Tom Fox's path from Vietnam to NCR

National Catholic Reporter, Jan 21, 2005 by Arthur Jones

Fox was at the Free Press for five years until Cloud, by then an editor at the Washington Star, encouraged Fox to move to Washington and take a Star editor's job. A year later, Fox was lured to NCR as editor.

The headlines on the National Catholic Reporter front page took on a fresh tone: "Minorities, women gain liberation leadership," "Conservative Christians spread influence, attract attention," "Jesuit superior Arrupe takes first steps to resign," "U.S. Vietnamese face identity questions," "Reagan links to Paraguay worry rights advocates," "NCR writer detained six days in Bolivia," "Suit may force nuclear weapon sites disclosure."

Tom Fox, the new NCR editor, was in town.

[Arthur Jones is NCR editor at large. His e-mail address is arthurjones@comcast.net.]

Viewing the world from both East and West

Tom Fox didn't so much leave Vietnam as bring a part of it with him. lf Stanford University's Dwight Clark and the peace churches moved Fox toward pacifism, the Vietnam War etched it into his soul. The country was then stitched into the fabric of his being with his marriage to Hoa and the birth of their three children.

Vietnam and its Catholics became his gateway into the church in Asia, a threshold from which he has reported on its struggles, and compiled his 2002 book, Pentecost in Asia (Orbis).

He understands, through the couple's three children, that the world viewed from both East and West is a refracted vision dependent on the eyes of the beholder. The children, Daniel, Christine and Catherine, Americans born and raised, were often told in the United States how much they looked like their mother. When they visit Vietnam, people remark how much they resemble their father.

In Pentecost in Asia, Fox reworks that. Seen from Asia, the Catholic church is Christianity rooted in an amalgam of European cultures, driven by U.S.-European aspirations, operating in a factual U.S.-European global hegemony unaccustomed to creatively coexisting with myriad non-European cultures, religions or spirituality.

The book reveals how, seen from the standpoint of the Vatican-based Euro-centric church, this pontificate reacts against that creative coexistence, particularly against a coexistence that would acknowledge other religions as believing equals with different paths to the same God. That possibility, it contends, threatens the Vatican's claim that Roman Catholicism is primus inter pares, first among equals.

Michael Leach, who published Pentecost in Asia, has remarked that Fox "is more than a journalist with integrity, more than a publisher with vision, and more than a writer with clarity and verve: He is a prophet." Jesuit Fr. Raymond Schroth, who writes for NCR and has jogged with Fox, suggests there's a new pulpit for modern prophets. Schroth, a fan of one of Fox's earlier books, Iraq: Military Victor, Moral Defeat, remarking on a seminar Fox addressed at Loyola, New Orleans, focused on Fox's ability to delve knowledgeably, deeply and entertainingly into complex topics. "His talent is under a bushel," said the Jesuit. His true metier "is television, as a regular on the 'NewsHour with Jim Lehrer' and similar shows. Perhaps there's still time."--Arthur Jones