My pitch: A Congress every 10 years — time enough to recover from one event before whetting people's appetites for another — and a big single-route pilgrimage every two years so a pilgrimage year can coincide with the Congress year.
My pitch: A Congress every 10 years — time enough to recover from one event before whetting people's appetites for another — and a big single-route pilgrimage every two years so a pilgrimage year can coincide with the Congress year.
Counter-pitch: Diocesan-level Eucharistic procession every year. Far fewer resources needed, and it starts treating processions like they are *normal*, not special.
Parish-level, for that matter. It doesn't take that much prep to walk around your church grounds (if you have them) for a bit. It's literally just walking.
My parish has done an annual Eucharistic procession for years now, but the National Pilgrimage was very effective in mobilizing interest in our community when it came through and bringing lots of people out who hadn't participated in the past. I think one of the big fruits we will see from the national event is an increase in local events, because people got to "practice" having these events that maybe felt intimidating when they'd never done it before, and because lots of people now have an experience of doing it and will be interested.
I'd like to see the national pilgrimage be less-than-annual, because I think what made it effective was that it was special, and if it happen every year, even though on different routes, it will cease to be special. But I think there is lots of room for both national and local, and they can help each other.
If it has any fruits at all, it will have to have local fruits. And I very much hope it does. Possibly one of the best things it did was declare to every Catholic that at least most of the bishops in the US consider Eucharistic Processions to be a normal Catholic thing, not a museum piece from the past or something only weird or super-pious Catholics do. But that declaration will go by the wayside if there aren't local fruits.
I think you could have it be an every-other-year event and still be special. Just don't do the same route. The one they took this year was well over a day's drive away for many people, which is a lot of people who couldn't do anything beyond read about it - press coverage certainly is something you get more of when you do things infrequently.
My pitch: A Congress every 10 years — time enough to recover from one event before whetting people's appetites for another — and a big single-route pilgrimage every two years so a pilgrimage year can coincide with the Congress year.
Counter-pitch: Diocesan-level Eucharistic procession every year. Far fewer resources needed, and it starts treating processions like they are *normal*, not special.
Parish-level, for that matter. It doesn't take that much prep to walk around your church grounds (if you have them) for a bit. It's literally just walking.
My parish has done an annual Eucharistic procession for years now, but the National Pilgrimage was very effective in mobilizing interest in our community when it came through and bringing lots of people out who hadn't participated in the past. I think one of the big fruits we will see from the national event is an increase in local events, because people got to "practice" having these events that maybe felt intimidating when they'd never done it before, and because lots of people now have an experience of doing it and will be interested.
I'd like to see the national pilgrimage be less-than-annual, because I think what made it effective was that it was special, and if it happen every year, even though on different routes, it will cease to be special. But I think there is lots of room for both national and local, and they can help each other.
If it has any fruits at all, it will have to have local fruits. And I very much hope it does. Possibly one of the best things it did was declare to every Catholic that at least most of the bishops in the US consider Eucharistic Processions to be a normal Catholic thing, not a museum piece from the past or something only weird or super-pious Catholics do. But that declaration will go by the wayside if there aren't local fruits.
I think you could have it be an every-other-year event and still be special. Just don't do the same route. The one they took this year was well over a day's drive away for many people, which is a lot of people who couldn't do anything beyond read about it - press coverage certainly is something you get more of when you do things infrequently.