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Notes -
Allan Bloom said that true open-mindedness is when one both (a) is willing to view different cultures as possible alternatives and (b) recognises that cultures are not, deep down, all the same.
People are familiar with the closed-mindedness that happens when people fail at (a) - the classic dogmatist who refuses to read about other religions or who dismisses other civilizations as savages. Yet there is also a closed-mindedness that comes from (b) - I have even known well-read professors who have been very reluctant to accept that Islamic or Confucian ethics meaningfully differs from contemporary left-wing liberal woke ethics in any respects. As Bloom pointed out, (b) is often driven by the combination of relativism and multiculturalism: a way of "resolving" moral conflicts in a multicultural society by denying their existence.
When I have taught philosophy and world religions, I have often found that the best students have strong beliefs/disbeliefs (including fundamentalist Christians or Catholics, and also New Atheist types) combined with a courage to think seriously about alternatives. So, while they are not Muslims or Ancient Greeks, they are willing to face a radically different culture, take seriously the possibility of adopting ideas from it, and thus they are motivated to apply reason to the intellectual problems that result, e.g. "How to live? What do I know? What can I know?" The students who start with a bland relativism and multiculturalism rarely developed a taste for such serious thinking.
Is this meant to be "fundamentalist (Christians or Catholics)" or "(fundamentalist Christians) or (Catholics)"?
The first. Though, given how intellectualist fundamentalist Catholics tend to be, it's perhaps less surprising when they show an aptitude for thinking seriously about philosophical or religious issues.
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