Interreligious Reading after Vatican II with John Henry Newman’s Two Habits of Mind

This paper applies certain elements from John Henry Newman’s An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent to some issues presented by the recent volume Interreligious Reading After Vatican II, responding particularly to Michael Barnes. My concern is, firstly, the fact that magisterial pronouncements are often bound to a correspondence view of truth, connected to the deductive reasoning frequently associated with the neo-Scholastic textbooks. Insofar as this seems to entail a “mono-visional” understanding of truth, it obviously threatens the plurality of voices which are part and parcel of the practice of SR in the Abrahamic tent of meeting. Secondly, I am concerned with the fact that magisterial documents of recent decades affirm consistently that interreligious dialogue should not preclude proclamation, with the ultimate end of seeking conversion. Again, this threatens to unsettle the kind of respectful engagement required for SR, where the centre of gravity lies not in seeking converts to one’s own tradition, but in engaging in constructive encounter with other traditions to heal the brokenness of our global context. With both these areas of concern, there is a genuine tension for the Catholic SR practitioner, and in this paper I show how John Henry Newman’s thinking offers resources to orientate Catholics navigating their way through this difficult territory.