ABSTRACT
Los Angeles to Dublin, Nairobi to Taipei, Cairo to San Salvador: the faith of the Catholic church assumes such diverse cultural forms that it is difficult if not impossible to specify a normative sense of the one faith catholic. The catholicity of the faith is thus maintained to the degree that the people of local churches communicate with other local churches, and share in a sensus fidelium. The current situation of a world church makes the discussion of the sensus fidelium a more daunting task than John Henry Newman might have imagined. To say that Newman used the sensus fidelium as a hermeneutical principle, a principle by which the entire church interprets and judges forms of faith, seems far from Newman’s intention. Newman’s work on the sensus fidelium pertained to receiving and transmitting the faith in its doctrinal forms. The hermeneutical philosophy of Hans-Georg Gadamer is an apt vehicle for pursuing the direction indicated by Newman.
