Mount St. Mary's, Greenmeadows
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Mount St. Mary's, Greenmeadows |
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2018 - It is fifty years since these letters began. The letters are from a time and way of life that are no longer there, and in my opinion will hopefully never come back. These letters to my parents, all unedited except for the occasional correction of name-spelling, came in years of tumultuous change. Although mainly mundane, perhaps even boring, between the lines there could be a little more going on. There will be a number of churchy words and a number of out-of-date words which might puzzle the reader. In the main, that shouldn't matter. So as not to clutter the text with footnotes of explanation, there is a not-totally-comprehensive glossary to help out. I realize that these letters won't be everyone's cup of tea. Rather than throw the letters away (I never knew my mother was keeping them!) I thought I would put them online. They may reveal a snatch of a snippet of an era. I couldn't see anything in the letters that might be offensive when a personal name is mentioned. Rather than say "names have been changed" I decided to leave the names of those mentioned as is. If you find yourself referred to and want a pseudonym used, I'll kind-of-happily do that, but won't delete entire sentences. It was another age altogether and not everything was trendy. I don't like to change a text to satisfy contemporary whims. There's much in these letters that today embarrasses me and I could so easily delete things to make myself nicer! The reality is, I'm not expecting many to read this blog anyway! There are 244 letters in all spanning the eight years of priestly formation. Their posting is some attempt to answer the many requests for a follow up of my autobiography - Bits of a Boyhood. Many around the world have enjoyed it online - even taught it in the classroom! - and asked "When is the next volume coming out?" This is not exactly in the same style, but it might sort-of sort-of do. We begin with a repeat of the final chapter of "Bits of a Boyhood", and move on from there. Note: The original letters are now held at the Marist Archives in Wellington. The archivist can be contacted HERE Thanks Bruce Goodman |
