Just recently news has come from unofficial sources that Pope Benedict XVI will visit England next year, at a time that could well coincide with the upcoming beatification of Cardinal Newman. If this is true, let us hope he will come to visit us in the Oratory in Birmingham. If that does happen, it will be one of biggest news stories of the English church in years. And what a snub it will be to our enemies and critics! I would love to see the reaction of the Tablet and some of the Bishops of England and Wales to a papal high mass in the Oratory...
For nearly forty years, particularly during the church's grim Babylonian captivity in the 70's and 80's, we were an embattled ghetto holding fast to the doctrinal, liturgical and devotional traditions of the church often by the skin of our teeth. Now those days are well and truly over and we are seen as the model for the Benedictine reforms, particularly on the web. The combination of the beatification of our founder, with a visit from the Holy Father will be the vindication of our efforts and what we have stood for.
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