London: Cardinal Bea Memorial Lecture 2012

04/06/2012: United Kingdom

At our Centre here in London, UK we held the  Forty Second Cardinal Bea Memorial Lecture 2012 – Celebrating 70 years of the Council of Christians and Jews and reflected together on the dialogue and co-operation between our two faith communities.

The Council of Christians and Jews was founded in 1942 by Chief Rabbi Hertzl and Archbishop William Temple of blessed memory, who was then soon to become the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Our keynote speaker, Lord Harries of Pentregarth gave an excellent historical overview of events and significant documents since 1942 leading to ‘Nostra Aetate’ and the current developments in Christian/Jewish Dialogue today. Our Jewish speaker, Rabbi Jeremy Gordon spoke from his own experience, which was extremely positive and paid tribute to his education in a Catholic Primary school here in London. His own children now attend the same school and the present headmaster was in  the audience which numbered over 70 people. This says so much about inter faith dialogue today.  The Revd. Baroness Kathleen Richardson (Methodist Minister) chaired the evening.  All the  participants  really enjoyed  the event   and were  very appreciative of the Sisters of  Our Lady of Sion for making this and other lectures possible.