THE
P RTAL
May 2016
Page 10
Thoughts on Newman
Amoris Laetitia and
Bl John Henry Newman
Fr Stephen Morgan reflects
F
or many members of the Ordinariate, the last eighteen months or so, with the uncertainty arising
from the reports of the two synods in Rome, and the great swirl of debate about marriage and the issue of
access to the Sacraments for the divorced and civilly remarried will have been horribly familiar, an unwelcome
echo of debates now long past.
Many will remember the various options before
General Synod in 1980 relating to divorce and
remarriage, how even if it was possible to take refuge
behind the letter of the protections offered in the
synodal legislation, it soon became clear that the
toothpaste was out of the tube and there was no way
of putting it back in. But unlike the machinations of
the General Synod, you and I can now cleave to Peter,
we can quietly, calmly ask Fr John Hunwicke to teach
us to parse ‘Roma locuta, causa finite est’, you and I
can echo the Council Fathers at Chalcedon: Peter has
spoken through...not this time Leo but Francis.
from the context out from which this sentence has
been ripped.
The sentence, in the Essay on Development, that
immediately proceeds “to live is to change” comes at
the end of a consider ][ۈو H \