a primary means of finding direction? Or if all leaders knew, in the final analysis, authority had to be earned from their people?

Mr. Fox shows how this expression of church has already been born and has been coming to life in Asia over the past 30 years. It is a Catholicism that offers a fresh, new vision of church, a global vision for the 21st century.

"Entering a new century," he writes, "the human family has critical choices to make and little time left in which to make them. The world's religious leaders are among those who will shape this century for better or for worse. How the Catholic leadership first envisions and then lives out the church's mission will make an enormous difference. If the Catholic church can help to bridge the intellectual, spiritual and material gaps between East and West and rich and poor, this century can be the most fruitful and glorious in history….

"For this to happen, today's apostles and their inspired messages must be heard. In this regard, I believe the Asian Catholic leadership, riveted by the suffering and hopes of the poor, by an abiding respect for the richness and diversity of cultures, and by an East/West global vision, needs to be heard. This is about vision. This is about leadership. This is about having the wisdom to know when and how to listen."

Thomas C. Fox is the publisher and former editor of the National Catholic Reporter (www. natcath.org). He has reported in Asia for NCR, The New York Times and Time magazine. He was a reporter for the Detroit Free Press and an editor at the Washington Star. He is the co-author of Children of Vietnam and the author of Iraq: Military Victory, Moral Defeat; Sexuality and Catholicism; and Catholicism on the Web.

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