-Newman (Wikipedia)
" The Grammar of Assent derives from Pope Paul's judgment an increased significance because in it Newman, rejecting the purely intellectualist approach to the problem of God, talks a language much more like that of Duns Scotus than that of St. Thomas. It is also much more like that of the modern analyst and existentialist and we can see that growth of tolerance reflected in the present language of the Church. Where the early nineteenth century Popes had been only concerned to denounce, the modern documents are concerned to explain and understand. Contrast for instance Pius IX's full blooded denunciation of all enemies of the Church with the careful and reasoned attempt to discover what had led atheists to become atheists of John XXIII in Mater et Magistra or in the Schema XIII of the Church in the World Today; contrast Gregory XVI's denunciation of freedom of opinion as 'insanity' with John XXIII's assertion of its rights in Pacem in Terris; compare the Syllabus Errorum's advocacy of a literal interpretation of the Scriptures with the assertion of a duty of hermeneutic exposition of them in Pius XII's Divino Afflante Spiritu; or the earlier Pope's denunciation of liberalism, progress and democracy with the Council's assertion of the autonomous rights of science and it's endorsement of democracy in it's judgment that 'admirable is the practice of those nations in which the greater number of citizens take part with true liberty in political life.'
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