A bit more on Dissent and Conscience

Thanks to Steve for his post on Conscience  and Dissent. The late Richard McCormick of the Society of Jesus was a gifted man whom I did not have the opportunity to meet. But if I did have that opportunity, I would ask him to elaborate his point so that I could understand why dissent within a community is essential in order to avoid its “comfortable stagnation.” I have the article to which Steve referred before me, and I have been going through it. Is it not possible that those who are faithful to the community and take the intellectual life and honesty seriously may regularly subject their positions to exacting scrutiny testing them with logic and objective empirical evidence and the critique of other views which stand in disagreement to their own? If so, and the positions of their community stand and maintain their integrity after being subjected to such rigorous, periodic examination, why is dissent from within the community needed to fend off stagnation, comfortable or otherwise?   RJA sj