This photo taken today at The London Oratory was nicked from New Liturgical Movement website.
It is a magnificent grace to be able to attend Mass at The London Oratory. Years before I was able to move to London, I would pass South Kensington tube station, and pray decades of the Rosary for the graces to live near to The Oratory. At this time of writing, I estimate that I have attended over 300 Tridentine Masses there – mostly private Masses. I record this not to boast of piety (which I am in short supply of anyway) but to render a historical account of the life of 'a modern Irish' who went to London in their mid-twenties to be near the ‘Old Rite’ Mass/’Extraordinary Form’.
Had someone told my grandparents in 1950’s Ireland that their grandchild would move to a part of London to be near the Tridentine Mass, they would have thought it fantastical and the stuff of illusion. This was ‘the hey-day’ of the Catholic Church in Ireland – frequent Masses in each parish and a surge of vocations to the priesthood. Then it would have been inconceivable that there would come a time in Ireland’s history when there would be a dearth of vocations to the priesthood and few Tridentine Masses celebrated.
I have also had the privilege of going to Mass in St Bede’s Clapham and Corpus Christi, Maiden Lane.
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