THE P RTAL
January 2014
UK Page 3
Thoughts on Newman
Newman: A Life in Letters
Stephen Morgan
T
he wave
of emails, texts, tweets and other social media messages that greets most of us every day
is a real feature of twenty-first century life. It marks a real change in the way that communicate from
that of thirty years ago: then important matters were committed to letters; other less serious things could be
covered in a telephone call – although not too lengthy since long-distance calls were costly and international
calls almost unimaginably expensive.
Now almost everything can be communicated at
very low cost in a form of written communication
across the internet or the airwaves. This is both a
blessing and a curse. I recently came back to my office
after five days away to find over eight hundred emails
awaiting my attention.
well the opposite of bad and wicked.
Many of them required little more than a cursory
read but a number were really important and the speed
of modern communications means that, all too often,
important means urgent. Reflecting on this, I was
struck, however, by one similarity and one difference
between our current situation and that which John
Henry Newman experienced.
We have thirty-two volumes of Newman’s letters
and diaries in published form, his sermons exist in
a number of published series and the Birmingham
Oratory Archives contain the original manuscripts
of much of his other work besides. And it is not
only Newman: the University of Toronto is part way
through publishing the letters of Disraeli and sitting on
my desk at the moment is a wonderful two-vo