The Herald says

THERE is a danger, growing in probability as the days go by, that the Catholic community of England and Wales will miss the opportunity of playing its full part in the Eucharistic Congress to be held in Lourdes this July. Unless more than 1,700 adults and about 200 young people are willing to set aside eight days to share in the international life of the Church, we will have to face the fact that we will be seriously under represented and that consequently our own distinctive contribution wil be attenuated and our chances learning from the Congress insights, diminished.
This imminent mass abstention will not only be a loss to the Congress, it will also weaken a potentially valuable link in the chain joining our own Pastoral Congress and our programme of preparation for the papal visit. It is, therefore, worth asking why response has been so poor.
It seems unlikely that the prospect of travelling to Lourdes has been a deterrent; many thousands of British pilgrims visit the shrine every year. The distance involved is considerably less than that undertaken by many participants in the Eucharistic Congresses of the past 20 years.
Above all the theme and purpose of the Congress could hardly be dismissed as being peripheral to our beliefs. The 60,000 delegates, including members of the laity, clergy and hierarchy, gathering round the Pope to celebrate the Congress, are expected to return to their local churches with a message of renewal in faith grounded in Jesus Christ, the bread broken for a new world.
It seems highly likely that this uncharacteristic English and Welsh reluctance to come forward has nothing to do with apathy or reticence. In all probability the culprit is simply a predictable semantic legacy of our own Pastoral Congress. Participants in the Eucharistic Congress have been unwisely referred to as -delegates-. Naturally with memories of the NPC fresh in their minds many people have assumed that they have to wait to be selected as delegates.
There is still time for this confusion to be cleared up at parish level. In this instance diffidence is an unwelcome virtue.