Letter from the Editor

I came to the National Institute for Newman Studies in May 2016 to serve as Interim Executive Director and Editor-in-Chief of the Newman Studies Journal. It has been an eventful year, marked by many initiatives and changes. Perhaps the most significant matter to report is that the affiliation with Duquesne University has been renewed and is now known as the Newman Studies Joint Initiative.

In the spirit of that Joint Initiative, the NINS staff and Duquesne University served as site hosts for the Newman Association of America conference in late July 2016, which attracted scholars from around the world. Many fine papers were presented and the evening reception at NINS proved a time for building professional relationships and nurturing the ongoing connection between NINS and members of the NAA.

In October, the NINS-Duquesne Newman Studies Joint Initiative sponsored the Fall Newman Lecture, and Professor Eamon Duffy of Cambridge University delivered a striking address on Newman and preaching. Following the lecture, thanks to the generosity of Henry and Mary Louise Gailliot, through their Gailliot Family Foundation, Fr. John Ford received the inaugural Gailliot Award for Newman Studies. That event was marked by a celebratory dinner in honor of Fr. Ford, who delivered an intriguing address on the state of Newman Studies. An expanded version of that address opens this issue of the Newman Studies Journal.

A closer relationship with the Birmingham Oratory of Saint Philip Neri has also emerged during the past year. During a visit to Birmingham in late October and early November, members of the NINS Board and the Birmingham Oratory visited the Rylands Library in Manchester, where Newman's archive had been digitized. In a new joint venture, NINS and the Birmingham Oratory community also interviewed and hired the first professionally trained archivist to reorganize and recatalogue Newman's manuscripts and create metadata for NINS' digital archive. While Mr. Daniel Joyce continues to do his fine work overseeing Newman's libraries and archive, and assisting scholars who contact him, Mr. Lawrence Gregory has taken up the challenge of his two-year contract, and is applyinghis archival skills with professional diligence. He is making impressive progress, and we anticipate that he will complete his work on schedule. As you will see reported in the News from NINS, Messrs. Joyce and Gregory will be deliveringthe Fall Newman Lecture on 16 October 2017. To celebrate the unique contributions to the study of Newman made by the Birmingham Oratorians, past and present, the Gailliot Award for Newman Studies in 2017 will be given to the Birmingham Oratory of Saint Philip Neri. You will find more information on that event and the dinner to celebrate that honor in the News from NINS section of this issue.

An early fruit of the digital archive project is being published in this issue of the NSJ. Robert Porwoll of the University of Chicago and Dr. C. Michael Shea of Seton Hall University made use of NINS' digital collection of manuscripts to prepare a critical transcription, translation, and annotation of Newman's Theses de Fide, a set of manuscripts of crucial importance in understanding his views on faith and reason.accomplishment marks what I hope will be a regular feature for the NSJ, in which shorter manuscripts from Newman's archives are transcribed and made available to our readers. Mr. Porwoll and Dr. Shea are to be commended for this work and for providing such a valuable resource to the field of Newman Studies. The editorial staff of the NSJ welcomes proposals for similar projects for future issues.

To complement this study, and explore the possibility of another editorial initiative, we are pleased to bring to our readers an English translation of Dr. Andreas Koritensky's German article, "The Early John Henry Newman on Faith and Reason." Our hope is to bring to our Anglophone readers some of the best contributions to Newman Studies that have been published in other languages. The editorial staff is eager for your recommendations and would welcome proposals for translation projects.

In an effort to acquaint our readers with the broad scope of publications on Newman and Newman-related...