The Musical Plans for the Newman Beatification Mass

The Beatification Mass for Cardinal Newman at Coventry Airport on September 19, 2010, seems to be preparing music that Cardinal Newman himself, to say nothing of Pope Benedict XVI, would regard as less-than suited to the occasion, according to Damian Thompson.

Newman himself had the highest regard for Gregorian chant, as Susan Treacy has written. He studied chant and marveled at how well children take to it. He celebrated the organ as giving "the nearest representation of the voice of God" on earth. Music, Newman wrote, "is the expression of ideas greater and more profound than any in the visible world, ideas, which center indeed in Him whom Catholicism manifests, who is the seat of all beauty, order, and perfection."