"Liberalism invites us to dialogue within the (putatively) open and pluralistic market of religions, all the while that it has already, hiddenly, filled the terms of that dialogue with a liberal theory of religion."

The assumption has become increasingly common since Vatican Counil II that Catholicism and liberalism "have successfully resolved" the fundamental differences they had in the past.¹ However one defines the difficult term, "liberalism," such an assumption typically comes attached to the claim that the Council vindicated the arguments of John Courtney Murray on matters of pluralism and religious freedom.

Surely religous pluralism is an ineliminable fact of life in America and throughout the West today. And just as surely religious freedom is one of the great achievements of the Council. As Murray argued, this achievement seems even to indicate a development of doctrine. Religious freedom is part of the Council's recognition more generally of modern interiority and subjectivity; and is of a piece with the Council's distinctive affirmation of the Church's openness to the world. In the matter of religious freedom, one might in fact agree with Hans Urs von Balthasar that Dignitatis humanae perhaps did not go far enough in renouncing coercive means as unworthy of the gospel: that it would have been appropriate for the Council to have apologized to humanity, in terms as clear as its apology to other Christian churches in Unitatis redintegratio (n. 7).²

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