A Leaky Sort of Thing? The divisiveness of Michael Dummett

Extract

A note by the Editor: In the October issue of New Blackfriars appeared an article by Professor Michael Dummett, ‘A Remarkable Consensus’. In it the author discussed what he saw to be problems arising when Catholic theologians and seminary teachers publicly align themselves with the so-called ‘liberal consensus’: in other words, adopt opinions which, in the author’s view, ‘imply that, from the very earliest times, the Catholic Church, claiming to have a mission from God to safeguard divinely revealed truth, has taught and insisted on the acceptance of falsehoods’. He believed this to have happened on a wide-spread scale. He concluded that ‘the divergence that now obtains between what the Catholic Church purports to believe and what large or important sections of it in fact believe ought... to be tolerated no longer: not if there is to be a rationale for belonging to that Church; not if there is to be any hope of reunion with the other half of Christendom; not if the Catholic Church is not to be a laughing-stock in the eyes of the world. ‘ Here Professor Nicholas Lash reacts to Professor Dummett’s article, and particularly to what he had to say about modern theologians and seminary teachers. In the next article Professor Dummett answers him.

In November 1869 Father Charles Meynell, professor of philosophy at Oscott, finished reading the proofs of the Grammar of Assent. Returning them to Newman, he wrote: ‘Well, I have learnt a great deal from you: I had no notion that an inference was such a leaky sort of thing!’.