THE
P RTAL
August 2018
Page 10
Thoughts on Newman
The Psalter
Dr Stephen Morgan reflects on the enduring effect
of Coverdale’s translation of the Psalms
I
t’s that time of the year when, in each locality, some of the clergy are engaged in quietly packing
up their books and preparing to move to new parishes, new assignments. For twelve years, I’ve watched
other men go through the ritual of working out how they’ll fit their books into their new home, where
their bookshelves will go, even whether they shouldn’t get rid of some of the volumes that currently
furnish their rooms.
For twelve years, I’ve witnessed this with a profound
sense of relief and gratitude that I’m staying put. This
year, however, I’m one of those on the move. At the
end of August, I will be moving, together with my
books, to take up an appointment at the University
of St Joseph in Macau. This year, it is I who wonders
whether the new home – a very nice two bedroomed
flat on the seventeenth floor of an apartment block in
the most densely populated territory on earth – will
have sufficient space to accommodate a lifetime of
buying any book that takes my fancy and my means
will permit. Where will the thirty-three volumes of
Newman’s Letters and Diaries go? Will I be able to
preserve the current familiar layout, which means that
I can almost immediately lay my hands on any volume?
I know that in a world full of strife and hunger, refugees
and environmental challenges, this sounds like a bit of
a first-world problem (as my younger son would call
it), but it is still very much my problem.
being the first verse of Psalm 30, the psalm appointed
for the sixth morning of the month. So began my love
affair with the Psalms of David and (despite thirty-five
years on this side of the Tiber) with Sung Matins and
Evensong in the Book of Common Prayer.
It has now been a very long time since the Vulgate
psalms of the Breviary became for me, as they did for
Newman for more than half of his life, my daily staple.
I am now firmly attached to the rhythms and cadences
of St Jerome’s Latin. When I encounter what I now
know as Psalm 29, the fourth psalm of the second
nocturn of Sunday in the Brevarium Monasticum, I
am now entirely habituated to praying “Exaltabo te,
Domine, quoniam suscepisti: nec delectasti inimicos
meos super me.” And yet … and yet, like Blessed John
Henry Newman whose correspondence is full of such
verses, whenever I’m asked to re