The impact of the Pope's visit to the UK will be felt for a very long time. The Year of Catholic Education could prove interesting for a start but I want to focus on the significance of Newman's beatification.
As the Anglican Bishop of Gibraltar in Europe, Geoffrey Rowell, pointed out, Pope Benedict quoted from Newman's Anglican sermons during his beatification homily. It is striking how many great Catholic works of literature were written by authors on their way to the Catholic Church, the most obvious examples being Newman's An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, G.K.Chesterton's Orthodoxy and two of the Father Brown collections, and Sigrid Undset's Kristin Lavransdatter. We need to be careful not to limit our definitions of Catholic Literature.
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