We are in something of a new Augustinian age – there’s an OSA friar as Pope, as you may have noticed – and it was no surprise that the Catholic Theological Association chose “Augustine past and present” as the theme of its annual conference this year.

We are in something of a new Augustinian age – there’s an OSA friar as Pope, as you may have noticed – and it was no surprise that the Catholic Theological Association chose “Augustine past and present” as the theme of its annual conference this year. It was held in Oxford for the first time, with St Peter’s College providing the accommodation and Blackfriars the lecture rooms. The big set- piece lectures included “Augustine East and West” by Lewis Ayres of the University of Durham and “St Augustine’s divine semiotics: a contemporary debate” by Jacob Phillips of St Mary’s University, Twickenham.
The Augustinian sister, Margaret Atkins of Boarbank Hall in Cumbria, described Augustine in a dazzling address as “the first peace theorist” who, despite being a naturally anxious person himself, taught that you can only be a peacemaker if you have first found inner peace yourself. David Albert Jones of St Mary’s dispelled the familiar charge that Augustine was a “body-hating bogeyman”: for Augustine the greatest vice was not car nality but pride, and he chose to write a book on marriage before writing one on virginity.

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