Klart for saligkåring av kardinal Newman

Kardinal Newman. Foto: Wikipedia

Søndag klokken 11.00 er det klart for høydepunktet under pavens besøk til Storbritannia: saligkåringen av kardinal John Henry Newman.

Messen finner sted i Cofton Park, Birmingham, hvor Benedikt bryter sine egne regler og selv presiderer ved saligkåringsseremonien - et tydelig tegn på hvor stor pris paven setter på kardinal Newman.

Da Den hellige far under gårsdagens mini-pressekonferanse ble spurt om Newmans person og betydning for katolsk-anglikanske relasjoner, svarte han slik:

"Cardinal Newman is mainly, on the one hand, a modern man, who took on all of the problems of modernity, he experienced the problem of agnosticism, the impossibility of knowing God, of believing; a man who throughout his life was on a journey, a journey to let himself be transformed by the truth, in a search of great sincerity and great willingness, to learn more, to find and to accept the path to true life. This modernity of his inner-being and life points to the modernity of his faith: it is not a faith in the formulas of a bygone age, it is a most personal form of faith, lived, suffered, found through a long process of renewal and conversion.

He is a man of great culture who on the one hand participates in our sceptical culture of today, in the question: "Can we understand something certain about the truth of man, of the human being, or not? And how can we arrive at the convergence of the verisimilitude?". A man who, on the other hand, with a great knowledge of the culture of the Church Fathers, he studied and renewed the internal genesis of the faith, thus acknowledging his figure and his inner constitution, he is a man of great spirituality, a great humanism, a man of prayer, of a deep relationship with God and a relationship with himself, and therefore also of a deep relationship with the other men of his and our time.

So I would say these three elements: the modernity of his existence, with all the doubts and problems of our existence today, his great culture, knowledge of the great cultural treasures of mankind, his constant quest for the truth, continuous renewal and spirituality: spiritual life, life with God, give this man an exceptional greatness for our time. Therefore, it is a figure of Doctor of the Church for us, for all and also a bridge between Anglicans and Catholics."

Newman etterlot seg store mengder skriftlig materiale, blant annet 21 000 personlige brev, i tillegg til de førti bøkene han utga, derav hans mest berømte: Apologia pro Vita sua.

I anledning saligkåringen tilbyr katolsk.no våre lesere en rykende fersk biografi, i tillegg til artikkelen "John Henry Newman, a man for all seasons".

St. Olav forlag utgir i disse dager også pocketboken "John Henry Newman - de tvilendes apostel", en kort men grundig innføring i kardinalens liv og virke. Boken kan kjøpes/bestilles på St. Olav bokhandel fra 19. september. (NB: søndagsåpen bokhandel!)

Oslo-baserte Newmanentusiaster kan også høre p. Arnfinn Haram OP i dominikanernes foredragssal tirsdag, hvor han holder foredraget "John Henry Newman, a man for all seasons".

Følg saligkåringsmessen live fra klokken 11.00

KI - Katolsk Informasjonstjeneste (Oslo); Andreas Dingstad (17. september 2010)