ABSTRACT
Augustine understood catholicity to be the universal agreement by all sectors of the church about what constituted the truth of faith. Vincent of Lerins held that it was that which was believed everywhere, at all times, and by everyone. Both Augustine and Vincent pointed in a promising direction by saying that the catholicity of faith is tied to the universal consent of the faithful about the content of faith. Newman's most famous presentation of the sensus fidelium occurs in the controversial Rambler article of July 1859 entitled "On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine". The dawn of a world church has raised the kind of questions about cultural incarnations of faith during the era of the European-centered church. The hermeneutical philosophy of Hans-Georg Gadamer is an apt vehicle for pursuing the direction indicated by Newman. The theology of liberation rests upon an assertion of a church model that begins with the sensus fidelium, not with hierarchical structures.
