If this is the New Evangelization, why isn't the general public invited?

By Phil Lawler ( bio - articles - email ) | Jun 04, 2013

Since last Sunday, when Pope Francis led a worldwide hour of Eucharistic adoration, several readers have contacted me to complain that in their own parishes, no plans had been made to join in the initiative. This negligence, my friend said, showed that their pastors were not in tune with the Vatican, not thinking along with the universal Church.

Ordinarily I would be inclined to agree with such criticisms: to say that pastors should inform their people about statements from the Vatican, and ensure that their churches are following the Pope’s pastoral plans. But pastors aren't clairvoyant. If you want them to cooperate with the Vatican's plans, you need to tell them what the Vatican plans are. In this case I’m going to side with the pastors, and lay the blame on the Vatican. You can’t blame pastors for failing to make advance plans, if the Vatican didn’t provide advance notice. What we have here is a failure to communicate.

I first became aware of the plans for a worldwide hour of Eucharistic adoration—led by the Pope in Rome, but observed simultaneously in cathedrals all around the world—on Tuesday, May 28, when the Pontifical Council for the New Evangelization held a press conference to announce the event. Now keep in mind that it’s my job to stay current on the latest announcements from Rome. A pastor has other duties. Even if he followed Church news carefully—that is, even if he did try his best to follow the Pope’s lead, even if he read all the CWN headlines--a typical American pastor didn’t learn about the planned hour of Eucharistic adoration until Tuesday night or, more likely, Wednesday morning.

Wednesday, for many American pastors, is the deadline day for the parish bulletin. If he learned about the Vatican plan within 24 hours after it was announced at that Tuesday press conference, the pastor still had time to put a notice in the bulletin. So he should have informed his parishioners, right?

Wrong. Think about it. When do parishioners pick up the parish bulletin? On Sunday, when they come to Mass. Since the hour of Eucharistic adoration was scheduled for that very Sunday, there was no efficient way for the unfortunate pastor to give his people advance notice in the parish bulletin. Oh, I suppose the notice could have been given in time to the people who attended an anticipatory Mass on Saturday evening. But then there’s another major complication.

Let’s just suppose that the pastor saw the Vatican announcement on Tuesday, put a notice in the bulletin on Wednesday, and arranged for Eucharistic adoration on Sunday, June 2. To coordinate perfectly with the Vatican event, a pastor on the east coast of the US would have scheduled the hour of adoration for 11 am. At any normal parish, that hour would have conflicted with the regular weekly Mass schedule. Since Sunday was observed as the feast of Corpus Christi in the US, many parishes had already scheduled Eucharistic processions, Benediction, and/or their own hours of adoration as well. To coordinate perfectly with the Vatican plans, the pastor would have needed to rearrange the parish schedule entirely, and then somehow to alert all his parishioners to both the revised schedule and the new event. Could it have been done? No doubt. But not easily.

Maybe I’m entirely wrong here. Maybe pastors had been contacted weeks or even months ago, and asked to begin planning for the hour of Eucharistic adoration. But at his May 28 press conference, Archbishop Rino Fisichella, the president of the Pontifical Council for the New Evangelization, made no mention of such advance planning. Instead he emphasized that his office had made arrangements with many cathedrals around the world, coordinating plans for simultaneous adoration. These cathedral parishes were notified well in advance, I gather, and other parishes were not, because their participation was not deemed essential to the success of the event.

But if that is the case, how is the Pontifical Council for the New Evangelization measuring its success? If the Church plans an event in which the faithful worldwide join in simultaneous prayer with the Roman Pontiff, why not notify all the faithful? An hour of Eucharistic adoration is a powerful form of prayer; why not include all Catholics in that initiative?

At that same May 28 press conference, Archbishop Fisichella announced plans for another event: an Evangelium Vitae Day, to be observed June 15-16. For those who are involved, the plans sound wonderful: a series of catechetical talks, a candelight procession to St. Peter’s Square, a prayer vigil, Confession and Eucharistic adoration, and Sunday Mass with Pope Francis presiding. But again only a tiny fraction of the worldwide Catholic population will participate; the vast majority of the faithful will probably never hear about the initiative.

These events are good things. Eucharistic adoration, Confession, catechesis, visits to the tomb of St. Peter: how could any faithful Catholic object? The problem is not with the events themselves, but with the approach taken by the Pontifical Council for the New Evangelization. By staging these events without furnishing an invitation for all the world to participate, this Vatican dicastery is hiding a light under a bushel. In effect these events have been organized for a relatively small number of invited participants, chosen from among the ranks of Catholics who are already actively involved with cathedral parishes or pro-life ministries. That’s an odd approach, for a dicastery that should be devoted to reaching Catholics who have drifted away from the faith.