THE
P RTAL
January 2018
Page 10
Thoughts on Newman
The Unity
of All Christians
Dr Stephen Morgan
M
indful that this article will appear in T he
P ortal at about the time of the Octave of Prayer
for Christian Unity, it occurs to me that what John Henry Newman would make of the news from the
Church of England these days might make a fitting subject for this column.
I have to confess to having avoided doing so in the
past too frequently or too explicitly for two main
reasons: the first is that, except in the most formal of
ways, I was never an Anglican and so feel I ought to
tread very carefully in such paths; and the second, that
Newman himself was mostly very wary of commenting
on events in his former communion after his own
conversion.
official Anglican damnatio memoriae of extraordinary
swiftness and thoroughness would have appalled
Newman.
Faced with the man’s successor rushing to condemn
him and pay compensation to his accuser, only later
admitting his dead predecessor was entitled, in justice,
to due process, would, at best have had Newman at a
loss.
Nevertheless, given the conjunction of the dates
Reading of an Archbishop of Canterbury choosing
of writing and publishing this article, it seems not
unreasonable to have a serious stab at looking back only to apologise for failures of process and refusing
across the Tiber at current events from Newman’s to restore the accused’s good name, choosing only
to say that the dead man had been “accused of great
perspective.
wickedness”, despite being possessed of a report making
Newman spent a great deal of time, effort and it crystal clear that his reputation had been trashed
money defending his own reputation from calumny without anything approaching a proper process or of
and detraction: first from those visited upon him by reaching a credible threshold of evidence, we can have
the renegade priest, Giacinto Achilli and, later, from no doubt that Newman’s customary equanimity would
the sly insinuations of Charles Kingsley. I suspect, have given way to disgust. But in none of this would he
therefore, that Newman would have had very clear have been in the slightest surprised.
views about the treatment of George Bell.
I am certain sure that it would all merely have
The scandalously easy way in which the good name served to confirm the judgment Newman made in
of a deceased Anglican cleric could be traduced by the wake of the episcopal charges against Tract 90:
those whose premature judgments seem concerned that institutional self-preservation was the organising
only to serve the news management agenda of principle of the church by law established.
organisational reputation would have astonished
Newman.
What Newman would have made of the election of
the entirely admirable – and I am told – amiable Sarah
The quondam Bishop of Chichester was one for Mullaly to succeed Dr Chartres to the office first held
whom fidelity to the truth was of such importance that, by Edmund Grindall, is another matter altogether.
despite the ire of the public press, he first stood out
against Fascism, then against war crimes committed in
It doesn’t do to be too definitive about such
the name of overthrowing it, then against punishing a speculation, given that the notion of women bishops
defeated Germany, then against the Nuclear arms race. was not one that Newman ever had to contemplate,
but somehow I doubt that he would have been either
That such a man, whose reputation, in his own quite as quick off the mark nor yet as breathlessly
lifetime could hardly have been higher, might, almost effusive in his welcome as seems to be de rigeur for
sixty years after his death, find himself subject to an Cardinals these days.