This year’s Newman Lecture – the annual event sponsored by Campion Hall, Blackfriars and St Benet’s Hall, the three Catholic permanent private halls of Oxford University – could not have been more topical. Halfway between the synod on the family last October and this year’s follow-up synod on the same topic, also to be held in October, moral theologian Lisa Sowle Cahill addressed a packed hall on marriage and the family, the need to distinguish between the two, and the disjunction between the expectations of the Church and the experience of Catholic families. Cahill, a professor at Boston College, described the divide between much of the laity and elements of church teaching on sexuality. She also praised the bishops of England and Wales for a report backing