The Cause of the Canonisation of John Henry Cardinal Newman

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Conference of the French Association of Friends of Cardinal Newman

Categorised as News and published Tuesday, November 25th, 2008
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The “Association Française des Amis de John Henry Newman” held its 12th International Conference in Paris on Saturday 22 and Sunday 23 November 2008, on the theme of Newman’s preaching. A dozen speakers examined such subjects as the relationship between his sermons and his other writings, between his moral and his spiritual teaching, major recurrent themes such as the nature of faith, the role of human memory, the invisible world, the sense of the Church and the ‘spiritual sense’ of Scripture, and also such questions as the relationship between Newman’s Anglican and Catholic sermons. Last but not least, space was given to the relevance of his sermons today.

A full and dense programme left organisers and participants delighted with the success of the venture. The conference papers will be published in the next issue of the Association’s annual review, the Etudes Newmaniennes, in 2009.

The Association, under the leadership of its President Father Keith Beaumont of the French Oratory, is currently engaged in translating into French those remaining volumes of sermons still untranslated, as well as publishing studies on Newman. The probable subject of the next conference, to be held in November 2010, will be the theme of holiness in Newman’s work.

The presence at the conference of a large number of new members and of representatives of several French dioceses bears witness to the growing interest in Newman in France, in anticipation of a forthcoming beatification, and to the desire of numerous dioceses to mark the event by conferences, study days and other means.

The website of the Association is: http://jhnewman-france.org