Indeed - the point I was making was that Elgar's choral piece was providing Newman with a link to a much wider audience than just Catholicism. And a further link can be found in the Elgar memorial window in Worcester Cathedral which includes references to Gerontius which were then incorporated into the design of the old £20 note which featured Edward Elgar.
I was a member of choirs many, many years ago but this ended because my life was unsettled for a while. Later I developed a strong friendship with the general manager of an orchestra (he was my son's godfather) and I observed the importance of filling auditoria.
For several years I have been a fervent admirer of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. Gerontius fills Symphony Hall, Elijah does not. (Both chosen because they both had their first performance in Birmingham). You referred earlier to Elgar being Victorian, surely it was Mendelssohn who was the Victorian ,,,
Symphony Hall is also filled by Mahler 2. Mark Elder considers Elgar to be the English Mahler. 
Please correct me if I am wrong, but I think you are a little older than me and I think this and where you live are relevant in your views on the profile and popularity of Dream of Gerontius.
First geography - I can fully understand why Dream of Gerontius has a special place in the hearts of people in Birmingham - as both Elgar and Newman are closely linked with the city. But Birmingham isn't England and those particular links don't apply in the rest of the country.
Secondly age and time - I actually think that Dream of Gerontius has undergone a strange fluctuation in popularity and prominence with its peak in the period from the 50s to the 80s and declining significantly thereafter. So I can tell you that in my part of the world (Hertfordshire, without its special links with Elgar and Newman) over the past decades where I've been significantly interested and involved in choral music Dream of Gerontius doesn't have a major profile and is not considered to be one of the most popular pieces. It certainly isn't a piece that would fill out the big venues (unlike a range of other pieces) and is therefore rarely performed.
So in our 75 years my choral society has only performed Dream of Gerontius twice, the last time in 1988 - and a quick glance at the other choral societies locally big enough to perform it reveals a similar pattern - rarely performed and increasingly infrequently performed over recent decades. Now there will be a number of interlinked reasons for this, but ultimately it affects profile, and profile impacts popularity which makes it less likely for it to be performed - a vicious circle.
And it isn't just amateur performances where this is the case - look at the Proms - if there is anywhere where the Dream of Gerontius fits perfectly it is in the Royal Albert Hall at the Proms. Well you can see the entire list of performances - through the late 50s to the early 70s Dream of Gerontius was almost ever present, performed 9 times in just 14 years. In the past 45 years Dream of Gerontius has been performed just 4 times at the Proms.
So I would say that Dream of Gerontius had a relatively brief heyday of popularity in the post-war decades but that popularity has declined massively for a variety of reasons, not least a general move in public tastes away from the high victoriana/Edwardian feel of Elgar and contemporaries - once upon a time Elgar would be locked on favourite for any vote on most popular English composer, now he'll certainly be behind Vaughan-Williams and probably Britten (maybe even Holst) as tastes change. And the reasons for the lack of profile of Dream of Gerontius in the first few decades after it was written are, of course, well recorded.
So coming back to my opening comment - again correct me if I am wrong, but if you a someone who was strongly involved in choral music perhaps through the 60s, 70s and into the 80s in Birmingham then of course you'll think Dream of Gerontius to be hugely popular and high profile. But if, like me, your involvement has been largely over the past 20 years and not in Birmingham, well Dream of Gerontius has very limited profile in the choral pantheon.
