Learned Ignorance

Constructive interreligious dialogue is only a recent phenomenon. Until the nineteenth century, most dialogue among believers was carried on as a debate aimed either to disprove the claims of the other, or to convert the other to one's own tradition. Now, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, many branches of Christianity, not least the Catholic Church, are engaged in a world-wide constructive dialogue with Jews and also with Muslims, made all the more necessary by the terrorist attacks of September 11. The Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies brought together an international group of sixteen Jewish, Catholic and Muslim scholars to carry on an important theological exploration of the theme of ''learned ignorance.''